My parents stood somewhere behind me, but I hadn’t looked at them since the baptism ended. I heard my mom give a little whimpering cry, but I refused to let it set me off. I didn’t want to weep the entire time I held my baby, the only time I held him. That didn’t seem fair. There should be something happy in his life.
The nurse walked to me slowly, letting the tubes shift. Angilee kept them aloft. When they lowered Finn to my lap, I didn’t know exactly how to hold him. He wasn’t like the practice dolls from class, but warm and soft. The nurse laid his head in the bend of my elbow, and I adjusted naturally, lifting that arm slightly and bringing my free hand under his back.
“Perfect,” the nurse said and arranged the ventilator so that the hoses weren’t bent or crimped.
Finn was so much lighter than I’d imagined. He was four pounds at birth, but then he lost some, then he swelled with water weight the last day or two. He had downy hair at his crown, and his little ears lay perfectly flat.
Gavin came around and knelt beside me, cupping his palm at the top of Finn’s head. “He has your nose,” he said.
“I think it’s yours,” I said.
My dad came around and snapped a picture of us, but we didn’t look up, or smile, or try to make this a normal image. There was no way to make anything that was happening seem normal.
“Can I have a turn?” my mom asked, and I looked up at the nurse.
“Of course,” she said and looked to me. “You want to give everyone a chance before we go on?”
I nodded. More time. I wanted all the clocks to stop, for this moment to last as long as possible, even though the pain was excruciating, a tightness in my chest and throat, my head pounding, my jaw aching from trying not to cry. Still, I would take it to keep looking at Finn.
I lifted him a little, and the nurse took him back. Mom and I traded places, and she sat with him for a minute, rocking and humming some little song I remembered from when I was small. After a moment she started sobbing super hard, and the nurse took Finn. My dad sat with him a moment, and then we all looked at Gavin.
At first he shook his head, but my distressed expression must have changed his mind, because he sat in the chair. Of all the moments that were hard, seeing him there, his dark head bent over Finn’s, was the one I thought might break me. I felt light, like I could float, and only when my vision started to go gray did I realize I had to pull myself together. I breathed in several rapid deep inhales and forced myself to calm.
The nurse took the baby from Gavin and said to me, “Corabelle, it’s time.”
Gavin moved out of the way, and I took my place back in the rocker. I accepted Finn, letting his little bottom rest in my lap. The nurse slipped a pillow under him to steady us and bent over him. “First I’ll just remove the adhesive.”
She used a bit of damp cotton that smelled sharply of chemicals to loosen the sticky tape. Finn’s mouth was red and misshapen beneath it. She pressed a wet cloth to it, surrounding the tube.
I couldn’t breathe. The only lifeline for Finn was loose and ready to come out. I wanted to look around the room, to remember everything, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from his face. My shoulder ached but I ignored it, keeping him still, fearful of moving and removing the tube by accident.
The nurse took the cloth away, and his mouth was soft again, pink rather than red. She looked up at Angilee, who nodded. “I’m going to take it out now,” the nurse said and pulled the tube away.
Angilee whisked away the hosing, and I looked down at Finn for the first time without anything blocking my view. My mother whimpered beside me, and Gavin squeezed my shoulder. For the longest time, Finn didn’t move at all, then his belly moved out violently, and he sucked in a breath.
The nurse placed the disc of a stethoscope on his chest in several places. “Heart tones are still there.” She glanced up at Angilee. “Let’s get her a wheelchair.”
“Where is she going?” Gavin asked.
“We have a private room for you,” the nurse said.
I couldn’t stop looking at Finn. I touched his nose and lips and ears and chin. I pushed the blanket aside to run my fingers down his little chest and belly, places that had always been a mass of wire and adhesive.
“Let’s move you into this.” Angilee guided me from the rocker to the wheelchair. “You all can come.”
Dad clicked images as we moved through the ward. I didn’t take my eyes off Finn. His belly still moved a little, not as violently as before, and this reassured me. I imagined that somehow they were wrong, completely wrong, and that he’d keep breathing, start growing, and soon we’d be in our car and speeding home to put him in his crib.
Angilee pushed me out of the NICU and down a short hall. The other nurse opened the door, revealing a room with a normal bed like you’d find at home, covered in a soft blue bedspread. A normal sofa rested against the far wall, and a table held plates beneath silver covers, like at a hotel.
Angilee pushed the wheelchair over to the bed. “You can sit wherever you like,” she said.
I stood and turned to the bed, then realized I couldn’t easily get on it while holding the baby. “Gavin, take him for a second.” I passed him over, thinking this might have been the most natural thing in the world, handing the baby to his father, if it had been any other time.
I crawled across the bed to sit against the headboard. “Okay, I’m ready for him back.”
Gavin returned him to my arms and climbed on the bed next to me.
Angilee lifted a red remote from a side table. “Call us if you need us,” she said. “We’ll check in every fifteen minutes or so.”
My parents settled on the sofa. “I guess it’s just a matter of time now,” my dad said.
I laid my hand on Finn’s belly, feeling that motion, noticing that the space between the breaths had already grown longer. Gavin put his hand on top of mine, and for a moment, we could have been any new parents, looking down at our son, marveling at how he was made, how he breathed, how sweetly he slept.
I wished that he would open his eyes, just once. But he hadn’t, and wouldn’t.
His belly gurgled and I had to smile, but when the brief happier feeling passed, grief overwhelmed me so fast that I couldn’t hold the tears back. My body had found more, an ocean of them, and I leaned back so they wouldn’t fall on Finn’s face.
His belly stopped moving, and I panicked, thinking it was already done. I wanted to call the nurses, tell them to resuscitate him. My head clanged with alarm bells, warnings to help him, to do something. Gavin squeezed my arm and said, “Take it easy,” and I realized I was breathing very fast, as if I could somehow make the baby accept my oxygen.
Then his belly rose again. I didn’t know how much I could take. This was impossible. How was anyone supposed to make it through this?
“Let’s give the kids a moment,” my dad said. As much as I might want my own mother there, I felt relieved that he would let us be alone, to have just a little time to have Finn all to ourselves.
Mom started to protest, but Dad took her hands and lifted her to standing. She came over to us and kissed Finn’s head. “I love you, baby boy,” she said before covering her face with her handkerchief again.
When they were gone, I laid my head on Gavin’s shoulder. “Is there something we should say to him?” I asked. “Maybe something easy?”
“Anything you want.”
“We love you, Finn. We wish you could stay with us.” I picked up his hand and extended the fingers topped by tiny fragile fingernails. “Daddy would have taught you how to fix a carburetor.”