Forever Innocent (22 page)

“His first Apgar scores were low, at four, and now Finn has dropped to a three.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a measure of the health of a newborn baby. Ten is the highest.” She glanced over at the team, who were now moving the bed out of the room. “Was anything wrong at any of the sonograms?”

I ran my hands through my hair, panic rising fast. “No, he was always healthy, always fine. Until he came early.”

She nodded and flipped through the chart again. “Go see to the mother. We’ll be there soon.” She gave me a smile, like that would be reassuring, and said, “Try not to worry.” Then she tugged her phone out of her pocket, clicked on something, and walked away.

“Her name is Corabelle,” I tried to say, but the doctor was already gone.

I stood rooted to the floor, unable to move. On the other aisle, a few women sat by more plastic beds. One of them looked at me sympathetically, and I couldn’t stand it.

The pink-scrubs nurse came back in. “Mr. Mays? Let’s go back to your room. There isn’t anything you can do for Finn here.”

“How long will he be gone?”

“Probably a while.”

“Is he going to die?”

She led me back to the sliding doors. “We’re going to do everything we can.”

I was kicked out. The hallway morphed into a horrifying wall of mirrors, every room decorated with pink or blue ribbons announcing the birth of happy, healthy babies. Mine could be fighting for his life right now, dying, or dead, and I wouldn’t even know.

I gripped the front of my shirt, so overwhelmed with fear that I thought I was having a heart attack. My chest was tight and I could barely breathe. I leaned against the wall. Corabelle was probably all snug in her bed, happy and waiting for them to bring Finn back. What would I tell her?

My lungs sucked in air and I forced myself to be calm. She was going to need me, and I couldn’t let her down.

Corabelle had known the minute I walked back into her room that something was wrong. “Where’s Finn?”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “They’ve taken him for some tests.”

“What kind of tests?” Corabelle’s dad asked.

“Pictures of his heart and lungs. He’s having some trouble with his oxygen levels, I think.”

“I’m going to go see what is going on,” he said.

“You need some sort of wristband to get into the NICU.” I held up my empty arm.

“I’ll get that taken care of.” He strode from the room.

Maybe they would take him more seriously than a teenage boy. Corabelle was sobbing in a way I’d never seen her do, great heaving gulps.

“Oh, baby,” her mom said, “it’s the hormones. After I had you I cried for hours a day. It’ll get better.”

I wasn’t so sure. The sides of the bed kept me from crawling in next to her like I wanted, so I just perched on the end, my hand on her ankle. “They asked about the sonogram. There wasn’t anything wrong, was there? I don’t remember it.”

“We just had two,” Corabelle said, clutching the tissue her mom handed her. “They didn’t say anything about a problem. They said he was fine.”

The wait was excruciating. Corabelle cried herself to sleep. I moved to a chair in the corner. Her mother sat on the foam sofa that converted to a bed. Her father returned after a while, shaking his head. “I couldn’t get anything out of anybody, other than I can’t see him right now.” He glanced over at me. “I had to tell them you two were married. Otherwise Gavin doesn’t have any part in this. I didn’t know that.”

I swallowed and glanced at Corabelle. She hadn’t been wearing her ring when we left for the hospital, so she didn’t have it now.

Her father sat on the sofa. “We just have to wait.”

Corabelle’s mother buried her face against his shoulder. “I should have been in here when he was born,” she said. “We should have gotten here faster.”

“That wouldn’t have made a difference,” her father said.

“But I would have gotten to see him!” She brought a handkerchief to her nose. “What if something happens?”

“You’ll get to see him.” He put his arm around her, and I envied his ability to pull her close. Corabelle seemed so far away.

A nurse came in and Corabelle’s dad and I both stood up.

“I’m here to check on Mom,” she said.

“What about the baby?” I asked.

She frowned. “He’s in the NICU.”

“They took him out.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.” She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Corabelle’s arm. As it inflated, Corabelle stirred.

“Where’s Finn?” she asked.

