by Renee Dyer
“I’ll do my best.”
“I have no doubt you will.”
Dr. Pinack and her nurse work together, getting my belly cleaned and setting her area up. Too soon, I hear, “Let’s do this shit.”
Surprisingly, it’s just what I needed to hear to help me relax. Well, as much as I could knowing what was coming.
That night, blue showed up in my pad. I was still leaking. I deflated faster than a balloon left alone with Edward Scissorhands. Dr. Pinack came in to see me after I embarrassingly showed the nurse the added layer to my underwear. She told me we’d continue with the bed rest. I needed to relax and keep my stress down. It was the best thing I could do for the baby.
I didn’t know how to tell her lying in this bed, away from my family, was causing me stress.
I dealt with it the best I could—watched movies, read books, solved a shit ton of word searches. When family could come to visit, they did. They called, too. But still, I had several hours a day where I simply lay there, wishing the walls would stop closing in on me.
Little One and I had lots of conversations. Too many times, they involved me apologizing for my body being weak.
Then, day nine hit.
May fourth.
The pain started in my back. I thought it was cramps from lying in one position too long, so I adjusted. To escape the pain in my back, I closed my eyes, and luckily, sleep came.
I’m not sure how long I was out when I heard someone calling my name. I was sure it wasn’t dinner time yet. My stomach wasn’t grumbling. One thing they were big on was making sure us mommy-to-bes ate all our meals. After a little work, I managed to flutter my eyes open. Paul, a nurse I’d had a few times, was standing there.
“Hey, Brenna. I need you to roll to your other side, sweetie, okay?”
“Is…is everything alright?” I ask, instantly nervous.
“You were having some small contractions earlier today, but they started picking up the last hour. Dr. Pinack wants to see if shifting positions will help them calm down. They aren’t regular.”
“Is that why my back hurts?”
“Did you have back labor with your other son?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Probably. When you’ve had it once, you’re more likely to have it again.”
“Am I in labor?” I ask, panicked.
“Not yet, sweetie, but like we’ve been telling you, if it starts, we won’t stop it.”
Paul leaves the room and I call Nick. He tells me he’s leaving work to pick up Brady. He’ll call his mom to see if she can take him and then he’ll be on his way. I don’t want him to panic, so I tell him he doesn’t need to rush. I’m technically not in labor, but I don’t feel right. My back is throbbing and my stomach just started tightening. He says he’ll get everything prepared, just in case, and to call him if I start feeling worse.
I don’t know why, but I look at the clock. Ten minutes past four. At least it was close to the time Nick got out of work.
A few minutes later, Janice calls. She assures me Brady will be taken care of and asks how I feel. I hate the concern in her voice, the way it wobbles when she talks. The baby isn’t due for nine and a half weeks. She doesn’t blame me for what’s happening, but I do. It’s a mother’s job to protect her child and I’ve failed in the simplest task—keeping him inside until he’s ready to be born.
Janice doesn’t keep me on the phone long. After hanging up with her, I call my mom. My inner child wants to break down and let her make it better, but I manage to keep it together. This is no time for tears. Little One needs me to be strong. I manage to fill her in on what’s going on and tell her Nick or I will call her with an update later.
Paul comes back in and lets me know Dr. Pinack has put me on a liquid diet for the night as a precaution. Where I have to have a cesarean, she doesn’t want me to eat anything solid. I wave him off. I’m not trying to be rude, but I want to close my eyes again and pretend none of this is happening. Before he leaves, he places a menu on my table and I can see items highlighted. I want to scream that I know what liquid is, but I don’t have the energy.
I close my eyes and it’s not long before sleep creeps in again.
“Brenna. Brenna.”
I open my eyes and Paul is standing there again.
“Hey, sweetie.”
Ooh. My stomach tightens. It’s not painful, but it’s much stronger than earlier. Fear courses through my veins and my heartbeat accelerates.
“I brought you some chicken broth and apple juice.”
“What, no Jell-O?” I joke, still feeling groggy.
