It feels wrong to be happy, to be riding through dusk with Gabe, in his bumblebee boots, while children who once lived on our unit cannot see the sky, the geese, cannot smell the wet ground permeating the air. But I keep pedaling.
The art therapist, Mary Margaret, arrived at the service with art made by two of the boys, Sam and Ramone. Sam’s piece was a collage of shredded magazine pages, strips woven together, in the blue hues of the ocean, which his mother loved. Ramone’s was a velvet stencil of a large cross, intricately and delicately hand-colored, like stained glass, made for his deeply religious grandmother who sat beside his bed for eleven months. Small marks of self-expression that pulsed with vibrancy, with their maker’s particular sensibilities. Intention remains even when the children are gone.
There was a collective hope at the service that the children were in heaven. Riding ponies, playing bingo, exploring the sea. But I don’t think heaven is so much like earth. If heaven exists, I hope it is far beyond what we conjure with our gravity-soaked imaginations.
To my mind, it is OK if there is no heaven. It is miraculous enough that Sam and Ramone lived. They were here, on earth, as themselves. The spontaneous eruption of an individual consciousness out of nothingness. I know this is too easy for me to say—I have one child healing, and the other murmuring self-soothing songs on the back of a blue bike. It is too easy. But still, it’s what I hold against my chest. They died, but, before that, they lived.
DAY 35
Gracie is allowed, for the first time, to take a walk off the unit. She suits up in the yellow gown, the mask, the shoe covers. When we reach the imposing electric double-doors that have held her in the ultrasterile environment of 5200 for almost two months, she hesitates. She peers through the door’s window to the hall beyond and asks, “Am I safe there?”
Stepping outside the unit feels as alien, as adulterous, as a moon walk. When she takes off down the hall, her gait is lopsided, a bow-legged half waddle with the toes of her left foot turned in. The result of lying in bed for weeks. She stops at a handrail and tries to pull her feet up, to hang upside down, something she did routinely before being admitted. She doesn’t have the strength; her feet dangle a few inches off the ground.
I say, “It might take a while for your body to remember how to run and jump and play.”
“It’s OK,” she says, “my body didn’t forget how to run.” She limps past me, saying, very matter-of-fact, “You know why my ankles isn’t working right? Because I was in the bed so much.”
She is overcome with happiness at being in a new corridor, even if it’s the same beige hospital corridor with the same generic seaside art as ours. For me, the thrill of watching her “run” is cut with the knowledge that she could be reduced to a ventilator by an unseen germ coughed out by any well-meaning passerby. Or a virus on a handrail. I run in front of her with a tub of antibacterial wipes, imploring her not to touch anything until I have wiped it down. She is a good sport about this; she points to whatever she wants to touch, so that I can wipe it first, saying, “Clean, please.”
DAY 38
Gabriel turns two.
My dad and his wife fly out for the party. They buy dinner for eight at Chai’s Noodle Bar and Bistro and bring it to the hospital. Gabriel refers to them as a single entity, Baba-Nana. “Baba-Nana come!” he says to us. On this trip my dad—renowned for being domestically inept (he used to keep a single, perpetually unwashed pot on the back of the stove, and whenever it got low, he’d simply add a new can of food)—does all our laundry, folds my shirts with care, hangs Brian’s dress slacks.
My mom flies out too, and I revel in the sight of my mom and my dad on either side of Gracie’s bed, each with a hand on her. A complete genetic circle. They have been divorced for thirty-six years, but they both want what is best for the girl between them.
Gabe spends the whole day saying, to one grandparent or another, “Is mine birthday!” It’s Lincoln’s birthday too, for that matter, and Darwin’s.
But they answer, “Gabriel, it is your birthday!”
We hold our party in the Connection, all clad in the canary yellow gowns of contamination containment. Gabriel is habituated to these papery gowns, the smallest of which billows around him as he walks, a diaphanous cloud.
Gabe pings from gift to gift like a drunk, ripping, tearing, shaking, dropping, tossing, ripping some more. A yellow blur of manic happiness, high on the surplus of ambient anxiety and spirit of celebration.
I try to collar him.
Brian says, “He’s OK. He’s opening presents Gabe style.”
I feel, once more, corrected. “Wow, Brian. Where are you getting all this incredible parental insight? Books? Meditation? A secret life coach you call in California?”
My mom looks up, startled by my tone. How mad can I be? Gracie is better, Gabriel is two. I’m eating a delicious Vietnamese salad. The bite in my voice surprises even me.
Later, as we stuff shredded gift wrap into a trash bag, my mom offers to stay with Gracie in the hospital that night so Brian and I can spend the night together at home. A total rarity. It’s February 12, a few days shy of Valentine’s.
We take the back way home, through the country roads. I’m glad Gabe is not here to lament the trees’ dislike of him. As we turn a corner, a crescent moon lies on the horizon line. A rind of new moon, slim and ghostly and seemingly self-lit. It is a cradle, reclining on the land, close enough to walk to. We could climb in and fall asleep. I think of suggesting to Brian that we stop the car and stroll to the moon. But as soon as I have the thought, I remember a time in California when I’d said, “Look, a full moon!” And he’d replied, “Not yet, it’s only almost full.”
We drive along in silence; neither of us mentions the extraordinary moon touching the ground. Nor do we talk about Gabriel being two or Gracie having engrafted. We don’t talk about how scared we were during the VOD days. We don’t talk about the children’s memorial service or about the latest child to go upstairs to the vent, a little boy with light blue liquid eyes that seemed never to blink. We don’t talk about how much we miss each other or how stressful it’s been to have our parents visiting, even when it’s been helpful. We don’t even talk about Jack Bauer.
When we get home we change Gabriel into his pajamas and lay him down in his crib to dream birthday dreams. Soon he’ll be sharing this room with Gracie. We hope. We say nothing about this either.