Baby Alicia Is Dying

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Desi heard someone coming down the hallway. Heels clicked hollowly against the floor. The shoes approached, but she didn’t look up. They stopped in front of her. She stared down at pointed black leather toes and wondered why they looked vaguely familiar.

  “Desi,” her mother’s voice said from above her.

  Startled, Desi swung her gaze from the tips of the shoes to her mother’s face. “Mom! What are you doing here?”

  Her mother stood ramrod straight, holding her purse in front of her like a barrier. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”

  Desi averted her eyes. She was still angry at her mother. And deeply hurt.

  “I thought you might like some company.”

  “I thought you said you found this whole thing bizarre,” Desi countered.

  “I said a lot of things I didn’t mean to both you and my sister.” Her mother’s eyes were red from crying. “Can I sit with you?”

  Warily Desi shifted, and her mother lowered herself to the edge of the chair beside her. “How’s Alicia?”

  “She’s not doing well.” A lump the size of a fist suddenly lodged in Desi’s throat. After she mastered it, she said, “Aunt Clare will be here soon.”

  “No she won’t. I called her and told her I’d come be with you. It’s my place.”

  Desi jumped up. “What other mean things did you say to her?”

  “Please sit down. We talked for a long time … straightened some things out. She agreed that I should come. I am your mother after all.”

  “I wish you’d never had me.”

  “Don’t ever say that. I love you, Desi.” She said the last with a catch in her voice.

  Desi stared at her coolly. “You love Valerie. But me—well, not me.”

  Her mother released a long sigh and leaned her head back against the wall. “Clare told me that’s the way you felt. I didn’t believe her, but now I hear it directly from you. I need to explain some things.”

  “What things?”

  “About how mixed up I feel inside. About how seeing you so involved with Alicia has brought back so much pain for me.”

  Desi’s hands felt icy cold, and her feet had gone numb. She returned to her chair, but sat sideways and on the edge like a small bird poised for flight. “Alicia’s dying. How can that hurt you?”

  “Because—” Her mother’s face contorted, and for an instant Desi thought she might lose control. “Because I keep remembering Matthew.”

  “My brother.” Just hearing his name gave the long-ago baby form and substance. She recalled his baby book with faded ink.

  “He was so beautiful, Desi, and so very, very perfect. He hardly ever cried, you know.” Her mother’s expression had gone soft, and her eyes glowed. “Such a good little boy too. That night, I bathed him, powdered him, dressed him in this soft green flannel sleeper. The kind with the little rubber pads on the soles of the feet.”

  Desi knew exactly. Alicia had a pink one. And she knew the smell of baby powder too, sweet and fresh. “What night?” she asked.

  “That night …” she repeated, as if Desi had been there and could remember it. “I kissed him and put him in his crib, on his tummy, the way he liked best to sleep. Your father and I were going out to dinner and a movie. Clare was baby-sitting.”

  “I didn’t know Aunt Clare sat for you.”

  “She usually did. I would never had entrusted Valerie and a new baby to some teenager.” Her mother fumbled for her purse and extracted a tissue, which she wound methodically around her forefinger.

  “When we came home, I checked on Val and Matthew; they were sleeping. Aunt Clare left, and your dad and I went to bed. I woke up at six the next morning. My heart was pounding, and I felt afraid. I felt that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. Then I remembered that Matthew hadn’t woken up for his two A.M. feeding.” Her mother’s voice had grown soft, but her sentences were quick and steady, as if describing a scene from a movie.

  “I ran to Matthew’s room, and there he was, lying in his crib, his eyes still closed, exactly as I’d left him the night before. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. I touched him, and he felt cold. I started screaming and couldn’t stop.” Desi’s mother halted her story. Her hands were trembling, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “They called it crib death. The doctors couldn’t tell us much about it. Only that seemingly perfectly healthy babies stopped breathing in their sleep and died. No reason. No medical explanation. No cure. Aunt Clare tells us medicine is now able to better predict babies who are vulnerable. There are monitors that keep constant vigil on their breathing. If a baby stops breathing, the monitor sounds an alarm, and a parent can administer CPR. But they didn’t have those when Matthew was born.”

