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The nurse gave directions as Davis helped her into the wheelchair. His hands were gentle, his face showing concern. He made her feel cared for, like she hadn’t felt since she was very young. She loved that feeling but didn’t want to take the time to enjoy it, because she was in a rush to go see her daughter.
Finally, after what felt like forever, they were rolling down the hall. She wasn’t sure she would be able to follow all the twists and turns to come back.
The hospital was bigger than what she thought.
Davis and the nurse chatted a bit, although Kim didn’t try to join in the conversation, just listening instead. She couldn’t believe how tired she was. Her limbs felt like dead weights, and her chest felt heavy.
It was probably the effects of the anesthesia. At least she didn’t feel sick in her stomach. She heard that could be a side effect as well.
“All right. Right here is the scrub station. Both of you need to take one of these little packets. When you open them, you’ll find a brush and soap and you’ll need to stand at the sink and follow the instructions right here.” The nurse tapped a little poster that was tacked to the wall right above the sink. “Once you’ve done that, you have gowns to put on right here, and then you can walk to these doors and push this button. Someone will let you in. Of course, since I’m here, I’ll use my badge to get us in today, but that will be the protocol when you don’t have someone escorting you.”
Kim assumed she was going to have to stand up from the wheelchair. She felt incredibly weak with rubbery knees and a tender middle.
Still, she would have endured a lot worse to see her daughter.
As she pushed up on the handles of the wheelchair, Davis’s arms came around her gently, giving her support, helping just a bit, not enough to hurt, but steadying her, and making it so all the burden wasn’t on her.
She didn’t know how he knew she needed it, but she appreciated it.
She was exhausted by the time she’d scrubbed her hands clear up to her elbows for the required amount of time, put a gown and hairnet on, and was able to collapse back in the wheelchair.
Still, she couldn’t contain her excitement. She had been out completely when they’d taken the baby, and she hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of her.
“Ready?” the nurse said, smiling as she scanned her badge and the door started to open.
Davis looked a lot different with the hairnet and the gown, but he still had the same square jaw, the same serious but admiring eyes, the same care and concern.
“All right,” the nurse said. “That group of people right there is where your little one is. We’re going to hang back so we don’t get in the way. They might have had a bit of a blip since the last time we spoke with them.”
Whatever “a bit of a blip” was. It didn’t sound good, but maybe that was the nurse’s way of making it so it didn’t sound terrible.
The doctors looked serious, the nurses even more so as they worked around the bassinet that Kim could barely see.
She caught a glimpse of a leg, so, so tiny.
“I have the mom and the dad, when you guys have a minute to let them take a peek,” their nurse murmured to one of the nurses who were working with tape.
As the nurse backed up and turned, Kim could see her daughter, covered in tubes and wires and under a bright light, completely naked with just a diaper.
It was hard to believe that the child under all those wires was hers. Such a tiny body, so small she could barely see it. But the thing that caught her heart and made her start to cry was when she saw that her daughter’s arm was taped to a board.
Intellectually she knew that that was probably necessary to keep her from moving her arm and dislodging whatever IV they had put in there, but emotionally, to see the little arm taped to a piece of wood—tiny, but still—something to keep it straight, just tore at her heartstrings, and she couldn’t keep the sob that erupted from her lungs silent.
Immediately Davis’s hand was on her shoulder, going around her back, warm against the skin above her hospital gown.
“She’s doing well,” the nurse working on the opposite side of the incubator said, with a compassionate glance at Kim. “Mom, if you want to come a little closer, you can put your hand in this hole and touch the palm of her hand. Right now, her skin is a little sensitive, but after she grows a bit, you’ll be able to touch her all over and hold her, and skin-to-skin contact will feel really good to her, and we’ll encourage it. We’re just trying to get her stable now, so take a couple of minutes to soak her in, she’s such a beautiful, perfect baby, and then we need to keep working.” The group seemed to fade back a little, to give Kim room to pull in beside her daughter.
She didn’t decline the opportunity but eagerly stuck her hand through the hole, touching her baby, pushing the pain aside. Trying to, anyway.
So many things went through her head. So many questions. She wanted to know what the odds were that she would make it. She wanted to demand whether they could tell her if she was going to live or not, but she knew no one really knew. They couldn’t tell her. They could give her odds, guess at percentages, but only God knew.
She wanted to ask God why? Why her? Why her daughter? Why wasn’t her daughter still safely growing inside of her, but she bit down on all of those questions.
“Do you want to touch her?” she asked, withdrawing her hand and looking at Davis. She wasn’t the only parent in the room. She didn’t want to take all the time for herself. Actually, she did. But that wasn’t right.
Without a word, with a look of wonder on his face, he put his hand in, so much bigger than hers had been, and touched the palm of Kathleen’s hand.
“I can’t believe how tiny she is,” he murmured. She startled at the sound of his voice, and then Kathleen seemed to settle.
