“Is Willow all right?” Sean asked.
“Can we see her?”
“Soon,” the doctor said, and the knot inside me dissolved. “A chest X-ray confirmed a broken rib. She was hypoxemic for several minutes, which resulted in an expanding pneumothorax, a resultant mediastinal shift, and cardiopulmonary arrest.”
“English,” Sean roared. “For God’s sake.”
“She was without oxygen for a few minutes, Mr. O’Keefe. Her heart, trachea, and major vessels shifted to the opposite side of her body as a result of the air that filled her chest cavity. The chest tube will allow them to go back where they belong.”
“No oxygen,” Sean said, the words sticking in his throat. “You’re talking about brain damage.”
“It’s possible. We won’t know for a while.”
Sean leaned forward, his hands clasped so tight that the knuckles stood out in bright white relief. “But her heart…”
“She’s stable now-although there’s a possibility of another cardiovascular collapse. We’re just not sure how her body will react to what we’ve done to save her this time.”
I burst into tears. “I don’t want her to go through that again. I can’t let them do that to her, Sean.”
The doctor looked stricken. “You might want to consider a DNR. It’s a do not resuscitate order that’s kept in her medical file. It basically says that if something like this occurs again, you don’t want any extraordinary measures taken to revive Willow.”
I had spent the last few weeks of my pregnancy preparing myself for the worst, and as it turned out, it wasn’t anywhere close.
“Just something to think about,” the doctor said.
Maybe, Sean said, she wasn’t meant to be here with us. Maybe this is God’s will.
What about my will? I asked. I want her. I’ve wanted her all along.
He looked up at me, wounded. And you think I haven’t?
Through the window, I could see the slope of the hospital lawn, covered with dazzling snow. It was a knife-bright, blinding day; you never would have guessed that hours before there had been a raging blizzard. An enterprising father, trying to occupy his son, had taken a cafeteria tray outside. The boy was careening down the hill, whooping as a spray of snow arced out behind him. He stood up and waved toward the hospital, where someone must have been looking out from a window just like mine. I wondered if his mother was in the hospital, having another baby. If she was next door, even now, watching her son sled.
My daughter, I thought absently, will never be able to do that.
Piper held my hand tightly as we stared down at you in the NICU. The chest tube was still snaking out from between your battered ribs; bandages wrapped your arms and legs tight. I swayed a little on my feet. “Are you okay?” Piper asked.
“I’m not the one you need to worry about.” I looked up at her. “They asked if we wanted to sign a DNR.”
Piper’s eyes widened. “Who asked that?”
“Dr. Rhodes-”
“He’s a resident,” she said, as distastefully as if she’d said “He’s a Nazi.” “He doesn’t know the way to the cafeteria yet, much less the protocol for talking to a mother who’s just watched her baby suffer a full cardiac arrest in front of her eyes. No pediatrician would recommend a newborn be DNR before there was brain testing that proved irreversible damage-”
“They cut her open in front of me,” I said, my voice quivering. “I heard her ribs break when they tried to start her heart again.”
“Charlotte-”
“Would you sign one?”
When she didn’t answer, I walked to the other side of the bassinet, so that you were caught between us like a secret. “Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like?”
For a long time, Piper didn’t respond. We listened to the symphony of whirs and beeps that surrounded you. I watched you startle, your tiny toes curling up, your arms open wide. “Not the rest of your life,” Piper said. “Willow’s.”
Later that day, with Piper’s words ringing in my ears, I signed the do not resuscitate order. It was a plea for mercy in black and white, until you read between the lines: here was the first time I lied, and said that I wished you’d never been born.
I
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
– WALLACE STEGNER, THE SPECTATOR BIRD
Tempering: to heat slowly and gradually.
Most of the time when we talk about a temper, we mean a quickness to anger. In cooking, though, tempering is about making something stronger by taking your time. You temper eggs by adding a hot liquid in small increments. The idea is to raise their temperature without causing them to curdle. The result is a stirred custard that can be used as a dessert sauce or incorporated into a complex dessert.
Here’s something interesting: the consistency of the finished product has nothing to do with the type of liquid used to heat it. The more eggs you use, the thicker and richer the final product will be.
Or in other words, it’s the substance you’ve got when you start that determines the outcome.
2 cups whole milk
6 egg yolks at room temperature
5 ounces sugar
1½ ounces cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla
Bring the milk just to a boil in a nonreactive saucepan. In a stainless steel bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch. Temper the yolk mixture with milk. Put the milk and yolk mixture back on the heat, whisking constantly. When the mixture starts to thicken, whisk faster until it boils, then remove from heat. Add vanilla and pour into a stainless steel bowl. Sprinkle with a bit of sugar, and place plastic wrap directly on top of the crème. Put in fridge and chill before serving. This can be used as a filling for fruit tarts, napoleons, cream puffs, éclairs, et cetera.
Amelia
February 2007
My whole life, I’ve never been on a vacation. I’ve never even left New Hampshire, unless you count the time that I went with you and Mom to Nebraska-and even you have to admit that sitting in a hospital room for three days watching really old Tom and Jerry cartoons while you got tested at Shriners was nothing like going to a beach or to the Grand Canyon. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out that our family was planning to go to Disney World. We would go during February school vacation. We’d stay at a hotel that had a monorail running right through the middle of it.
Mom began to make a list of the rides we would go on. It’s a Small World, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Peter Pan’s Flight.
“Those are for babies,” I complained.
“Those are the ones that are safe,” she said.
“Space Mountain,” I suggested.
“Pirates of the Caribbean,” she answered.
“Great,” I yelled. “I get to go on the first vacation of my life, and I won’t even have any fun.” Then I stormed off to our room, and even though I wasn’t downstairs anymore, I could pretty much imagine what our parents were saying: There Amelia goes, being difficult again.