  Desi felt tortured, unable to think of a single thing to ease her mother’s anguish over reliving the night Matthew died. Down the hall Alicia lay dying, so Desi understood what that part felt like. But her parents had had no warning. No dread disease. No way to prepare. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “For the longest time I believed his death was my fault.”

  “But it couldn’t have been,” Desi cried impetuously, “if no one knows what causes crib death!”

  “In my mind I went over and over every detail of that night. Had I sprinkled too much powder on him, and had it clogged his lungs? Had he caught a chill from too cool bathwater?”

  She knotted the tissue and stared at the shredded mess in her hands. “I even thought that maybe Aunt Clare had caused it. Maybe she’d covered him too tightly and he’d smothered.”

  “Oh, Mom—”

  “I know,” Mrs. Mitchell interrupted Desi’s protest. “It wasn’t rational thinking, but I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t believe that my beautiful, perfect, healthy baby boy was dead and no one knew why.”

  Desi heard her mother take a long, shaky breath. “We survived, your father and I. We still had Valerie, and by the time she was four, I could tell she d be a natural at tennis. I poured myself into her. She was bright and adorable, and she helped me forget.” She sniffed and ran her fingers through her tangled dark hair. “Then, unexpectedly, I got pregnant again.”

  “I was an accident,” Desi stated, affirming aloud what she’d already secretly known—she hadn’t been wanted. Like Alicia.

  “You were unplanned, not unwanted, Desi. But I didn’t know how to relate to you. Something was wrong inside my heart. The whole time I carried you, I felt detached from the pregnancy, as if I were a surrogate of some sort. As if I were carrying you for some other woman. I know that’s hard to understand.”

  Desi wanted to tell her that it was easy to understand. Hadn’t she felt as if Alicia were hers? Willed and gifted to her by a world unable to deal with an infant with a deadly disease? Her mother continued. “After you were born, I was terrified of you—for you. I could barely stand to put you to bed each night. I was so afraid that you might die too. I guess I figured that if I didn’t get attached, then it wouldn’t hurt so bad if you left, the way Matthew did.”

  “I used to think there was something wrong with me. That I wasn’t special like Valerie.”

  “It wasn’t you—it was me. All I can tell you is that it was easier to care for you if I detached myself from you. Val was a big help when you were a baby, you know. She’d play with you for hours, read to you, feed you cookies. Then as you got older and you didn’t need so much attention …” She shrugged.

  Desi accepted what hadn’t been spoken—over time she learned to get along in the family without much attention. “Val told me she remembered how she and Aunt Clare took me for walks. What about Daddy?”

  “He retreated into his work. In many ways he never comes home from his job. But he has always been very proud of you, Desi, and of your science smarts. He really hopes you’ll decide to become a doctor.”

  “I hope I get to be a doctor too,” she said. “Maybe I can help babies like Matthew and Alicia.” Hearing her mother’s explanation helped Desi immens
ely. It didn’t make her hurt go away, but it made it more bearable. She turned her attention toward the closed door of ICU. “Alicia’s changed my life. It hurt me that you didn’t understand. Didn’t seem to care.”

  “Oh, Desi, I understood, too well. I know what it feels like to bury a baby you love. After Matthew died, I wrote a poem for him. We put part of it on his headstone.” She shut her eyes and recited, “ ‘If all our fondest memories could be kept and never spent, We’d treasure most this chip of time, Where Matthew came and went.’ ”

  Desi’s mother stopped talking, and in the silence Desi heard the mechanical drone of the air-conditioning system and down the hall, a door closing. She wished she were older, wiser, had something to say that might erase the years of loss for them both. But nothing came to mind, so she simply stood and whispered, “I’m sorry about your baby, Mom.”

  Her mother looked her in the eye. “And I’m sorry about yours.”