He chuckles. “No. This is all you’re allowed. Your contractions have been picking up. We don’t feel they’re going to stop.”
I don’t say a word. What can I say, really?
“Dr. Pinack is on her way in. You may want to call Nick.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t know how many minutes pass. It could be three. It could be thirty. I just stare at the phone, trying to figure out how to tell Nick tonight is the night he’s going to be a dad again. I had him convinced I would stay in this bed for weeks and keep our son protected.
I failed.
Finally, I work up the courage. My fingers tremble so badly, it takes four tries, but I manage to dial his number.
“Hey, babe. Are you feeling any better?”
“You need to come now, Nick.”
I can’t sugarcoat it. I can’t say how I’m feeling. My emotions are too all over the place to have a rational conversation.
“Bren?”
“The contractions aren’t stopping. He’s coming. You need to get here.” I hate that I’m so blunt. He deserves cajoling. Me saying Little One will be alright, but I refuse to make promises I can’t keep.
“I’m already on my way. I love you, Bren,”
I hang up, not feeling like I deserve his love.
The wait is torture. Not just the pain in my back, but imagining what Nick’s face will look like when he gets here. He was a wreck when Brady was born five weeks early. This is so much worse. I’ve read all the baby books. I understand the risks to a baby born this early. We both do. He shouldn’t be driving. Why didn’t I think to find someone to drive him?
“Knock, knock.”
“Hi,” I say to Dr. Pinack.
“It looks like your little guy has decided he wants to meet you.”
I nod, sadly.
“Try to relax, Brenna. The nurses are monitoring you from the nurses’ station. I have another cesarean to do and then I’m going to check back in on you. It will be alright. You’ll see.” She pats my leg and exits the room, leaving me alone with my turbulent thoughts again.
My hands never leave my stomach, and I hope they’ll send a message to my son to stop what he’s started. I guess he’s starting young with disobeying Mom. I’d lecture him if I wasn’t so worried it might speed up labor.
A little after eight, Nick storms through the door, his black hair sticking out everywhere. It’s obvious he’s been tugging at it. Fear shows in his dark eyes. I want to take all his worry away, but I can’t. Not when a contraction hits as soon as he gets close to me. If it were just in my stomach, I could hide my discomfort, but my back is starting to take one hell of a beating. His eyes go to the monitor and he watches the scribbles peak and drop off.
“Contraction?”
“Yeah,” I answer quietly.
We sit in silence, neither of us knowing what to say. He pulls the chair as close to the bed as he can and holds my hand. His head comes down on the pillow next to me and his eyes close. I place my head next to his and together, we give each other whatever comfort we can. He says nothing when I squeeze his hand through the contractions and I say nothing when he sighs out of the blue. We just let the other feel what we need to.
Paul and a couple other nurses check on me throughout the next couple hours. I’m ready to beg for them to do something about my back when a nurse I’ve never seen comes in and says they
’ll be taking me up to the surgery unit in about twenty minutes.
“Do you see the time, Bren?”
I look at the clock and see it’s a little after eleven. Nick has a smirk on his face, but I’m missing the joke here.
“He’s going to be born on Cinco de Mayo. Just think how much he’ll love that birthday when he’s twenty-one.”
All the emotion I’ve been holding back rams into me. Twenty-one. He has to get through this delivery. God only knows what will be wrong with him. He’s going to be tiny. He shouldn’t be born yet. Not tonight. It’s my fault. My damn body. I’ve managed not to cry the whole time I’ve been in the hospital, but I tear up now, overwhelmed by the idea of my child being sick.
“I’m so sorry, Nick.”
“No, babe. No tears. Not now. You save them until we meet our little guy, and then you can cry happy ones. You hear me?”
I suck my tears back, sniffle loudly, and nod. He runs his fingers under my eyes.
“I’m going to miss this belly,” he says, rubbing my stomach. “It’s so damn sexy.”
“God, I love your crazy ass.”
