by Angela Pisel
—
THOMAS CONSULTED WITH THE NURSES ON DUTY while Sophie searched the hallway for Mindy. “Hey,” she said, when Mindy finally appeared from behind a pile of charts on the unit secretary’s desk. “You have a second to talk?”
“I will as soon as I’m finished drawing my meds.” Mindy looked out of order and her flat-ironed hair seemed even more worn. Chunks had started to rebel and wave in the wrong direction around her rounded face. “I know someone who has time for you,” Mindy said, as she pulled a rubber band off of her wrist and corralled her red hair (paprika red, as Mindy described it: “My stupid hair looks like a garnishment on a damn deviled egg”). She tied it off in a French knot, then pointed to the room located directly in front of the nurses’ station. “He’s been asking for you.”
Max’s face lit up when Sophie walked into his room. Sesame Street was just ending on TV. She reached for the remote, which was sitting on the table next to his bed, and turned it off before public television forced Max to watch some French chef make chocolate soufflé with a twist of rum.
Max, who had just turned three, still needed the rails of the bed up when he was unsupervised. Sophie lowered one and sat on the edge of the mattress beside her favorite hospital resident. “Hey, little man. How are you doing today?”
Max placed his index finger over his throat to cover the surgically created hole from a tracheostomy and with a raspy voice said, “Puzwle.”
“Puzwle,” Sophie teased. “What’s that?”
Max, now sitting up and bouncing on his bent knees, pointed across the room to the circus puzzle he and Sophie had been working on for the past few weeks.
“Puzwle,” Max said, giggling. “Over there.”
“Oh, you mean puzzle,” she said, gently poking Max in the tummy. “I’ll get it for you.”
She scooted Max back to the center of the bed, then retrieved the puzzle from the table under the windows. “Think we will ever finish this thing?”
Max held up both of his arms and wiggled every finger, making it impossible for Sophie not to pick him up and set him on her lap as they searched for the missing piece that would finish the white unicorn on the carousel.
She found the corner piece before Max did and slid it to the edge of the table, away from the distractions of the other pieces. Her plan worked. Max squealed in delight as he picked up the piece and said, “Horsie done.”
Mindy, who was Max’s nurse for the day, walked in just in time to witness his victory. “Good job, Max. You’re such a smart little boy. Who’s your helper?” She winked at Sophie. Max ignored her, intent on finding the piece that would complete the elephant’s ear.
“Any news on finding this guy a foster family?” Sophie whispered, while Mindy prepared his medications. Max’s premature birth had left him with underdeveloped lungs, which was why he had the tracheostomy. His mother, Sophie had heard, couldn’t handle the responsibilities of caring for an infant with such severe special needs.
“Not yet, not with all his care. Going to take a special family for this one,” Mindy said, then converted the first dose of medication into a bunny rabbit hopping toward Max’s unwilling mouth. He’d been placed in a few homes, as far as Sophie knew, but nothing permanent. His need for constant suctioning and breathing treatments had worn the last family out. And his health didn’t appear to be getting any better. Lately, he seemed to be in the hospital more than out.
Sophie had met Max quite by accident. His occupational therapist had been giving him a ride through the hospital gift shop in an oversize plastic green wagon and Sophie, who was volunteering in the unit, caught a glimpse of his big, gap-toothed smile when they went wheeling by. His messy blond hospital hair and large brown eyes captivated her heart, and her growing relationship with him eventually set in motion her idea to start her fund for needy children on the pediatric ward.
She’d convinced Thomas to be the figurehead behind the fund-raising effort, but not before he attempted to persuade her not to get too involved with Max. “He has social workers to help him,” said Thomas. “Besides, I don’t want you to get attached to him and get your heart broken.”
Her heart was already broken, and maybe, in some small way, Max could help change that. She and Max had a connection, and if she couldn’t help William, couldn’t she at least help Max?
