Take care Gabey. A fine, fine idea if ever there was one.
Brian arrives and—in pursuit of a Coke for the drive home—runs into the lobby gift shop with Gabe, hospital celebrity. The guard smiles at him and says, “Baby Gabe! Wearing your boots tonight?” The gift shop woman offers him a fat Tootsie pop on the house. And two complete strangers stop to admire his cheeks (so round, so dimpled) and his general joie de vivre.
I kiss Gabe one more time before going upstairs, drawing out the good-bye. Never good. Back go his hands into my hair. “You’ll have fun with Daddy!” I say. Brian hates being touted as the consolation prize. He and Gabriel have a fantastic relationship; he doesn’t need a propaganda campaign. But I can’t help trying to deflect Gabe’s sadness. Though it’s a doomed effort; he is, all day, bobbing in the thrashing tide of our collective anxiety.
DAY ?5
New Year’s Eve around midday Gracie falls asleep for an hour or so and wakes up in a mysteriously good mood, singing the Barney song, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family.”
She goes on eating Doritos and playing with her ponies and asking to walk Tough Guy in the hall, even as the drugs rise to therapeutic levels. We know the side effects of chemo are delayed, but still … Will she skip over the pain entirely? Only her mouth is peeling in huge, dry rinds of skin. This is far beyond chapped lips, more like a snake sloughing skin. Not a condition conducive to taking oral meds.
Bobbie comes on at 8 p.m. She has the overnight shift. Just like her to take overnight on New Year’s. She arrives with bubbly apple juice and three plastic champagne flutes. Around midnight she and I and Gracie toast each other. Gracie seems unclear what makes this a new year. She keeps asking, “How is it a different one?” I can see her point.
Brian calls from the apartment, so we can toast each other. Gabe is asleep on his chest. Gracie’s nodded off on my shoulder. We are a nuclear family of four, divided into two twos. Separated by six miles. I feel eons apart.
“Cheers to you, darling,” he says. “Cheers to everything you are doing for her every day.” “Cheers to you too,” I say, “for getting on and off planes. And teaching when you’re worried sick. And, most of all, for being a tiger, Pony.”
“Cheers to a better year,” Brian says.
We both let that idea drift out there.
Tomorrow Gracie begins ATG. We’ve been told to expect the possibility of high fevers, chills, nausea and vomiting, seizures, burning and bleeding of the bladder, terrible rashes, or more serious allergic reactions. I do not ask for a definition of more serious.
I look up ATG online. “Anti-thymocyte globulin is an infusion of horse-or rabbit-derived antibodies against human T cells, used in the prevention and treatment of acute rejection in organ transplantation.” Dr. K has to choose whether to give Gracie ATG serum derived from horse or rabbit cells. Would Gracie’s love for horses make her body more or less inclined to accept a horse-based drug?
DAY ?4
I want to ask Ramya which ATG drug Varun had, rabbit or horse, and if he reacted against it. But I don’t; we’re still getting to know each other. Varun is some weeks ahead of Gracie and recovering well. He benefits from the undivided attention of his mom. She does not leave his side. Ever. She’s there every minute of every day without interruption. I never see her in the parents’ kitchen. I never see her without Varun on her shoulder. As many minutes as Varun’s dad, Deepak, can be there, he is. This is the most loved baby, I think, of all time.
He gurgles, he coos, he smiles; he flings his huge-eyed calmness around the room. He does not cry. He has myriad reasons to cry, every day, but I have no idea what his cry sounds like. Only his laugh, his soft whoop of surprise or curiosity. Or his sigh, as he settles into his mom’s shoulder. Gracie considers herself an honorary aunt. She calls him, as though she were decades older, “Baby Varun.”
DAY ?3
It is late afternoon when we find out that a child has died on our unit. I don’t know the family, don’t know the child, but feel stricken. How has this been allowed to happen?
Bobbie is off duty. An unfamiliar nurse comes into our room. “It is OK,” she says, “the family was prepared; they knew it was going to happen.” She wears heavy blue eye shadow and smells of Jean Naté perfume. She looks too young, too naive to realize what she’s just said.
“Do you have children?” I ask.
You can’t prepare to have your heart pulled up your throat, plucked from your mouth, and hurled into space.
When Gracie falls asleep I walk down the hall, to what I believe is the door of the room where, hours before, a child has died. It’s closed. The blinds are drawn. There is no sound from within.
The door is identical to the fifteen other doors on this floor. Thick wood, steel industrial knob. Window, with curtain drawn. I linger there for as long as I can without seeming to be lingering.
I wonder if the parents are still inside. How long will they be permitted to stay? I would not leave. I would refuse to go. This is self-deluding. But it comforts me to believe I would never leave that room.
Why am I standing here? Am I looking the way you look at an accident? The parents, should they open the door, won’t want to see a stranger. But I want to look into their faces, to occupy them, for a sliver of second. To know if such loss is survivable.
Losing a child makes time reverse direction, flow backward. To survive loss on that scale, I imagine, you have to become someone you make up, whole cloth, to impersonate you, for the rest of your life.
On the way back to our room I pause at the nurses’ station. There is a subdued vibe, but everyone continues to work. I want to gather information. Of course, this is impossible; I cannot ask; they cannot answer. But I want to know. Give me a map. Tell me where not to go.
When I get back to the room Gracie is awake and anxious.
“Where did you go?” she asks. I’d been gone ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
“I went for a walk in the hall, lovey. I was right outside.”
“You weren’t here when I woke up.”
I climb back into bed with her even though I want to get on the phone with my mom, Cassie, Suzi, Kathy. I want to tell someone about the door, how it looked like any door. Like our door.
It isn’t a big bed, but it is big enough for the two of us. I keep as much physical contact with her as possible. I want her to know I have the rope.
DAY ?2
The child was a boy. Six years old. Sam. He loved horses. A picture of him in his cowboy hat appears in the parents’ lounge. Under the photo is a quote from John Wayne, “Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.” There’s an address to send condolences. In the photo his right hand holds the reins, a slender length of leather connecting him to the mouth of a huge brown horse.