The woman waited for the machine to beep. “I’m going to find out just as soon as we check this.” She placed a gadget in Corabelle’s ear. “You’re looking good. Any pain?”

Corabelle shook her head. “I just want to know about Finn.”

The nurse hustled out, but she didn’t return that hour, or the next. I finally wrestled with the hospital bed and lowered the side so I could get close to Corabelle.

“It’s almost midnight,” Corabelle’s dad said. “I don’t think we’ll get any news tonight.”

“I don’t want to go home,” her mother said.

“We’ll see where we are in the morning,” he said firmly. “We’ll be back first thing.”

Her mother leaned in to kiss Corabelle on the forehead. “Stay strong, honey.” She squeezed my arm. “Take care of her.”

When they were gone, Corabelle started sobbing again. “Why won’t they tell us anything? This is horrible.”

“I’m going back to the NICU. They have to know something.”

She clutched my hand, and I wished I’d gone before her parents left. I’d be leaving her alone. “Kiss him for me,” she said.

I nodded, but based on how they acted earlier, I wasn’t going to get within touching distance.

When I got back to the NICU entrance, the stern woman had been replaced by a friendlier-looking nurse. “I’m Finn Rotheford’s father,” I said.

“Do you have your things together?”

I washed over with fear. “What do you mean?”

She glanced the clock. “They should be transferring you to El Paso as soon as the ambulance is prepped.”

“No one told us.” My head started pounding, my heart trying to explode. “Why are we going there?”

“They have an NICU better able to handle your baby’s needs.”

I slammed my hands against the window. “Nobody has told us what those needs are!”

“Let me see who is available.” She picked up a phone and spoke into it so quietly I couldn’t hear. “I’ve paged the doctor to your room. You can meet him there.”

I raced down the hallway, but when I arrived, several people were already there.

“Gavin?” Corabelle cried. “They’re moving Finn!”

“I know!”

A tall man with buzzed gray hair held out his hand. “I’m Dr. Fletcher. I’m coordinating the transfer of your baby to a unit in El Paso.”

“Why are we going there?”

The doctor perched on a stool at Corabelle’s feet. “Your baby has a very serious condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. We first suspected a heart problem when we listened to his heart tones right after birth. The attending obstetrician was on top of it, which was why Finn was taken so quickly to be checked. The first few hours are very important.”

I moved to Corabelle’s side to hold her hand, for her or for me, I wasn’t sure. She wasn’t crying right then, just listening, her brown eyes wide and full of fear.

“We did some imaging of Finn’s heart and confirmed the defect. Unfortunately, this hospital is not prepared to manage the care of a baby in this condition. He’ll need a heart specialist and a surgeon, possibly within the next 24 hours.”

Corabelle sobbed then, and I gripped her hand hard. “What will happen?” I asked.

“He’ll be assessed on his ability to withstand the surgery. Then you will be given choices about going forward with the surgery or choosing palliative care.”

“You mean watching him die?” Corabelle’s voice was strained and choked.

“The team there is very good. They will do everything they can.”

“Why haven’t we already gone?” Corabelle asked. “Finn’s been here for hours.”

The doctor glanced at one of the nurses. “We had to stabilize him to survive the trip. He’s in very critical condition.”

“Oh my God,” Corabelle said. “He could die any minute?”

“His heart is not very strong. The left side is barely functional. We’ve left the ductus arteriosus open, a vessel that connects the two parts of the heart, one that normally closes at birth. This way we can keep Finn’s heart working until surgery. But it will have to happen within a few days.”

“Or what?” I asked.

“He’ll eventually go into cardiac arrest. But that is the same risk if we do close it. This gives us time to work on his heart.”

My blood was pounding in my ears so hard that I wasn’t sure I could hear anymore. I looked at Corabelle, ghostly white against her pillow. She took several rapid breaths, then sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed. “I have to get dressed.”

“You can’t leave yet. You just had the baby!” I said.

“I’m not staying here while they take Finn away!” She limped to the sofa, where her duffel bag waited, and started jerking clothes out of it.

