Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 3: Now

It's hard to tell how much time has passed when I come back into my body after the emergency Cesarean section. I find myself seated upright, across from Owen in a room that was clearly designed to be waited in and nothing else.

If we are, in fact, waiting to be discharged from the hospital, I wish they'd hurry things up because I just want to be back home with Owen and our sweet dog, Daisy.

And the baby.

It feels like we've been in the hospital for more than a lifetime, and the thought briefly crosses my mind that if I don't make it home soon, I'll forget what home even feels like.

I study Owen's lowered face for any sign of the anger I saw etched across it back in the operating room. But there's no trace of it. He just looks tired now.

"Hey," I whisper. At the same time, a door swings open on the other side of the room and the face of a nurse I don't recognize appears. Before she even speaks, Owen is on his feet beside her, following her into the next room.

I notice the sign above the door: NICU.

Right. We haven't been waiting to be discharged. We've been waiting outside the neonatal intensive care unit to visit the baby.

I slip in behind Owen just as the door to the NICU closes again. The large space bustles with controlled urgency. We're following the nurse toward a bassinet in the far corner. To reach it, we have to weave among dozens of tiny bodies on elevated tables attached to IV stands. Their grunts and gasps are barely audible over the whirring and humming of life-giving machines.

We pass another young couple huddled over a bassinet.

They alternate between sniffling into wadded tissues and speaking in hushed voices to the oblivious, unconscious creature below them.

We stop in front of the bassinet over which someone has scrawled on a whiteboard, "Thomas Porter." He's one of the smallest babies in here, since I was only slightly over twenty-seven weeks pregnant when we arrived at the hospital.

His entire two-and-a-half-pound body is about the size of Owen's hand. Countless cords and tubes protrude from beneath the muslin blanket in which he's swaddled, and his grey face is nearly obscured by the oxygen tube taped across it. Someone's smeared a clear, disinfecting goo across his protuberant eyelids, which are sealed in a shapeless dream. His fingers flutter in little fists that curl and uncurl, grasping at nothing. It doesn't look like he should be alive.

I can't bring myself to touch him. Instead, I imagine my voice as a blanket, wrapping its warmth around his snug little body. I want to swaddle him in the way being cared for sounds and smells and feels. That way, he'll have some memory to fortify his heart, in case I'm unable to love him later.

"Hi, Baby," I say. The voice that emerges from my mouth startles me. It's not the rich strain of comfort I intended. Instead, it sounds so shrill and unsure that I'm immediately relieved Thomas is deep in slumber and hasn't stirred.

Owen says nothing, but I sense his disappointment in me. I'm supposed to know how to speak like a mother.

The nurse finishes unplugging the wires attached to Thomas's body. She tucks them into his swaddling blanket so we can hold him if we want to. I reach down, pick up the little bundle, and cradle it against my breast.

"You're my baby," I say again, as if repeating it will make it feel right. This time I'm able to infuse my voice with what I hope is a maternal timbre.

His eyes snap open; two dark, mysterious wells.

I'm startled to find myself confronted by his consciousness in the NICU's gauzy dimness.

Thomas's eyes narrow. He blinks rapidly, maybe by chance, but I choose to believe it means that he recognizes me.

His lips pucker and grope around my nipple. No milk.

The tiny, swaddled body wriggles in my arms.

I readjust the position of my breast and try again. The baby's mouth gums desperately, like a fish on a hook.

Still, nothing comes.

It breaks my heart to disappoint him like this. Watching the baby struggle is worse, somehow, than any disappointment I've felt before. After another moment, it becomes unbearable.

Vowing to make another breastfeeding attempt later, I gingerly place the baby back in the bassinet and reach for Owen's hand. My fingers foolishly rake the air where I hoped to find his hand waiting.

He's no longer standing beside me. But it's all right. I wouldn't know what to say, anyway. I don't blame Owen for struggling with this.

After all, Thomas is not his son.