“Here comes Peter Cottontail,” Mindy said in her best furry voice. As Sophie looked on, she noticed Mindy’s left hand was missing her wedding ring. She started to ask her about Stephen, but before she could, a flurry of activity in the hallway interrupted their conversation. “Code red in room two-sixteen, code red in room two-sixteen,” shouted a voice over the PA system. Mindy immediately got up to leave. “I think that’s Thomas’s patient. Be back as soon as I can.”
Sophie tucked Max into bed and then closed his door. She didn’t want him to be startled any more than she assumed he already was. However, Max, to her surprise, didn’t seem to notice the hospital hustle and bustle, but busied himself making a pretend rocket ship out of a folded lunch menu.
She dimmed the lights since it was after ten and pulled his favorite book, The Velveteen Rabbit, out of his top drawer. “I like wabbits, not bunnies,” he’d told her the last time she read it to him.
It was clear to her she needed Max more than he needed her right now, but at least he nodded when he saw the book and tossed the makeshift rocket to the floor.
He scoured his bed for his Toy Story blanket. Sophie helped in the search, undoing his sheets in three out of the four corners. The bed looked as if a tornado had blown through, causing them both to laugh when they noticed Buzz Lightyear and the gang had been hiding under the bed the entire time.
“Come here, silly boy.” She picked up Max and carried him to the mauve recliner angled in the corner of the room. “Buzz Lightyear can try to hide, but he’s no match for you.”
She gave Max the book to look at while she attempted to reassemble the bed. When she glanced over at Max, his tired head was bobbing.
The commotion in the hallway seemed to have died down, so she picked up a sleeping Max and tucked him into his bed. She put his favorite blanket under his floppy arm.
“Sleep well, sweet boy, sleep well,” she whispered into his ear before pressing a good-bye kiss into his chubby cheek.
Sophie walked down the hallway, trying to find Thomas. The sound of muffled voices led her to a small lounge at the entrance of the pediatric ward, directly across from the elevators. Through the slightly open doorway she could see Thomas talking to a young thirtysomething couple. She eavesdropped while she poured herself some coffee from the mobile cart parked in the hallway.
“You said this operation would be a piece of cake, Dr. Logan. You said our daughter would be okay,” said the man, who was wearing faded blue jeans and a Blue Devils T-shirt. He spoke slowly, as if trying to process his own words.
“What went wrong?” the mother asked, her question drenched by her tears. She had both arms wrapped around a gray stuffed elephant and held it to her chest.
Thomas’s face was pale and his white oxford shirt wrinkled. His suit jacket and tie lay beside him over the arm of the chair. Sophie watched as he searched for something to say. Her confident, capable husband appeared unable to find the words to make the situation less painful or to make any sense of it at all.
The expressions on the parents’ faces would forever be embedded in Sophie’s mind. Shock and sadness alternating with anger, then disbelief. A carousel of emotions Sophie had seen years before on the faces of her own grieving parents. A haunting gaze that could be replicated only by those who had lost a child.
“I’m not sure what went wrong with—with . . .” Thomas stuttered. “The autopsy will tell us more. I’ve done this procedure multiple times, and I’ve never had a bad outcome.” His pager beeped, and Sophie saw him take it out of his pocket to look at it.
“Dr. Logan,” said the father, his voice escalating. The man stood up, over Thomas, with his sobbing wife’s head braced against the side of his trembling leg. “This bad outcome was named Isabel, and your bad outcome, as you like to call it, was our daughter.”
GRACE
(This journal belongs to Grace Louise Bradshaw #44607—Please see that my daughter, Sophie Pearl Bradshaw, receives this upon my death.)
Dear Sophie,
I’m writing this journal so you’ll have a piece of me to hang on to when I’m gone. Words, written in my handwriting, declaring our great love story. The beginnings before my end.
I pray the words written on this faded, white paper will find you someday, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll let your heart love me again.
My legal fight appears to be over. I haven’t lost hope, but I’m preparing myself for the inevitable. My execution, which will happen sometime in February.
