CHAPTER 17
Visiting hours were over. Donny had gone home; the whole family had. Everyone except her and Lydia Dale, of course, who was asleep in her room at the far end of the hall. Rob Lee slept in a clear plastic bassinet placed next to her, waking every three hours and bleating like a hungry lamb, demanding to be put to the breast.
Earlier that day, one of the younger nurses, Mandy, brought a wheelchair into Mary Dell’s room and took her to visit Lydia Dale and Rob Lee. Donny trailed along behind. Mary Dell held her new nephew in her arms and smiled at her sister, said he looked just like her and not a bit like Jack Benny and thank heaven for that. They both laughed and Donny smirked a little.
Next, Mandy wheeled Mary Dell to the NICU, past two scrawny babies in clear plastic boxes with bluish skin so thin you could see their veins. Howard was not closed up inside a plastic box. He was sleeping in a regular bassinet, just like the one Rob Lee was in, though, unlike his cousin, he had heart monitor wires taped to his chest and an IV tube taped to his ankle. It was a little jarring to see him hooked up to tubes and wires, but he was sleeping peacefully, his tiny hands tucked up under his chin. Compared to those other, scrawnier babies in the plastic boxes, Howard looked plump and healthy.
Mary Dell felt bad for those other babies and their parents, but the nurse told her not to worry. They were fine, just a little small, having come even earlier than Howard. After a few weeks, Mandy assured her, those babies would fill out, go home, and be just fine. By the time they went to kindergarten, nobody would ever guess they’d been premature or be able to tell the difference between them and other children.
Mandy scooped Howard out of the bassinet and settled him in Mary Dell’s arms. Donny stood looking on, frowning, as Mary Dell, at Mandy’s urging, unbuttoned the front of her nightgown, exposed her breast, and tried to get Howard to nurse, but the baby wasn’t interested and kept turning his head away. When he yawned, Mary Dell tried to shove her nipple into his open mouth, hoping he’d take the hint, but that didn’t work either. After ten minutes, Mandy said she had to go check on some other patients.
“It can take a while for the preemies to get the hang of it,” she said as she took the baby from Mary Dell’s arms and laid him in the bassinet, wrapping the receiving blanket around him so tight he looked like a tiny blue bean. “Don’t worry, Momma. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Now Mary Dell lay in her bed, too tired for sleep, staring out a crack of her partially opened door into the twilight half-light that is common in hospital corridors, places that simmer down after dark but are never completely at rest, the maternity ward the most restless of all.
There was a shift change at ten. Near midnight, another nurse, a heavyset black woman with short-cropped hair, smiling brown eyes that radiated confidence, and a name tag reading “Roberta,” came in to take Mary Dell’s temperature and blood pressure.
When she was through, Roberta stood by the side of the bed and said, “You been crying, honey? Baby blues?” She patted Mary Dell’s hand. “You wait right here. I’ll be back in a minute with something to help you sleep.”
She returned ten minutes later, carrying Howard.
“Can’t leave him here all night,” Roberta said. “But he’s good-sized. It won’t hurt to pull him off the monitor for an hour. No need for Dr. Tibbets to know, though. He’s a good doctor. Nice too, not like some of them. But he’s young. Doesn’t know everything there is to know about babies and mommas, not by a long shot. So, this has got to be our secret, all right?”
Mary Dell nodded and rolled slowly onto her side. Roberta tucked the blue-bean bundle into the crook of his mother’s arm and smiled approvingly.
“There now. That looks just about right. You two take some time to get to know each other. I’ll be back later.”
At first, Mary Dell just looked at Howard, studied his face, listened to him breathe, admired his eyelashes. Then, quietly, carefully, she loosened the blue blanket, pulled out his arm, examined his perfect tiny fingers and nails, made a bracelet of her thumb and forefinger, and circled his little wrist while Howard slept peacefully on, eyelids barely fluttering.
After a time, Mary Dell unwrapped the blanket completely, inspected her son’s shoulders, torso, the two little legs protruding from the smallest diaper she’d ever seen, his feet and toes, the iodine-stained bandage on his belly that hid the stub of the cord that had connected them one to the other for so many months. She stroked his smooth, impossibly soft skin with her hand, traced the soles of his feet with the tip of her forefinger, eliciting a tiny twitch of response but nothing more.
Removed from the warm cocoon of the blanket, Howard twisted his little body. Mary Dell unbuttoned the top of her nightgown, pulled him closer, keeping him warm in the ample pillow of her breasts. Howard dozed for a few minutes and then yawned. Mary Dell placed the dark nipple of her breast between his pink lips.
At first, Howard did nothing, neither taking it into his mouth or pushing it out. After a minute or so, his lips quivered, clamped down, and Howard sucked at his mother’s breast. Not very hard or for very long, just four feeble sucks in succession, but Mary Dell’s heart pounded as she counted them off.
When he was finished and lay sleeping again with his cheek against her breast, Mary Dell made a cup of her hand, stroked her son’s soft, dark hair, and told him he was a good boy, a smart boy.
Roberta returned a little before one, approaching the bedside with quiet, light steps, and said in a low voice, “Well? What do you think?”
“I think he’s perfect,” Mary Dell said.
Roberta nodded. “That’s what I thought too,” she said.
Roberta had been a nurse for longer than Mary Dell had been alive. In that time, she had witnessed a hundred times more joy and sorrow than the average person saw in a lifetime. Sometimes it was hard to watch. Sometimes, driving home to go to bed at the hour most people were just getting up, she cried quiet tears for her patients and their families. In spite of that, Roberta had long ago concluded that every baby was perfect, put on the planet for some good purpose, if only people would give them a chance to prove it. If the mother loved the baby, everything would work out some way or other.
Roberta felt good as she carried Howard back to the NICU. She’d bent a few hospital rules that night, but it didn’t matter. This little baby was going to be fine. Thirty-four years on the maternity ward had taught her all about babies and mommas. Indeed it had. Roberta knew the face of love when she saw it.