HER BABY'S SECRET FATHER

by Lynne Marshall

  Grateful to escape on a three-day weekend, he had big plans to rock-climb and hang-glide with Dave—far, far from Mercy Hospital. It was the personal reward he’d promised himself for doing so well on his biochemistry midterm, and he deserved it.

  Jaynie—and his new responsibility as a dad for Tara—would get put on the back burner until he felt ready to deal with it.

  Would he ever feel ready?

  The mere thought of being a father again forced him from his early-morning torpor and out of bed to pack.

  *

  Por Por Chang entered Jaynie’s house like an ancient Chinese empress. Accompanied by Kim, she bowed her head magnanimously to Jaynie. She smelled like mentholated vapor rub and sandalwood. Gray hair, pulled severely back into a tight bun, rested on a shiny Mandarin-collared, red dragon-patterned jacket.

  “Welcome,” Jaynie said.

  Wasting no time, the bird-frail old woman walked through the house, eyes darting, hands gesturing, tongue clucking and spewing hard foreign sounds to her granddaughter.

  Jaynie worked up courage and showed her into Tara’s room. Again, the old woman’s eyes snapped from corner to corner. More words flew out of her mouth, and Kim kept answering with, “Yeah-yeah-yeah.”

  She said what sounded like a mantra, “Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum.” And she made a gesture with her hand, middle fingers pointed downward, pinky and index straight out. Her thumb flicked the middle fingers and she continued to repeat the words while she paced the length and breadth of the nursery.

  Fifteen minutes and a full home inspection later, Por Por Chang smiled, nodded graciously, and bowed when Jaynie offered her a cup of green tea. She sat primly on the sofa and sipped while Kim filled Jaynie in.

  “First off, she did a cleansing mantra to rid the nursery of any negative energy.” Kim brushed her long straight hair behind her thin shoulders, looking serious and sincere. “The crib shouldn’t face the doorway. Por Por says to move it to the other wall. Negative Chi energy otherwise.” Kim gave a petite swallow. “She says the color of the room is good for creativity. Add some green for health.”

  Jaynie smiled, feeling uplifted and encouraged about something at least.

  “Overall, the bagua of this house is sufficient. You have good energy—Chi—flowing. But you’ll need to bring more color in for happiness and health.” She glanced toward her por por, who encouraged her with a nod. “Bring in more of the five elements: fire, earth, metal, water, wood. And never keep anything dead inside. You must replace your dried flowers with a real plant to intercept the bad energy. And put a fountain somewhere. Even a small one will do.”

  Por Por Chang pinched her lips into a tiny smile, pleased with her granddaughter’s interpretation. Only then did Jaynie realize the older woman could understand English.

  As they left, Kim whispered into Jaynie’s ear, “I’ll fill you in on my date later.” They hugged goodbye. “Do you want to have lunch Sunday at the hospital? It’s my weekend on.”

  “Sure,” Jaynie said, knowing she’d be visiting Tara, and glad to have plans of any kind to keep from rattling around in her empty house.

  Once they’d left, she set to work rearranging the nursery. She hung the special essay from her sperm donor on another wall and reread its content, feeling a wealth of emotion.

  What kind of wonderful man could write those words?

  And, when she was done, she made plans to visit the local bookstore the next day, to buy a book on Feng Shui.

  *

  On Sunday, Jaynie found herself looking for Terrance in the NICU, but he was nowhere in sight. Tara fidgeted and squirmed when she first arrived, fussed while she bathed her and then settled down when Jaynie pressed her hand gently over her tummy and spoke soothingly to her in mommy language. Unknowingly, they had already slipped into a routine.

  When Tara was fast asleep, Jaynie called Kim in Pulmonary and met her for lunch.

  She continued to watch for Terrance in the hospital cafeteria, where she dined with her friend on macaroni and cheese, salad, and canned fruit cocktail in jello.

  “Tommy finally asked me out for a Saturday night— a weekend date. Can you believe it?” Kim’s dark almond eyes sparkled with excitement. The totally white uniform seemed to make her glow.

  “Fantastic.” Jaynie realized how different their situations were. Kim dreamed of finding the right man, and Jaynie needed to learn to live completely without one.