I’m not mad at you. I understand why you stopped visiting. The embarrassment, I suspect, was too much for you to handle. Your dad made up reasons for your dwindling visits, saying things like “She has a big geography test” or “Her best friend Jillian is having a pool party,” but I knew the truth. You needed me, and I wasn’t there, in our home, living in a normal world that didn’t include plexiglass with attached telephones and graffiti-covered metal dividers.
I’m writing to you on a thin mattress that covers the rusty off-white bed frame in my six-by-nine-foot cell. My room, I like to call it, consists of a small sink and a toilet without a lid. I’ve wallpapered the space above my bed with photos from our life—a lovely life that I view as unfinished.
Life, or what little I have left, still matters to me. I’m not sure it matters to anyone else. It’s hard to be a good friend to anyone on the outside when you’re on death row.
Hanging right beside me at eye level are three smiling faces. You, wedged between a enormously pregnant me and your daddy, with both of your arms muddled together, trying to hold on to our squirmy three-month-old poodle. Do you remember? We’re standing under the red-and-white awning of a borrowed RV. We’d spent the weekend at Hilton Head Island and I’d forgotten to rub sunscreen on your nose. I could feel William kicking and turning inside of me when the kind stranger snapped the picture.
The puppy, if you remember, had served as a negotiating tool in a minor squabble your dad and I had been having with you. For months, you wanted a puppy, citing the usual promises all kids tend to make. You told me at least three times a day: “It will be all my responsibility. I’ll potty-train him. I’ll walk him every day after school. You and Daddy won’t have to do a thing. I already have a name picked out. I’m calling him Teddy.” I’m sure you figured out that the pronounced dimples that appeared right below the corner of your lip when you begged for something usually tipped the scales in your favor.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want a dog. It was the adding of another thing to my to-do list. I didn’t feel like myself and hadn’t for the past few weeks. I was always tired and sick to my stomach. I knew your dad worried that my depression had returned. That wasn’t it, but I couldn’t argue the point much when something as simple as a coffee commercial sent me running for a Kleenex.
After weeks of throwing up at the smell of anything sizzling in a frying pan, I scheduled an appointment with our family physician. It was during that visit that I found out I was ten weeks pregnant with William.
I’d given up on having another baby. I knew Paul was right. The aftereffects of my first pregnancy had taken a toll on me and on our marriage. The baby blues from having you had lasted too long to be considered normal. I’d consented to see a psychiatrist after Daddy found you (I think you were around nine months old) crying in your crib, your onesie soaked halfway up your back with urine, while I sat in front of the TV, engulfed in the latest episode of Guiding Light. I hadn’t held you all day.
“Pregnant?” I said to the doctor when he gave me the news. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The doctor gently squeezed my left foot as he listened to me from the end of the exam table. He squirted something on his fingers and asked, “I take it this baby is a surprise?”
“A big one.” I closed my eyes and tried to breathe slowly in and out through my nose.
He finished my exam and then sat down on the rolling stool beside me. I watched the black ink flow from his stainless-steel fountain pen, documenting the truth I didn’t yet want to accept. Another baby. The ends of my fingers tingled as I struggled to catch my breath.
The truth is I never thought I wanted to be a mother. I never once had the desire to hold or dress or rock anyone else’s baby, cooing at how cute and how tiny his or her fingers were. In no way did I ever share this intimate information with anyone, especially not your dad or the women in our church—most of whom already had their nurseries decorated with spindly monkey mobiles and matching safari borders well before their white sticks turned blue.
“When are you and the pastor going to start your family?” they’d ask me, when it was my turn to watch the newborns during the morning service. I wondered if something was wrong with me, or if I lacked the gene that made the women around me feel whole.
My youthful lack of desire haunts me now, keeping me awake at night questioning myself and taunting me for something I know I did not do, could never do. I’m not sure why I’m sharing this with you now, but I feel I have to. I probably won’t get another chance for you to know who I was before all of this.