  “I need to go see her.” Desi checked the clock. “They’ll let me in now.”

  “Can I go in with you?”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Yes. I want to see this baby you love so much.”

  Her mother took her hand, and they went in together. Nothing in the room had changed; nothing there announced that it was almost five A.M. and the world would soon be waking. Within the bubble Alicia’s tiny chest rose and fell with the aid of the respirator. Tubes snaked from her mouth and nose. IV lines were hooked to her foot. Very carefully Desi slipped her hands inside the rubber gloves and touched the frail body.

  As if the baby sensed Desi’s presence, a shiver ran along her body. “I’m here, Alicia,” Desi whispered. “Right here.”

  “Dear God,” Desi heard her mother say. “Oh, Desi. It’s breaking my heart.”

  Hearing the emotion in her mother’s voice, Desi glanced over her shoulder. “You can touch her through the gloves if you want. They say it’s good for the dying to be touched.” Desi withdrew her hands and stepped aside.

  Slowly, with hesitation, her mother inched forward. Copying Desi’s motions, she slid her hands into the gloves protruding inside the plastic bubble. She maneuvered them awkwardly, but eventually was able to pat Alicia’s back. Another tremor shook the little body. “It’s so unfair,” her mother whispered. “Unfair that babies die before they’ve ever had a chance to live.”

  Desi had the eerie feeling that although her mother was touching Alicia, she was seeing Matthew. For a single moment she saw him too, lying on his tummy the way her mother had described, smelling of powder and looking so warm and soft in his green flannel sleeper. An unbearable aching filled her, coupled with a longing to hold the brother she never knew. She trembled, fought against tears that dammed behind her eyes. “We have to go, Mom,” she said. “They only allow visitors a few minutes.”

  Slowly Desi’s mother removed her hands from the gloves, and even more slowly stepped backward. Finally she turned and walked quickly to the door. Before following, Desi allowed herself one long, lingering look at Alicia. At the crystal bubble that surrounded her. At the tubes and fluids and machines that supported her. At the chip of time that held her captive. Like a sparrow waiting to be set free.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Three nights later Gayle called for Desi to come immediately to the hospital. Desi yelled for her mother, paused only long enough to grab her coat and a small paper sack, and ran for the car. Her mother drove like a mad person to the hospital, where they abandoned the car at the emergency room parking lot entrance and raced inside. Frantically Desi pushed past other visitors and ran up the stairwell to the pediatric floor. She arrived so winded that she felt lightheaded.

  She saw Gayle and her aunt standing outside the door of ICU. “The pneumonia’s taken over. Her respiration’s doubled, and her heartbeat’s over two hundred—her heart is literally beating itself to death,” Gayle told her.

  “I want to be with her.”

  “When the doctor comes out.”

  Desi tugged on the sterile gloves that her aunt handed her, while down the hall the elevator doors opened and her mother hurried along the corridor toward them. “How is she?” Desi’s mom asked breathlessly.

  “We’re losing her,” Aunt Clare replied.

  Desi felt as if daggers had been jammed into her heart.

  The door to isolation swung open, the doctor emerged, and his eyes told Desi everything. She braced herself against the wall and heard him say, “She’s gone.”

  Stunned by the finality of his words, Desi felt as if the walls were closing in on her. She held back her tears and asked, “Can I be with her? For one last time?”

  Aunt Clare glanced at Desi’s mother, who nodded. “Give me a minute,” Aunt Clare said, starting into the room.

  “Wait.” Desi took her arm. “Take this for her.”

  Her aunt took the paper bag and minutes later held the door ajar for Desi, saying, “Just for a quick good-bye.” She stepped outside so that Desi could be alone.

  An eerie silence blanketed the room. The monitors had been turned off, their screens vacant, their sentry duty over. The isolette was open, like a broken eggshell. Within, Alicia lay on the white sheeting—still, so very, very still. The tubes and IV lines had been pulled, and Aunt Clare had dressed Alicia in the beautiful red velvet dress Desi had bought her for Christmas.

