Rejoice

by Karen Kingsbury

  But now that Hayley had been awake for ten hours, Brooke was beginning to understand. The nightmare wasn’t over; it had only begun. The child in the bed who looked like Hayley was nothing like the little girl Brooke had bid good-bye that sunny Saturday afternoon. The differences were terrifying, and sometimes Brooke could barely stand to be in the room with her.

  It wasn’t the fact that her daughter had so much ground to make up before she’d be well again. Rather it was this: The child in the bed was no longer Hayley. Not her expression, not her personality, nothing even remotely familiar in her face. And definitely not her cry.

  From the moment she woke up, Hayley had been crying. She was still crying now, at seven o’clock Thursday evening. Other than a few short naps, she had cried all day.

  “It’s okay, Hayley.” Brooke stroked her daughter’s bare leg. Discouragement rang in her voice, but Brooke could do nothing to change it. “Mommy’s here, baby. Shhh . . . it’s okay.”

  The crying grew louder. Not the familiar cry that had been Hayley’s before the accident. But a strange, sickly sort of cry, slow and constant like a bleating lamb.

  The cry of a brain-damaged child.

  “Baby, I’m here; it’s okay.” Brooke reached for her daughter’s hand and braced herself. Hayley’s hands didn’t feel the same either. They were stiff and turned slightly out, the same as her feet. Brooke wanted to think Hayley was suffering from cramps or a lack of movement. But she knew better. The stiffness meant she was seizing, another symptom of a seriously injured brain.

  More crying, and this time Hayley turned her head from one side of the pillow to the other. Over and over and over again.

  Brooke watched and felt her insides being ripped to shreds. An hour after Hayley woke up, Dr. Martinez had explained the reason for her crying, for the strange way she looked from side to side a hundred times without stopping.

  “She’s looking for you.” He held Hayley’s file, his eyes full of quiet compassion. “We consider it a good sign when a drowning victim shows a desire to connect. It means some part of her memory is working.”

  “But I’m here.” Brooke wrapped her arms around her middle and tried to keep her head from spinning. “All I want to do is hold her and take away her fear, Doctor. If she’s looking for me, why doesn’t she know it’s me beside her?”

  “First of all, she’s blind. She can’t see you, and the darkness is scaring her. It’s something new, something she has no frame of reference for.” He bit his lip and leveled his eyes at Brooke. “Second, her brain is too injured at this point to recognize your voice. She knows you’re there, but she doesn’t know you’re her mother.”

  The news had hit like a machete to what was left of Brooke’s fragile heart. Of course Hayley didn’t recognize her. Brooke remembered lessons she’d done in med school about brain-damaged children. Hayley’s symptoms were classic in their presentation. Brooke simply hadn’t wanted to believe it was true.

  And that wasn’t all. Every time one of her family members came to visit, Brooke had to explain the situation again. Now, after a full day of hearing her daughter’s unfamiliar cry, a full day of failing to connect with her, of watching her hands and feet grow stiffer with each passing hour, a day of breaking the awful news to her family, Brooke was at the end of her abilities.

  The hands on the wall clock moved slower than usual, reminding Brooke that the hours here with Hayley, the months of recovery, were bound to be as tedious as they were painful. Her eyes fell on a framed picture of Peter and her and the girls on the bedside table beside Hayley. Her mother had brought it earlier today.

  “When her sight returns, she’ll have something familiar to look at.” Her mother had cleared a spot on the table and set it up during her morning visit. Then she looked at Brooke. “Maybe it’ll help you, too.”

  Brooke let her eyes move from Maddie to Peter and herself. The picture had been taken at Lake Monroe little more than a year ago, during the Baxters’ Labor Day picnic. Brooke remembered playing Frisbee with Peter on the beach, grateful for a chance to drop the professional role and be less serious.

  Once, in the middle of their game, Peter threw a floater and ran after it at the same time Brooke did. They collided in shallow water and fell, knees bruised, laughing at their soaked shorts and T-shirts. The collision became a tickling match, the two of them going after each other, wrestling on the shore and chasing each other into the water. By the time they stumbled up the beach and grabbed their towels that day, Brooke felt young and alive and more in love with her husband than ever before.

