Gracie packed every single My Little Pony she owned, and a few of Gabe’s. I packed her pajamas, her toothbrush, a hairbrush, her favorite snacks. Soon she would not be able to eat or brush her teeth. She would have no hair to comb. But we packed for the present.
We’d woken up early. On the slope behind our house, dozens of wild geese waddled in agitated circles, a shifting gray carpet honking their anxieties into the morning air. I wanted to wade out and join them.
Gracie had appeared in our bedroom, wearing her Dora pajamas. Gabe had trailed in after, in his T-shirt, diaper, and bee boots.
“Can I go pet the geese?” Gracie asked.
“Those are wild geese, love, not for petting,” Brian said. “When you come home from the hospital, we will go to a petting zoo and find some tame geese.”
“How long will that be?” Gracie asked.
We stared at her, searching for a number that would sound acceptable. “Some few weeks,” Brian said.
Gracie never asked us What am I doing here? Or Why would you do this to me? She was not philosophical about her suffering. She didn’t want to know Why me? She only wanted to know how long it would last. She asked us, over and over, “When will I see my friends again?” and “Does Eden miss me?”
The power of her feelings—for Eden, for Gabriel, for the boy we’d met on our first day, Jake, whom she hadn’t seen in weeks but still talked about with great animation—was startling. As we packed she sang to herself, “And I just love you, Eden. And I just miss you, Eden.”
“Me,” Gabe cut in. “Miss me, Yacie.”
“Gabriel, you are here. I can’t miss you.”
“Miss me!” Gabe said again. Gabe, who was always missing at least one of us, wanted to be missed.
Brian carried Gabe to the car; Gracie loped along beside us, trusting, willing. We had said she had to live in the hospital for “some weeks,” and she accepted it. She buckled herself into her car seat. As we backed down the driveway, Gracie said, “Bye, house, I won’t see you for a couple of days. I have to catch up to the Nemo bus.”
Often I had no idea what she was talking about, much less thinking; she had an ongoing inner life of quiet and powerful sympathies for various imaginary characters. But the bus we understood. She had a dream of chasing the cast of the Ice Capades show Nemo on Ice. She and her friends, she’d explained, would “jump on that bus and take it for our own. No grown-ups can come with us; just me and Eden and our Nemo friends are gonna have that bus.” Her idea of perfect happiness hinged on a world run by, and for, kids alone.
Fair enough. Considering what adults did to her.
As we passed Gabriel’s menacing trees, I prayed a wordless, half-faithless prayer: Let the same four people pass these trees from the opposite direction.
At the hospital entrance we piled Gracie’s bags onto a cart. Gabriel wanted to ride on top. Having him with us added a layer of complication and unpredictability, but he deserved to see where his sister was going. We set him atop the bags: “I uppy!” he shouted, from the top of the luggage, at anyone and everyone, “I uppy!” The boy in bee boots, sending salutations to each passing soul in the lobby. And so began Gabe’s reign as a hospital celebrity.
“Be careful, Gabey,” Gracie said. She was, at heart, a grandma, a mensch. She kept on chatting with Brian and me, exuding an air of merry anticipation. To her, this was more or less like checking into a hotel. She skipped along in front of us, past the lobby fountain with its glimmering layer of coins, each one an underwater wish.
On the fifth floor we turned down the long corridor toward our unit, 5200. Before you can enter the transplant unit, you have to first pass through the scrub room, a large antechamber with a trough sink. This sobered us up. The room is designed for decontamination. To keep the children of 5200 safe from outside germs and viruses, every visitor completes the protocol of scrubbing arms up to the elbows with disinfectant soap, donning shoe covers, and wearing a protective gown.
Gracie didn’t want to put on the shoe covers. Gabriel didn’t like the smell of the soap; he shrieked as Brian scrubbed him down.
“This is important, sweethearts,” Brian said. “It keeps the kids here safe.”
“They are not safe?” Gracie said.
We faltered. The children on this unit were so fragile, any renegade germ or garden variety virus could fell them.
“Washing keeps the germs out,” Brian said, “so the kids can stay healthy.”
Gracie nodded, a hero accepting the mantle of responsibility, and pulled the stiff blue paper covers over her shoes.
The unit was shaped like an L: two long corridors connected at the elbow by a nurses’ station. I looked in every room we passed. Each had a large window onto the hall, but all the shades were down.
As we approached our room, an adjacent door opened and a young mother emerged, a pretty brunette. Her hair was done in a retro upflip, Marlo Thomas–esque. Her makeup was smooth, evenly applied, appropriately subtle under the harsh hospital light. I was in awe of her coping mechanism: under duress, look nice. She smiled at us with both warmth and distance. A don’t-talk-to me smile, a welcome-to-hell smile.
Brian was bent down, listening to something Gracie was asking, but I smiled back. I wanted to stop her, to ask her everything, but she walked past us toward the communal kitchen holding an ominous plastic bag that looked like it held something wet and heavy at the bottom.
Brian took my hand, squeezed, a gentle reprimand, Get your head here, now. Our room was nearly at the end of the hall, second to last. I took this as a good omen—end of the hall, out of the way. Don’t tempt fate. We stepped into our room, and Gracie immediately scrambled on top of the bed. She reached out for Gabe, who was standing beside the bed, with his arms up. He believed she could lift him. She believed it too. She might pull his arms out of the socket trying, but she would get the job done. Brian put his foot under Gabe’s butt and hoisted him upward onto the bed. Gabe said, “Yacie uppied me.” Matter-of-fact, not at all surprised by her powers.
The room was a small, strange shape, maybe a trapezoid. I tried to remember my geometry. There was space enough for the hospital bed, a big chair that pulled out into a cot, and a wall-mounted TV. In one corner a tall, skinny window looked out on a single tree.
“That better be a good tree,” I said.
“What?” Brian was putting a few of Gracie’s pajamas in a drawer.
“Nothing.”
I was taking stock of all the daunting, gleaming, ominous, ever-present equipment. Monitors, IV stand, oxygen outlet built into the wall. And much more. This was a room designed to sustain life. Or, if necessary, restore it.
A nurse had told us, “All the rooms are under negative pressure. The air flows out, exclusively. No germs can enter, so your daughter will be safe.” I certainly felt as if I was under negative pressure, whatever that might be. But I also felt supremely unreassured.