“He has half my nurses swooning out here, too,” Dr. Pinack says from the door. “You two ready to meet your son?”
Nathaniel Shane St. James was born nineteen minutes after twelve. And he was ready to party the second he arrived.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Nick
People always say your life can change in the blink of an eye.
My response to that, “Keep your fucking eyes open.”
Seriously. I’m sick of change. I’m sick of worrying what will happen. Most of all, I’m sick of the people I love fighting for their lives. I was just starting to let my guard down and believe life could be good. Brenna feels okay most of the time. She only sees Dr. Wendell once every six months. The nightmares where she dies stopped a long damn time ago.
Then, Nathaniel comes nine and a half weeks early.
Why does God think we need to be punished?
What the hell did we ever do to him?
I didn’t hold my son for a week. For a fucking week, I could only stare at him through plastic. Half that time, I wasn’t even there. I had to go home because my other son needed me. I can’t explain how incompetent I felt leaving my wife and newborn. He was hooked up to tubes that overtook his tiny body and needed help breathing. He needed me, and I had to leave him, knowing he was fighting to stay in this world.
Brenna didn’t cry when I left. That damn woman and her strength. Thank Christ for it. If she had broken down, I would have never been able to leave her side. Even when the monitors blared because his oxygen levels plummeted or his heart raced, she held her head high, letting me know she would take care of him. She gave me the peace I needed to be able to go home.
I wanted to cry.
It made me think of the first time I wheeled Brenna into Nathaniel’s room.
“Good morning. You must be Mom and Dad. Can I just check your bracelets, please? I’m Hope, and I’ll be this adorable little guy’s nurse until two o’clock. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Brenna is staring at Nate, her hand against the incubator. I know her. She won’t cry in front of a stranger, but I can see the emotions welling in her face. This is the first time she’s seen him since she woke up from anesthesia, and she was pretty out of it then.
“Hope is the perfect name to work in this unit,” Brenna rasps out, showing how emotional she really is. She keeps her back to the nurse, her eyes focused on our son.
Hope smiles at me, but talks to Brenna. “I think so, too. My sister’s name is Joy.”
Brenna turns to face her now and a small smirk replaces the sadness that was there a moment ago. “Is she a nurse, too?”
“No,” Hope replies, grinning. “She’s a therapist.”
Brenna bursts into laughter. Her hands wrap around her incision and she coughs out a few, “Ouches,” in between her howling. After a couple minutes, she pulls herself together and her embarrassment is apparent. The blush in her cheeks is adorable. Her outburst made me forget what we’re facing.
“I’m so sorry,” Brenna blurts. “I’m sure the other parents don’t want to hear that. It’s just Joy, the therapist.” She giggles again.
“It’s alright,” Hope says, placing her hand on Brenna’s shoulder. “You can laugh. You can cry. We see parents go through every level of emotion on this floor. There is no judgment and we have an endless supply of tissues if needed. We understand this is hard. No one wants their baby to be here. It hurts in ways you can’t explain to people. So, if you can find something to laugh at like you just did, please laugh. It’s good for you.”
“Thank you,” I say, overwhelmed by how much this nurse just nailed down so much of how I’m feeling.
“Can I ask how your parents came up with Hope and Joy?” Brenna asks.
“They were hippies.”
“Of course that’s the answer,” Brenna says, chuckling lightly. Her eyes go back to Nathaniel and the spark goes out. Her hand lifts to the incubator and I see blame splash across her features.
“He will get stronger. Each day, you’ll see him change right before your eyes. He’s a little miracle,” Hope tells us as she starts to leave the room.
“Your name really is perfect,” Brenna says.
For six weeks, Nate stayed in the hospital. Brenna only cried twice that I’m aware of. Two nights after I left the hospital, she called me while she was lying in bed at the Ronald McDonald House. That place was a Godsend. We weren’t sure how we were going to afford having Brenna stay in Maine to be with Nate. Hotels, gas prices—the dollar signs kept adding up in my head, but the staff at the hospital made sure we knew about the Ronald McDonald House, and I was so grateful for that. Not only did they offer free rooming, they offered meals, too. Other families were there to talk to, and it was a short walk—only a few blocks away, so I didn’t have to worry about Brenna getting back and forth to the hospital. Having this worry taken off my shoulders, made it easier to breathe.