After a few days the initial shock wore off. I couldn’t help being excited. Many times, Paul and I had second-guessed our decision not to have any more children, but mentally I was now in a much better place. I knew by the way you cuddled up against me on the sofa and rubbed your bare toes against mine—I’d turned into an excellent mother.
“PTA-perfect,” Paul teased me. “Best blue-ribbon bake-sale brownies in the entire school district.” I hadn’t needed medication in years.
I prayed your dad would be happy about the pregnancy. I thought about wrapping a Carolina-blue baby blanket and a box of Huggies as a way to deliver the news but decided against it, fearing you might walk into the room.
Instead, I thought of a more foolproof approach. I still get tears when I think of Paul—his suit coat draped over his shoulder, sweating, exhausted from another contentious elders’ meeting—going to the mailbox as he did every day on his way in from work and finding a letter addressed to My Daddy.
On yellow-and-blue polka-dotted stationery, I’d written:
Dear Daddy,
I hope you don’t mind, but sometime around early September, I’m going to need a place to live. Also going to need all the usual things, like a bassinet, rattle, bottles, and lots of diapers. Don’t know the exact day of my arrival, but I plan to stay with you for many years. Hope that’s okay.
Love, Your Kid (name and gender to be decided)
I sat on the front porch swing, watching to see Paul’s reaction. Minutes later we sat together, holding each other, crying and thanking God for this unexpected miracle.
Eleven-year-old you, who had been eavesdropping from behind the screen door, whined, “Does this mean I don’t get my puppy?”
xoxox
—
MY DAILY ROUTINE DOESN’T VARY MUCH HERE. Morning wake-up is at 5 a.m. on the dot when the meal cart squeaks down the hallway. The bright fluorescent lights pop on in stages, first flickering, then buzzing, making it impossible for me to sleep. I roll out of bed with little time to empty my bladder before a tray of two link sausages, a slice of wheat toast, and one hard-boiled egg forcibly enters the slit in my front door. The tray stays for thirty minutes before, finished or unfinished, I have to push it back through and it makes its way on the clanky transportation cart to the kitchen dishwasher to get ready for a revisit at 10:30 and 4:00.
When I first arrived at Lakeland, I barely ate. The infirma
ry placed me on medical watch after my weight dropped by twenty-two pounds. I knew I didn’t have a pound to lose, but I couldn’t force myself to eat. How could I, after what I’d been accused of doing? I wanted to die. It’s ironic how now the tables have completely turned.
The warden and the infirmary nurse followed the rules and made sure I didn’t die. I found it morbidly humorous that the people who would eventually observe my death now forced me to stay alive, recording every morsel I put in my mouth, meal by meal. After a few months, the prison doctor put me back on antidepressants.
Every day after breakfast, I pick up my Bible and read a Psalm. I have to check and double-check to make sure my favorite picture of Sophie and William are being guarded between the pages of Psalm 91. A favorite of Paul’s. My Psalm of protection.
Every morning I say this prayer for you: “Father, thank you for letting me sit beside you and talk about my Sophie. I trust you with my daughter. Please keep your eyes on her. I know your huge outstretched arms are protecting her, and she is perfectly safe. I will fear no disaster during the day because your faithfulness will protect her. Guide her where evil can’t get close to her. Thank you for the angels that are guarding her and holding on to her for dear life. I know you are giving her the best of care. Thank you for giving her a long life and please, somehow, let her make her way back to me. Amen.”
I bank on that prayer as others do an insurance policy. I have to trust that someone is taking care of you. I study the photo again before I tuck William, in his blue-and-white sailor outfit, and you, in your pastel-purple ballerina tutu, safely away.
I’m not mad at God, in case you’re wondering. I hope you aren’t, either. This IS NOT what I planned for myself, or for our family, but I’ve adjusted. I’ve turned my outcome over to the One who created me, and placed my hope in the only One who can save me. He gives my heart new guts when it doesn’t have the strength to beat another beat.
