We routinely discussed celebrities as if they were extended family members. In fact, my mom believed celebrity culture had replaced tribal affiliations.
“She lost most of the hearing in her left ear from an abusive boyfriend,” I said. My mom looked at me. I’d stepped into territory she preferred to avoid. I took a bite of my salad. “Maybe,” I said, “she has a team of people who pull her muscles north, south, east, west, intoning ancient chants.” No response. “I’d pay a thousand dollars to see her naked,” I said. “Not to touch. Just to check her out, at my leisure.”
Given her incredible levitating body, Halle Berry, it went without saying, would have a gorgeous and peppy baby. Not a pasty over-sleeper.
I waited for my mom to respond, but she was looking at the baby. Really looking at her. She touched the baby’s cheek and looked up at me, “I think you better take her in.”
We both knew where in was, even though we’d barely spoken of the hospital since we’d left. I regarded the hospital like a bad acid trip: the less said afterward the better. I glanced down at the baby, at the twins circling the fountain, at Halle Berry happily filling up her car, at the baby again.
I didn’t want to take her back in. I wanted to take her home.
My mom was emphatic. “She’s so pale. And she never really wakes up.”
She wasn’t only pale; she was nearly see-through. Her skin was parchment thin and transparent, like an anatomy doll. Beneath her skin a tributary of veins formed intricate, lacy patterns in violet hues. I was afraid to press on her, afraid she could be breached.
I looked down at her. She was just a little comma, a small curved thing, cupping air. Her face was peaceful, her hands quiet on top of the blanket, her moist lips pushed forward in the involuntary pout of infants. Her eyelids didn’t flicker or twitch. Either she wasn’t dreaming, or her dream was of an unmoving landscape.
“Don’t drift off,” I whispered into the curve of her ear, sunny yellow with wax at the core. She didn’t stir.
My mother was right; she was a girl in need of a doctor, probably several doctors. But I hesitated. I didn’t want to set the medical wheels in motion. I didn’t want her examined or diagnosed or written up. I wanted to finish eating the goodies of Provence (anchovies, olives, bits of seared tuna) and decoding Halle Berry’s sex appeal.
I wanted to be a person dedicated to earthbound pleasures. A person from another era—my great-grandmother, born in an olive grove before email, before permanent paper trails, with nothing to verify her birth except her. She raised her children outdoors with a minimum of medical interference. They ran through the olive groves and grew strong. End of story. The only trouble with this vision was that, back then, my girl wouldn’t have lived twenty-one days.
I took a last look at the bronzed twins and at Gracie, still sleeping, hands motionless. I collected the diaper bag and hoisted the baby carrier into the crook of my arm. “OK. Fine,” I said, and started walking toward the car, dialing the pediatric hematologist’s pager. My mom trailed after me, saying, “Let me help, let me hold that.” I shrugged her off, irrationally furious.
I got the page prompt and entered my number. I had no idea that the act of paging this specialist would be replicated dozens of times over the next year, or that Marion Koerper’s number, even years after it was decommissioned, would remain in my consciousness, the one number I could remember without trying.
7
When Dr. Marion Koerper, renowned hematologist, called back, she sounded like a warm, chatty grandmother, like someone who might invite you over for raspberry scones. When I told her that the baby was see-through and slept most of the day, she gave me instructions in a calm, authoritative voice: “Take her to Marin General. They can check her blood counts. I’ll call in the orders. Step one is to determine if we need to transfuse her.” A pause. “This must be very scary for you.”
I wanted to hug her through the phone. I didn’t yet know what she looked like, that she had ungovernable silver hair that flew around her face in long independent-minded strands. I didn’t know she had a wide smile populated by a band of unruly teeth. I only knew the sound of her voice made me want to curl up in her lap and sleep.
Eventually, I came to know that she’d wanted to be a doctor from the age of six, that she had two sons, both in medical school, that her husband was also a doctor. That she’d been raised in the Midwest, loved ice-skating, and didn’t consider herself dressed without medium heels and panty hose. That she treated the nurses with respect, always, even in private.
And she came to know that I was on my own with my daughter, that I had feelings, of one kind or another, for the father, who lived in New York. That I lived in a studio beside my mother’s house, together with a dog whose white and black hairs clung to the baby’s clothes, despite my occasional efforts to dehair her. That I was sometimes rude to the nurses, sometimes nice, and was the granddaughter of Greek immigrants, one of them a wrestler who went by the name of Pete the Greek. That I also liked to ice-skate. That I had not one doctor in the family. That I was a worrier, a hoverer, and couldn’t be counted on to hand the baby over easily.
That first day, when she said, “Take her to Marin General … I’ll call in the orders,” I believed she’d take good care of Gracie.
The nurses on duty at Marin General, where Gracie had been born only three weeks before, recognized us. The kind-faced doctor who had transferred us to UC Med was there too, Dr. Eric Scher. “Call me Dr. Eric,” he said, smiling. It made me feel like I was ten, but I was happy he wanted us to feel comfortable. “You remember us?” I was pleased. He gave a smile and a shrug. “Not many newborns need central lines or are transferred by ambulance to UC,” he said. “Your girl is unique.”
One good thing about having a sick kid: it confirms what you’ve secretly believed all along—what your mother repeated to you, like a mantra, all through your childhood—you are special. Well, technically, only your kid is special, but you’re the mom. You made her. It’s fame by association.
“Dr. Eric” had spoken with Dr. Koerper on the phone and taken down her orders. “Your hematologist asked us to transfuse the baby if her hemoglobin is under six,” he said. “So let’s see what her numbers are and then figure out what to do.” He paused, surveying her like an engineering problem. “Does she still have the central line?”
“No,” I said. “They took it out when we left UC.”
“OK, then we have to get in. We might as well place the IV at the same time we draw her blood. Then, if she does need a transfusion, we will already be in.”
Again, in was the key concept.