  She gazed out the hospital window. Things had certainly changed since then, and she wondered if the difference was entirely centered around Maddie’s illness.

  Maybe it was something more; maybe they’d become too busy for each other, too caught up in building their separate practices, too given to their daughters when they came home at night. Or maybe they’d developed some kind of professional competition. Whose practice would be more successful, more quickly established?

  Brooke studied Hayley again and realized she was tuning out her daughter’s crying, finding a way to survive the situation even when she knew she couldn’t take another minute.

  Or maybe the trouble with her and Peter hadn’t truly started until Maddie’s illness. The specialist had been just the answer, of course. The man had known what tests to run, where to look to find the reason for Maddie’s constant fevers. Though she’d never admitted it to Peter, he’d been right to call the man. He’d been right and she’d been wrong.

  And he’d reminded her of the fact as often as he could. A quiet comment about her inexperience, or a reminder that he at least had realized they needed to call in a specialist. So maybe it was a competition thing between them after all. He saw himself as the competent doctor; her, the incompetent one. In the past year she’d gone out of her way to change his mind. She looked the part—simple, shoulder-length dark hair, little makeup, and a closet full of rayon skirts and blouses.

  And she was active in two organizations that sought to give women equal pay and respect in the medical field. More than once Peter had commented that women should spend less time trying to convince people they were equal and more time acting it out.

  So yes, professional competition had to be part of it. She soothed her fingers over Hayley’s brow.

  The only time they didn’t seem to be in competition was on Sundays at church. Since September 11, 2001, they’d attended her parents’ church together, but after Maddie’s last illness, their attendance had been only occasional. It wasn’t something they talked about or agreed on. Rather their conversation was too distant to make weekend plans, even the simple plan of attending church.

  Once in a while Brooke took the girls when they complained about missing Sunday school. But for the most part Brooke spent Sundays grocery shopping, taking the girls to the park, visiting her parents. And Peter spent Sundays in his home office, studying his more difficult cases. In recent months, whole weeks had passed without the two of them sharing a kiss or even a smile.

  Whatever the reason, their love had grown cool long before Hayley’s accident.

  That was the other thing her mother talked about on her visit earlier today. Her relationship with Peter. “You’re a pediatrician, Brooke. You know the statistics.”

  “Statistics?” Brooke wasn’t in the mood for counseling. She wanted to spend every moment praying for Hayley, that the fog in her brain would clear at least enough for her to recognize their voices.

  “Marriage statistics. In the aftermath of a child’s tragedy.”

  Yes, Brooke knew the statistics. More than 90 percent of marriages ended in divorce after a child’s tragic accident or death. But Brooke didn’t want to talk statistics. “Mom, this isn’t the time, not when . . .” It was one of the few hours when Hayley was asleep. Brooke looked at her daughter and felt a thickness in her throat. When she spoke again, her voice was a strained whisper. “Please, Mom.”

  �
��Brooke, I won’t lecture you.” She took hold of Brooke’s hand. “But Hayley and Maddie need both of you. God’s given you each other as a means of support for times like this.”

  “Mom . . .” Brooke held up one hand, her heart ice-cold.

  “Okay . . . no more. I’m sorry.”

  And that had been all. After that her mother didn’t say a word about Peter or the troubles between them. Peter had returned to work the day before, and he’d been in twice that day to see Hayley. Since Brooke was staying at the hospital, Maddie was staying with her grandparents. Peter didn’t feel up to watching their older daughter, not when he was gone until after dinner most nights, anyway.

  Both times he’d been by the hospital that day, Brooke had gone to the waiting room with her parents or Ashley, all of whom had been in at one time or another since morning. On his last visit, he left straight from Hayley’s room, without even stopping in to say good-bye.

  Hayley’s crying grew softer now, and she fell still, the way she did before taking a nap

  “That’s right, baby . . . shhh.”