  Alicia’s eyes were closed, and she looked as if she were asleep. Desi stood beside the ruptured bubble and traced the infant’s perfect features with her eyes—lashes, mouth, button nose.

  She tugged off the latex gloves and dropped them onto the floor. Gently Desi lifted up the baby. Alicia’s body felt feather light, and she smelled of her medications. The baby’s small arms hung limply, and her fingers were already stiffening. But her skin was still warm, and as long as she felt warm, Desi couldn’t let her go.

  The valley of the shadow of death. Desi knew what a valley was, and now, for the first time, she understood what the shadow of death looked like. Alicia’s skin had taken on a dusty, gray hue. No flow of blood to turn her skin its usual dark, glowing sepia. No flutter of breath from her lungs. Life had fled, and with it, the soft, sweet scent of hope.

  She rocked Alicia, cooing softly, whispered her name and reminded her of her yellow bath duck, her stuffed animals, her favorite blanket. She wondered if God would allow her to have such things in heaven.

  Aunt Clare came in. “We have to go, honey.”

  “It’s hard to leave her.”

  “I know.”

  Desi tenderly placed Alicia back inside the fractured isolette, smoothed her dress, and twirled a soft black ringlet of hair around her finger.

  “She looks beautiful,” Aunt Clare said. “Like an angel.”

  Desi bent over and ever so gently rubbed her nose on Alicia’s and whispered, “Good-bye, baby girl.”

  The corridor was empty when Desi stepped outside Alicia’s room. Gayle had gone to fill out paperwork, and the nurses were busy with night rounds. She found her mother in the small room where they’d met and talked nights before. She was looking out on the glittering Atlanta skyline when Desi came in with her aunt. She turned, and when their gazes met, Desi felt the tears she’d so carefully held inside start flowing.

  She began to shake, her teeth chattering, and a burning, aching sensation clogged her throat. “Alicia’s dead, Mom,” was all she could manage before her voice broke.

  Beside her she heard her aunt say, “Desi, sit down, honey. Come on, let me get you something.”

  Eva Mitchell stepped forward. “I’ll take her now, Clare,” Desi’s mother said. “I’ve been down this road before.” She held her arms open, and Desi fell into them, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Desi … very, very sorry. I know you loved her. And I know how it feels.”

  Desi realized that her mother did know, because she had lost a baby too. She clung to her mother so tightly that her arms ached. Her mother held her, rocked her, smoothed her hair. At some point Desi reached out toward her aunt,
and the three of them stood in a circle and wept as one.

  * * *

  The staff and volunteers of ChildCare held a small memorial service for Alicia on the property of the facility. The January day had broken bitter cold, and even though the sun was shining, Desi couldn’t feel its warmth. Her mother accompanied her, and they listened as Reverend Wilcox presented a verbal picture of Alicia in a far, far better place, where there was no more pain and suffering and where every tear would be wiped away.

  Desi looked to the barren trees, remembering when they’d been bright with autumn colors and she’d walked Alicia along the winding pathways. Now the trees looked dead, empty and stripped. Her heart felt hollow. As barren and hard as the red Georgia clay beneath her feet.

  After the brief ceremony people hugged her—Gayle, Sadie, Tamara, Aunt Clare. The reporter who’d interviewed her at Christmas was there too. “I’m doing another story to help publicize the plight of these babies and stress the needs of ChildCare. I can’t begin to tell you the response we got at the paper over the first story. The mail was tremendous. People were impressed by you and Tamara, that you volunteered so much of your time when you could have been doing other things.”

  The reporter studied Desi thoughtfully. “I know Alicia had special significance to you. Can I tell our readers what you’re experiencing?”

  Desi stared blankly, not certain how to answer. How did she put the intensity of her pain into words? “I’ll miss her,” was about all she could think to say.

  “This has been hard on my daughter,” her mother interjected, putting her arm around Desi protectively. “She loved that little girl.”

  The reporter turned to her. “You must be very proud of Desi.”