mine {h.s.} | {b3}

CHAPTER TWELVE

— CHAPTER TWELVE —

may, year one.

There's not a single cloud in the blue sky around us, something that I have come to regard as an oddity in Seattle weather patterns. Nice as it can be, and infrequently as it rains in the way that most believe it does, I still don't credit a completely blue and exposed sky to be a regularity amongst the frequent weather patterns of Seattle. It's odd enough that whenever it does happen, I find myself noting it. Like today: I find myself noting it on today, May 5th.

Harry and I are sitting in his car in the parking garage of the hospital. I'm struck by how much has changed in such a short time. Mostly by the small detail of the distance to the hospital. For so long I had grown accustomed to the small privilege that Harry would allow me in pulling directly up to the hospital entrance and allowing me to get out there before driving the car to the garage himself. At the end of a shift—while pregnant—he would grab the car and pick me up at the front. He didn't want me walking more than I had to, knowing how tired I would get just from being on my feet all shift. My feet that were positioned right under the swollen ankles that groaned and ached with most every step as little Edie grew heavier inside me.

I'd known that I was pregnant from the moment that we became fellows in our rotation at the hospital. Every day since, Harry had dropped me off at the entrance. Accordingly, I'd never taken time to notice the proximity of our new parking—a small reward allowed as you continue to work up the food chain—because I had never been around to notice it. Closer than where we found ourselves our intern year, I'm aware that still there is a gap between us and the attendings. The place where I will find myself in just over two years, should all go right.

As I sit with the feeling, I realize that most of that depends on today.

Today is a turning point in both of our lives. Sitting in the hospital parking lot, I know that we both can feel it. I know that we can feel the changing energy as we sit in the parked car, the air conditioning blowing lightly on our faces and the dimmed sounds of Fleetwood Mac lilting through the car. So much rides on today.

In my near thirty-one (thirty-one!) years of life, I've come to find the things that make me anxious. Standing in a surgery does not make me anxious. Stressful situations in which I need to maintain a steady hand do not make me anxious. Testing does make me anxious. Public speaking does not make me anxious. The list goes on and on. I've had so long to experiment with the trial and errors of life that I now just consider myself well acquainted with the woman inside of me. Infrequently does she manage to shock me. In thirty-one years, I have grown to know what to expect from her.

But today, she shocks me. Today, I add a new stress to my list.

Automatically, I close my eyes and I think back to that first ride home from the hospital with Edie in the back of the car. I sat in the backseat with her, my heart trying to stutter in something of a normal rhythm. I fawned over her, my body huddled over hers as though preparing for the moment in which a car would unpredictably collide with us. Old habits die hard, I suppose. My muscles still remember the movements that had me shielding little Michael in the back bay of the ambulance. The car ride home with Edie had been the beginning of a new anxiety to the list: the attachment anxiety. The protective anxiety. How many times have I since woken up in the middle of the night and pattered over to her crib, stood above her and just listened to her breathe? There's a certain reassurance in the gesture, something that I know she doesn't do on purpose, but I am just thankful that she is offering it to me all the same.

Given my awareness of this particular attachment anxiety with my daughter—the one that makes it feel like my heart is living outside of my body every time I look at her and causes fear to seize every pore of my body—I don't suppose it should be a shock that as we sit in the parking lot of the hospital, we both find ourselves fretting over the fact that our daughter is not within ten steps of our direct eye line.