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah. He’s taking me to see Mamma Mia! Don’t you think that’s a step up on the dating scale?”

  “Definitely.”

  A flash of a cozy Greek café and a handsome male face popped into Jaynie’s mind. In the midst of discovering motherhood, an odd craving for something beyond Mediterranean food, something in tight jeans and a blue polo shirt, puzzled her. Now was definitely not the time for such fantasies.

  *

  Terrance squinted into the early-morning glare on this crisp, clean Sunday in Joshua Tree state park. Making like Spiderman up the side of a cliff was exactly where he wanted to be. Elevated two hundred feet, and concentrating deeply on each fissure in the wall of rock, he chose a crack and inserted the fingers of one hand. Next he planted his smooth-soled boot on a cleft below, and placed his other hand in a chink slightly above the opposite hand, moving the second foot to a credit-card-thin ledge. His friend Dave followed.

  So far, so good.

  He searched and reached up to a split in the granite, but his hand slipped on slick rock and his foot slid off. He swung loose, left to dangle in his harness on the sturdy rope he’d anchored above. It gave a couple of inches.

  With skyhook in hand, and ready for action, he felt adrenaline rush through his veins. He swung, to latch on to something…anything. This was what he lived for—the excitement of man against the elements, the draw of danger.

  “I’m okay,” he called out to Dave. His eyes swept below and noticed a huge crevasse. If he fell right now, at the height and angle he was hanging, he’d be seriously injured. Maybe even killed.

  Two thoughts popped into his head. Jaynie and Tara.

  Astounding.

  *

  Arriving back to work early Monday morning, Terrance came to find out that three of his respiratory therapists had decided to make it a three-day weekend. The night shift supervisor had pre-arranged for registry staff to fill in, but that meant that he would have to work the NICU and face his demons—namely the cherubic Tara and her sexy mother.

  Fighting off an illogical desire to run directly to Tara’s incubator and coo at her, he went systematically through each baby in the unit. He checked the ventilators and performed the daily arterial blood gases, having to prick tiny capillaries in the preemies’ heels and causing general uproar around the unit. Finally, he reached his secret daughter.

  He approached with a smile, but it quickly faded when he saw that Tara wasn’t sedated enough, and that her efforts to breathe weren’t synchronized with the ventilator pressure. Her oxygen saturation read right at the ninety percent mark, occasionally dipping below.

  “Natalie?” he called to the nearest NICU nurse. “When was baby Winchester last medicated? She’s way too active.”

  First he checked for air leaks, making sure the tube in her trachea fit properly, and that there was no need to place a larger one. No problem there.

  The ventilator made peeps and pings as he adjusted the pressure down and the oxygen concentration up a minute amount. He knew how important the right combination was to maintain proper lung function without causing injury to the delicate tissues.

  Over-oxygenation in a preemie could also cause damage or scarring to the tiny capillaries in the eyes. He kept that in mind, and only made the smallest adjustments.

  He used his stethoscope to listen to Tara’s lungs and heard a disturbing sound in her right lower lobe. Nothing. He listened again. No movement of air in or out suggested a collapse in a portion of her lung. Air collected and trapped in her chest could interfere with her heart an
d lung function, and he knew the condition needed immediate attention.

  “Did they do today’s chest X-rays yet?”

  The nurse nodded, while drawing up some medication to insert into Tara’s intravenous line.

  Terrance paged Dr. Shrinivasan, rechecked Tara’s pulse-ox readings, and then went searching for the latest chest film.

  Instead of answering the page, Dr. Shrinivasan appeared, almost miraculously, on the ward.

  “Doctor S.” With a grim look, Terrance handed the X-ray to the specialist. “It looks like a pneumothorax has developed.”

  “How large?” The doctor raised his brows and slapped the film into the bright viewbox on the wall. He clicked his tongue while he studied the X-ray. “We’ll need to insert a chest tube.”

  Terrance alerted Natalie, who brought a prepackaged chest tube tray and suction machine, while the doctor scrubbed his hands and placed sterile gloves on. Terrance did the same.

  “Call the mother—let her know what we’re doing,” Dr. Shrinivasan said to the nurse.

