The elevator halts, crushingly, at every floor from the fifteenth to the NICU on the tenth. A bored metallic voice keeps track, announcing each like a station on a train ride. People board, disembark. Trapped in a wheelchair, I keep my eyes on the screen so my life does not brush theirs. The numbers slide off, like the countdown to a black-and-white movie.
This whole box is drained of color, like the room I just left. Empty. No balloons, off-white and sky blue; no chocolates in silver paper. No baklava on a silver tray for visitors. No visitors, flowers, baby. No heat. White light through a gaping black frame.
I couldn’t leave it fast enough, that mutilation of a new mother’s room. I wanted to walk. I wanted to run, fly to the tenth floor. But I could hardly stand. A faceless nurse holds the wheelchair in place, blankets weigh my thighs down, but my knees still knock against each other.
The thud of arrival.
Steel doors open to the floor where the NICU lives. I grip my stomach. It doesn’t help. The nurse wheels me out. Nobody follows. The other passengers are going elsewhere. The doors close.
I am wheeled down a silent hallway, too slow, too fast, too cold. We stop at Room 1013. At the threshold, I lose courage.
“Stop!”
I cry, to her surprise, to my horror and shame; I am scared of entering.
Too much of a coward to meet her eyes, I look down. The wheels graze against the navy tiles between the hallway and room. I could touch the fear. If I cross that border, if I see the boy inside and he becomes real—
“Ms. Zayat, your son is waiting for you.”
He already is. My heart knows that heart. My son is waiting, for me. The threshold dissolves. From inside Room 1013, a force powerful and light as air. From inside me, a pull I have never felt. I nod to the nurse, and we roll in.
No clock, no windows. An incubator sits in the center of a too-large, too-empty room. Monitors blink like Christmas lights, red and green and blue.
The nurse wheels me as close to the box as the wires and tubes allow. Too many between us, and a plastic barrier. I feel, gapingly, unarrived. Almost there. The ache is so great I could sob. I lean forward.
My entire life feels stopped at that clear wall, those last few inches of distance enormous, agonizing, but then, a tremor. But then, but then, behind it all, almost fully concealed by the respirator…
“This is Baby Deeb.”
An all-purpose blanket, white and blue. Under the mask, a tube, neon orange, thin as a hair, slips into his nose. A piece of tape holds it in place. It is shorter than my thumb. It is larger than his cheek. He is smaller than my forearm.
I have never been more acutely aware of life. It is almost palpable, white and blue and beautiful. It travels through the wall, coloring the air, disarming me. All my life suddenly feels like a series of almost arrivals, and now, and this, and here, is as close as I will ever get to happiness.
“Hello, habibi.”
Baby Deeb. Hadi, he already has your name. Part of a name. Part you, part me. I look, opening my eyes wide, a skyful. His are closed. He has long lashes, thin as the strands of a feather. The finest nose I have seen. His lower lip flutters, barely. I reach over. Instinct, a flapping of heart, of wings. My hand meets the plastic.
“Hello, habibi, I’m here.”
Hoping he can hear me, hoping, against all reason, he can feel some of my heat.
“Mama’s here, ya zghir.”
I’m here.
“Would you like to touch your baby?”
I do not dare understand the question. I do not dare turn around to look at the nurse.
“Ms. Zayat, did you hear me?”
“Are, are you sure it’s safe?”
Not daring to hope.
“I don’t see why not. You could just slide your hand through the porthole. In fact, I think contact with his mother will be good for him.”
His mother. The words glow, fine and numinous as fireflies in my lungs.
“Sterilize your hands with that gel over there. Clean them well. Put on some gloves.”
I hurry, before she changes her mind, my fingers so shaky I tear two latex gloves before I succeed. She opens the porthole.
“Go ahead,” she whispers, as though not wishing to let anything louder into the incubator. I hesitate, then jaggedly, clumsily, guide my arm into the hole, into my baby’s bell jar. My finger touches his.
Heartbeats course through me and out, in waves, like a meteor shower, breaking through the latex barrier between us. Hey, it’s me. It’s Mama. I think the words as lightly as I can, not wanting to mar his skin, translucent as rice paper. So little, so very zghir. So soft I hardly feel his fine, fine fingers stir. Like touching wind.
I withdraw my arm, exhausted by the infinitely small gesture, the infinitely colossal encounter. Something lingers on my fingers, light. The nurse closes the porthole.
“Your son is beautiful.”
I can only nod. My throat is raw, my vision blurred, like I have been staring at the sun. I see her through particles of floating pink and green.
“He’ll be okay. You just have to be patient.”
I can be patient. I have time. A lifetime. I’ll wait here, ya zghir, on the other side of the incubator, until you’re ready. Then we’ll go together. You’ll see, the world is also waiting.
“Have you decided on a name?”