I saw you, Hadi. I dreamt you were drowning. I watched you, like you were in an aquarium, being flogged by giant waves, banging against the glass. I banged from the other side. You opened your mouth to scream and, somehow, salt water filled my lungs. I woke up gasping and you weren’t there, and I was gripping the bed’s bars. It was salt water; my thrashing had yanked out the saline drip.
Something liquid trickles down my arm. Six a.m., green and fluorescent on the bedside table. Six a.m. Boston dark is not molten, Damascus dark; it glitters. Outside Room 1508, the glass skyline, the Charles. One white, flashing light crowns the Hancock like a star. Beacon Hill, burgundy Beacon Hill, is still deep mauve.
A knock.
“May I come in?”
Dr. Farber. Wet hair, clean scrubs; she went home last night. My heart sinks and sees a kitchenette, blue Ikea plates on a sail-white counter, a dinner I will have to throw out when—
“I hope you slept well. I just saw your son.”
My heart leaps.
“You saw Naseem? How is he?”
She hesitates, not long, just long enough to stop my next breath.
“Ms. Zayat, your— Naseem was stable overnight. No sign of jaundice, which is good.”
She pauses, as do I, midair.
“But his blood pressure is still too low, and his temperature keeps dropping, even in the heated incubator.”
She seems to be dispensing the information piecemeal, like bits of bread to a bird.
“There could be many reasons for hypotension: blood loss during delivery, an infection, a cardiac complication… It could also be because it took so long for him to breathe when he came out.”
Break. Maybe she hears the frenzied flapping in my ears.
“I must remind you, Ms. Zayat, that the chances for babies born this early…”
Boston, this early, still glittery.
“… started him on pressors and will be monitoring closely for new symptoms—”
Dr. Farber stops midsentence and looks at me. I don’t know what she sees, but she says, “Why don’t we go see him?”