  Consulting the X-ray, he drew an “x” where it would be best to insert the tube, into the space between two ribs on Tara’s side. She’d already settled down from the sedation, but squirmed when Terrance put a cold betadine swab next to her skin.

  He wiped in a circular motion, starting at the center and moving concentrically outward. Then he repeated the process two more times, to make the procedure as close to sterile as possible. He put a blue paper sterile field with a hole in the middle over her body.

  Dr. Shrinivasan worked like the skilled professional he was, and in no time the chest tube had been expertly inserted. Terrance taped it in place. The results were immediate and amazing. With the tube and suction relieving the excess air pocket, the compressed lung would be able to re-expand. The leaking air sacs would now have a chance to heal over the next couple of days.

  Tara’s oxygen saturation moved back up over the ninety percent mark and the ventilator quit squawking.

  While Terrance readjusted the settings on the ventilator, Dr. Shrinivasan approached.

  “You were very helpful today. As always. I’m glad you have decided to attend medical school.”

  “Oh, hey—thanks, Doc S. Your vote of confidence means a lot to me.”

  “If you’d like, I will make a recommendation at the University Medical School affiliated with Mercy Hospital. Instead of having to leave the state, you could continue living and working here.”

  The compliment was greater than Terrance could ever have imagined. He shook the doctor’s hand and thanked him profusely.

  “Now,” Dr. Shrinivasan said, “do you want to call this baby’s mother and tell her the successful news? Or shall I?”

  Under normal circumstances only Dr. Shrinivasan would have done any updating on infant conditions. Terrance realized even the doctor had figured out that something more than the ordinary was going on between Terrance, Jaynie and Tara.

  “You better do it, doc,” he said, gathering his equipment and moving on to the next incubator, with plans to be out of the unit before Jaynie arrived.

  He wasn’t yet ready to face the woman who unknowingly had changed the course of his life.

  *

  As Dr. Shrinivasan had promised Jaynie, the chest tube got removed three days later, and Tara seemed surely set on the road to progress. But Terrance was nowhere in sight. The good doctor had explained everything to her so thoroughly, she couldn’t even manage to come up with a fake question as an excuse to call Terrance.

  Another few days passed in comforting routine. Jaynie never so much as glimpsed Terrance, and chose to concentrate on her new life and daughter.

  The following Monday morning, her phone rang, waking her up. She looked at the clock, surprised by how late she’d slept: seven-thirty a.m.

  When she answered, Terrance’s deep, soothing voice vibrated on the other end. “I thought you’d want to be the first to know that I just extubated Tara.”

  Jaynie gasped.

  “She’s off the respirator and breathing on her own,” he said. “Beautifully.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Jaynie said, throwing back the covers and sitting up with lightning speed.

  An hour later, when she entered the NICU, Terrance had stuck around. With dark circles all the way to his cheeks, he looked exhausted. Avoiding her stare, he smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He seemed tentative and distant. Too excited about Tara to stop, Jaynie disregarded his troubling appearance and flew past, brushing his hand on the way to her daughter’s incubator.

  Sure enough, in no sign of distress, her baby slept with a knit cap perched on her head and the tiniest pacifier Jaynie had ever seen plugged into her mouth. Her tiny lip twitched and drew intermittently on the rubber binky, sucking like a newborn on a learning curve. The respirator had been replaced with a minute oxygen cannula, resting beneath her nose, and a tiny feeding tube inserted into one of Tara’s nostrils. How they could find a catheter small enough to fit amazed Jaynie.

  “Oh, my Lord, I can’t believe it.” Joy leapt in her heart. She clutched the incubator to keep from floating away. More tears—the good kind—washed down her cheeks.

  Dr. Shrinivasan approached. “We’re feeding her your breast milk through the nasogastric tube. It will help with digestion and the lining of her intestines.” He patted her arm in a fatherly fashion and nodded. “We want to encourage the sucking reflex. This is so far and so good.”

  He squinted his eyes and gave a pleased smile, bobbing his head from side to side. “This will also help improve her blood oxygen level. We will observe her progress.” With hands crossed behind his back, he turned to leave, but first raised a finger. “One very reputable study showed that breast-milk-fed preemies go to their homes fifteen days sooner than formula babies.”

