Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [43]
Charles and Josie Lynch’s neighbor Muttie Scarlet came to pay his respects to the child. He was in the hospital anyway, he said, on business, and he thought he would take advantage of the occasion to visit the baby.
And eventually Noel was told that he could take his baby daughter home to his new apartment. It was a terrifying moment. Noel realized that he was about to stop being a visitor and become entirely responsible for this tiny human being. How was he going to remember all the things that needed to be done? Supposing he dropped her? Poisoned her? He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t be responsible for this baby, it was ludicrous to ask him. Stella had been mad, she was ill, she didn’t know what she was doing. Someone else would have to take over, they’d have to find someone else to look after her baby—her baby, nothing to do with him at all. He had a sudden urge to flee, to run down the corridor and out into the street, and to keep on running until the hospital and Stella and Frankie and all of them were just a memory.
Just as his feet were starting to turn towards the doorway, the nurse arrived with Frankie, wrapped in a big pink shawl.
She looked up at him trustingly, and suddenly, from nowhere, Noel felt a wave of protectiveness almost overwhelm him. This poor, helpless baby had no one else in the world. Stella had trusted him with the most precious thing she ever had, the child she knew she wouldn’t live to see. Nervously, almost shyly, he took the baby from the nurse.
“Little Frankie,” he said to the tiny baby. “Let’s go home.”
Emily had said she would come to stay with him for a few days to tide him over the most frightening bits. There were three bedrooms in the apartment, two reasonably sized and one small one, which was to be Frankie’s, so she would be perfectly comfortable. The visiting nurse came every couple of days but even so, there were so many questions.
Was that horrible-colored mess in the baby’s nappy normal, or did she have something wrong with her? How could anyone so very small need to be changed ten times a day? Was that breathing normal? Did he dare go to sleep in case she stopped?
How on earth did anyone manage to get all those snaps on a baby’s sleep suit in the right places? Was one blanket too much or too little? He knew she mustn’t be allowed to get too cold, but the pamphlets were full of terrible warnings about the dangers of overheating.
Bath times were a nightmare. He knew to test the temperature of the water with his elbow, but would a mother’s elbow signal a different temperature from his? Emily needed to come to test the water as well.
She was kept busy: she would do the laundry and help him prepare the bottles and they could read the hospital notes and the baby books and consult the Internet together. They would take the baby’s temperature and make sure they had supplies of nappies, wipes, newborn formula. So much of it and so expensive. How did anyone cope with all this?
How did anyone learn to identify what kind of crying meant hunger, discomfort or pain? To Noel all crying sounded the same: piercing, jagged, shrill, drilling through the deepest, most exhausted sleep. No one ever told you how tiring it was to be up three, four times every night, night after night. After three days he was near to weeping with fatigue; as he walked up and down with his daughter trying to burp her after her third feed of the night, he found himself stumbling against furniture, almost incapable of remaining upright.
Emily found him asleep in an armchair. “Don’t forget you have to go to the center every week.”
“They’re not taking any chances with me,” Noel said.
“It’s the same for everyone. They call it the Mothers and Babies Group, but more and more it can be Fathers and Babies.” Emily was practical.
“It’s not just that they think I’m a bit of a risk—past history of drinking and all that?” Noel asked.
“No. Don’t be paranoid. And aren’t you a shining example of what people can achieve.”
“I’m terrified, Emily.”
“Of course you are. So am I, but we