  Brooke folded her hands on her lap and dug her fingertips into the backs of her hands. She would’ve given anything to blink her eyes and be at home with Hayley, anything to turn back the hands of time and have her little daughter back once more. She no longer had the energy to think about her husband’s behavior. She was completely consumed with watching Hayley, praying for her, trying to see even the smallest bit of hope during her waking hours.

  Hayley’s crying grew even quieter, the pattern slower than before. Brooke stood and leaned over her, searching her daughter’s face, her eyes. She could picture her last moments with Hayley as clearly as if they’d happened only a moment ago. The two of them leaving the car and heading up the walkway to DeWayne and Aletha’s house. Hayley jumping into her arms, and Brooke carrying her to the front door.

  With Hayley close against her chest, Brooke had felt loved and needed, the way she hadn’t felt in weeks. She’d snuggled the child close and felt Hayley take hold of her hand and squeeze it three times. Their secret code for I love you. Then she’d whispered in her daughter’s ear, “You’re a sweet girl, Hayley; do you know that?”

  And Hayley had responded in a similar way. “You, too, Mommy.” Hayley had rubbed her tiny nose against Brooke’s. “You’re a sweetie girl, too. Know why?”

  “Why?” Brooke and Hayley had trailed behind Peter and Maddie.

  “Because—” Hayley had tilted her head, her pale blonde hair shining in the afternoon sun—“I love you; that’s why.”

  Now Brooke took hold of her daughter’s stiff fingers and tears filled her eyes. Hayley . . . where are you, Hayley?

  She swallowed hard and the memory broke apart. Was Hayley, the old Hayley, gone forever? Would she never again have the Hayley she’d held as they headed up the walkway hours before the drowning? Watching her lie there in the hospital bed, drifting to sleep, her brain so damaged she was beyond comfort, Brooke pictured something from her own childhood.

  Her mother had loved to sew back then. Until Brooke was ten years old, Mom had sewn matching outfits for the five Baxter kids, including once when she made the girls floral pantsuits in lightweight cotton with matching headbands. Luke had shorts in the same material, and a white shirt, and together the group looked like some sort of kid band from the seventies.

  The five of them laughed about the outfits now, but they still appreciated the hours their mother put into the effort. Brooke remembered sitting beside her while she sewed, watching her struggle to thread the needle. Once in a while the thread would dance about just below the needle’s eye, until her mother would drop her hands to her lap.

  “It’s right there. I can see it and feel it. I just can’t bring it to the surface.”

  That was how Brooke felt now.

  Hayley was there, just below the surface. But no matter how hard she tried to grab what was there and pull Hayley back, it was no use.

  “God . . .” Brooke whispered the words, ignoring the wetness on her cheeks. “I know you’re there. I know you saved her for a reason. But give her back her sight, please. Breathe life into her brain, because she’s in trouble, God. Please . . .”

  Hayley’s crying grew loud again, and she began turning her head from side to side. She still had tubes in her nose where she was being fed and hydrated, so maybe Dr. Martinez was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t looking for Brooke; maybe she was sick of the nose tubes. It was possible, wasn’t it?

  With each minute her daughter’s crying grew louder, and a panic began to come over Brooke. Panic and adrenaline. The same feeling she had once when she was in the house and heard a loud crash in the backyard, followed by Hayley’s desperate cries. In that moment, she’d had a frantic determination to reach Hayley, cradle the little girl in her arms, and rock away the fear and pain.

  It was a mother’s instinct really, and now . . . now even though Hayley desperately needed comfort, Brooke could do nothing to help her. The mother’s instinct was there, stronger all the time. But there was no way to act on it, no way to do the one thing that would bring peace to both her and Hayley.

  The bridge between them was broken in too many places, and now nothing could repair it. Not even an ocean of love for her younger daughter.

  She gripped the rails on Hayley’s bed and raised her voice. “Baby, Mommy’s here . . . it’s okay.”

  More crying, more head turning.

  “Sweetheart, I love you.” She stood and moved her face closer to Hayley’s. “Everything’s okay. Jesus is with you . . . he’s going to make you better.”

  The pattern of her daughter’s wailing stayed the same. Over and over and over again. Deep sorrowful monotone wails, and finally something inside Brooke snapped. As long as Hayley didn’t recognize her voice, she couldn’t do anything to help. Couldn’t be a mother to her own daughter.