  Jaynie wanted to hug him, but refrained. Her hands slipped into the portholes on the incubator and she stroked Tara’s tummy and whispered soothing words, then kept vigil for the next several minutes until the breast milk disappeared.

  She wanted to thank Terrance for calling her, and share the good news about Tara’s progress with him. But when she turned he was nowhere in sight, and she figured he probably already knew, anyway.

  Filled with delight and new hope, she hugged her newest friend, Arpita, when she arrived later for her daily visit. Unfortunately, little Manish, her son, wasn’t progressing as quickly as Tara. Jaynie felt some of her joy dissipate when she saw the preemie’s little ribs retracting and struggling with each breath, and the worried look in Arpita’s huge brown eyes.

  Later, tears filled those doe eyes as Arpita told Jaynie that Manish had developed a respiratory infection during the night. Jaynie put her arm around her new friend and offered a shoulder for her to cry on, and before long joined her.

  Exhausted, and on her way home for lunch and a nap, she glimpsed Terrance at the other end of the hall. He looked preoccupied with another employee, and she didn’t want to interrupt, so she left without saying goodbye.

  Kim had the day off. She’d give her a call after talking to her mother long-distance, and she would tell Kim all about Tara’s progress. And then she’d talk her into shopping for some pillows, paint and a small indoor fountain for her house.

  “Each day is one step closer to bringing Tara home,” she chanted like a mantra. “One step closer to bringing Tara home.”

  *

  The next morning, both a new R.N. and R.T. were assigned to the NICU. Jaynie wondered where Terrance was, and why he hadn’t been coming around. But she soon got distracted when the older nurse approached her with a sparkle in her eye and a tiny bath blanket tucked under her arm.

  The nurse wisely stood back and let Jaynie do the entire a.m. care for Tara, who reacted to her mother’s attention with squirms, and made a tiny bleating sound.

  Jaynie laughed.

  “Oh, my gosh, she sounds like a little lamb.” She smiled and touched her index finger to Tara’s delicate chin, and the b
aby opened her mouth as if she wanted to eat. Jaynie slipped her pinky finger inside. Tara latched on. Surprised, Jaynie’s eyes widened, and she turned to the R.N. who nodded in approval.

  As the morning progressed, Tara got fussy and couldn’t seem to settle down.

  “I want you to go pump yourself.” The nurse spoke in gentle tones. “We’ll try an experiment.”

  When Jaynie returned, a rocking chair had materialized and the nurse handed her an adult-sized bath blanket. “Now, open your blouse, take off your bra and sit down,” she said.

  The R.N. went about untangling Tara from all of the tubes and wires strategically placed around her body, holding her like a football, and then put her against Jaynie’s chest, smack between her breasts. She wrapped the blanket around Jaynie’s middle, swaddling child to mother.

  “This is called Kangaroo-care. Two doctors from South America discovered in the 1980s the amazing results of keeping preemies close to their mothers’ skin.” She winked and nodded at Jaynie. “See—it’s like a pouch.”

  The feel of her own flesh and blood flush to her chest brought an incredible sense of peace. Her breasts tingled as if her milk was about to let down, and she was grateful that she’d just used the pump. The nurse placed a second bath towel over Jaynie’s shoulders like a shawl, and she settled in to rocking and humming to her daughter.

  Within seconds Tara relaxed, and drifted off to sleep, allowing Jaynie to study her close up, press her to her bosom for warmth and kiss the top of her perfect little head.

  “This will help your baby conserve her energy for growing, both physically and emotionally,” the nurse said with a kind, knowing smile, “while maintaining good body temperature.”

  The peace of finally holding Tara the way she had dreamed, feeling her fine skin and warmth, acted like a drug. Before long, with her arms wrapped securely around her tightly swaddled child, Jaynie drifted off to sleep, too.

  *

  Terrance couldn’t stay away any longer. It had been days since he’d gone to see Tara and he couldn’t stand the separation. The same blood in her veins ran in his, and her precious preemie soul called out to him. Since returning from his rock-climbing trip he’d made a point to only come around when Jaynie wasn’t there—which was hard, because she always seemed to be there.