That night when she called, I could hear the weariness in her voice. Every breath was an effort for her to take.
“How was Nate tonight? Well, since I last called?” I asked.
Silence greeted me. I started to worry something had happened to our son. My stomach churned with the ensuing quiet. Before I could ask her again, her sobs broke free. My heart lurched and fear took over.
“Brenna, what’s going on?”
“He’s s-so tiny,” she gulped out. “Those damn alarms never stop blaring. Ev-every time one goes off, I swear he’s not going to start breathing again, or hi-his little heart is going to beat so fast, he’ll have a heart attack.”
Her pain overwhelmed me, bringing back the ache I felt the day I left her and Nate. I knew she wasn’t alright, but I let her bravado fool me. She was an hour and a half away from me. Brady was sleeping upstairs. I had no way to get to her. To hold her. It was just our voices through the line.
“He’s going to be okay, Bren.”
“He-he’s not okay, Nick. I don’t kn-now how much more I c-can take.” She struggled to speak around her tears. “I can’t do anything for him. I can’t e-even hold him. He’s being f-fed through a tube. He’s not bre-eathing on his own. Dammit, Nick, he’s orange.”
“He’s our little pumpkin,” I joked, trying to ease her mood.
“He doesn’t need to look like one,” she yelled.
Guilt swamped me. I couldn’t ease the pain she was feeling and jokes wouldn’t make this situation better.
“His color will get better soon, babe. I promise. He just needs more time under the lights.”
Her sobs started to subside and anger filtered in. “He looks like he’s been abducted by aliens when he’s under those lights.”
“What?” I chuckled. I didn’t mean to, but the comment was so unexpected. “How on earth did you come up with that?”
“They put those giant goggles on him
. The stupid things are bigger than his face. Then, they fill his incubator with those bright lights—it looks like a spaceship in there.”
“You and your imagination, Bren.” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. This woman and the way she saw the world. “You can make a cute scrapbook page out of it.”
“Oh, yeah, wouldn’t that be lovely,” she sneered. “Welcome, Earthling. What a page for a baby album.”
“I think it would be great. It would be a fun way for us to remember how his life started instead of always looking back and being sad.”
Again, silence greeted me. I wasn’t sure whether she was considering the page and how it would look, or how Nathaniel was breathing when she left. Not being able to see her face was hindering my ability to control the conversation. All I wanted was to comfort her, but I felt like I was failing.
“He will be okay, babe. You know how I know this?”
“How?” she whispered.
“He’s a fighter, like you.” She gasped and I took that as my opportunity to keep going. “Tomorrow, you need to sleep in a little. I know you rush in to be there for the doctor’s rounds, but I don’t want you to burn yourself out. Promise me you’ll take it easy. I’ll be there in two days. I bet I’ll see a difference in Nate by then.”
“Maybe his skin will be normal by then. I can’t wait to see you, Nick. I need a hug.”
“How about two? One from me, and I’ll bring one from Brady.”
Two days later is when Brenna cried again. We spent the morning with Nate and for the first time, we both got to hold him. I’ve never been so afraid I’d break something in my life, but my little man fit in my two hands. I was nervous I would tangle or rip out a wire. He was so fragile in my hands, but I saw a warrior in his eyes. I knew he’d keep fighting.
That’s what I told Brenna when it was time to leave. This was the day she had to go home. Brady needed his mom and the damn swine flu kept me from bringing him to meet his brother. The unit was locked down to children under the age of fourteen. Explaining to an almost four-year-old he can’t go meet his baby brother because other people are sick is like telling a mom not to worry the first time her child gets on a bike. Neither one wants to hear you.