  And in that moment Brooke’s adrenaline and panic turned to nausea.

  She gritted her teeth. Enough. She couldn’t stand there while Hayley was suffering, couldn’t take another moment of it. A way had to exist for her to mother her daughter, and somehow, someway, Brooke would find it. Without considering protocol or Dr. Martinez’s assurance that nothing would help her daughter, Brooke released the lock on the bed rail. She eased it down and then climbed carefully into bed beside Hayley and propped herself up against the headboard.

  Then she worked her hands beneath her small daughter and lifted her into her arms. Brooke fought the urge to recoil, because the moment her daughter was completely and fully in her arms, Brooke realized something. The stiffness wasn’t only in Hayley’s hands and feet.

  It was throughout her entire body.

  Hayley had always been more clingy, more willing than Maddie to cuddle with Brooke. Maddie was the independent one, the daughter who would give Brooke a quick hug, then be on her way. But now Hayley fought Brooke’s embrace, pushed against it and stiffened in a way that left Brooke unsure about whether she’d survive the pain.

  “Hayley, it’s me, Mommy.” Brooke lowered her mouth to Hayley’s temple, inches from her daughter’s ear. “Hayley, I’m here, honey . . . I’m here.”

  Brooke hadn’t cried much since the accident.

  She was a professional, after all. Someone trained to think with her head, not her heart. But with Hayley unwilling, unable to respond to Brooke’s arms around her, the tears came like streams. Quietly and without the sobbing some parents showed in emergency rooms, Brooke wept over Hayley, wept for all the missing parts and for the uncertainty of whether she’d ever be whole again.

  “Baby . . . shhh. Hayley, it’s Mommy.” She hugged her daughter to her chest and whispered the words as often as she could, as often as her strength would allow.

  If only Peter had watched her, if he’d stayed with the girls until she got back . . .

  Hayley’s blonde hair was matted to her head. Brooke brought her knees up so Hayley wouldn’t roll out of her arms back onto the bed. Clutching h
er tighter than before, Brooke worked her fingers through her daughter’s hair, the way she’d done a hundred times before. “Hayley . . . I’m here. Mommy’s here.”

  And that’s when it happened.

  Suddenly Hayley stopped crying. For the first time since she’d woken up earlier that day, she was neither sleeping nor crying. Brooke’s breath caught in her throat, and in the shock of what was happening she stopped running her fingers through Hayley’s hair. Almost at the same time, Hayley began crying again, wailing that constant, sickly slow cry that sounded not even remotely familiar.

  Brooke drew short, shallow breaths, desperate to find her way back to that place where for the fraction of a moment, Hayley recognized her voice.

  She knew. I know she did, God. Let her remember again, please. . . .

  No audible response came, but the moment she finished praying, she knew the answer. It was Hayley’s hair. The touch of Brooke’s fingers in her hair had pierced the darkness and caused her to remember. Even for just a few seconds.

  Trembling with the possibility, Brooke gathered herself into a straighter sitting position and cradled Hayley closer than before. Once more using her legs to brace Hayley’s body, Brooke worked her fingers slowly and carefully through her daughter’s knotted blonde hair.

  And once again her crying stopped.

  Hayley’s mouth hung open, and her eyes held the vacant stare of someone who couldn’t see. She still turned her head from side to side, but she was connecting. Somewhere deep inside her brain, she was feeling a bond with Brooke.

  A dryness filled Brooke’s throat. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Brooke had always run her fingers through Hayley’s hair. Whenever the child couldn’t sleep or if she’d had a bad dream, Brooke would sit at the side of her bed and play with her hair until she was sleeping once more.

  She sniffed and found her voice. “That’s right, baby. You always loved this.” Brooke felt a smile lift the corners of her mouth, because for the first time since Hayley’s accident, the panic and fear and nausea were gone. As awkward as it felt sitting on the hospital bed, holding her stiffened daughter, Brooke was doing the only thing that in this new season of life held any meaning whatsoever.