“Can she do that? Can she go?”

The doctor looked at the nurses. “When will she get discharged?”

“Tomorrow at the earliest. Possibly another day,” one said. “She’s only six hours postpartum.”

Corabelle whirled around. “I’m walking out of here whether you sign a paper or not.”

The doctor nodded. “Did everything go normally for her?”

The nurse picked up her chart. “I didn’t attend, but everything here looks clear.”

“Let her go. Inform her OB.”

Tears streaked Corabelle’s face. “Thank you.” She turned to me. “Help me dress.”

Another nurse came in. “They are ready to transfer.”

“Never mind,” Corabelle said. She stuck her feet in her shoes. “I’m going like this.” She shoved her bag at me. “I’m riding with the baby.”

“Get her a wheelchair,” the doctor said. “Take her down.”

Once we got to the hospital, Corabelle started checking out books and making sure she understood every term. We were given a room at the Ronald McDonald House, and she printed out internet searches, peppering the doctors with questions whenever anyone made rounds.

Finn was enclosed in a clear incubator. We could snake our hands through round openings on the side and touch his hands and head wherever the wires weren’t taped. Corabelle kept a vigil, standing by him as much as she could, or sitting in one of the rockers that seemed to be a staple in NICU wards.

The room was never silent, but whirred and buzzed with alarms and machines. On the first day, I thought I would go mad with it, but eventually I learned to cope. We had nothing to do but this, no school, no job, just be there for Finn, to sit in the ward, watch them run the tests or wheel him out when he had to be assessed on some other floor.

The journey had been hard on him, and at the new hospital we saw the nurses come over to him when he had something called apnea, where he stopped breathing. Apparently during one of the nights we weren’t there, they had to do CPR to restart his heart. We were waiting for some definitive word, and we talked to so many doctors, from normal baby doctors to heart specialists. It seemed every time they made a decision, something would happen to Finn, and they would want to assess him again.

Corabelle’s mom tried to convince us to go home for prom, to try to enjoy a night out. Corabelle had a fit. “How can you even suggest that, when Finn is so ill?”

The last time we saw the neonatologist, on the morning of prom, he said the surgeon would be meeting with us. “Why hasn’t he already had surgery?” Corabelle demanded, shoving a printout in the man’s face. “Five days is the recommended maximum to keep the ductus open. It’s been seven!”

I could see what Corabelle couldn’t. The man’s face was a mask of professionalism, of detachment. They’d given up on Finn, but they hadn’t told us yet. I couldn’t bring myself to say this to Corabelle, even though I knew.

Her phone had been blowing up with messages all day. Everyone seemed to think that since Finn was okay all week, he’d be okay for the night. Several of Corabelle’s friends sided with her mother, telling her to get back home and attend her prom.

“They don’t get it.” Corabelle threw her phone in her purse. “We can’t go dance and laugh and have our pictures made. This is our whole life.” She pressed on her swollen breasts. “Besides, I can’t exactly pump milk in the middle of the crowning of the king and queen.”

I sat on the floor of the NICU, leaning back against the seat of her rocking chair, her knees on either side of my shoulders. My arms wound around her legs. I didn’t know how anybody did this long-term, just waited. Corabelle had talked to some of the other mothers, but their babies were all doing well, growing and getting better. She couldn’t bear it any more than seeing the curtains get wrapped around a family and a bed, rolled along a track to hide their tragedy from the other occupants of the ward. Two babies had died in the week we’d been there, and both times Corabelle had sobbed half the night.

Our favorite NICU nurse, Angilee, came and got us for the last meeting with the doctors, her face somber. Unlike the other times, when they talked to us in the ward or the hallways or the waiting rooms, this time we were led to a conference room with a large table and rolling chairs.

A nurse brought in a cart with a computer on it inside the room. Inside was one of the NICU doctors who talked to us every day, plus two other new ones, a man and a woman. They stood when we walked in.

My senses immediately went on alert. This was too formal. Something bad was about to go down. At the last minute another woman rushed in, dressed in regular clothes.

I don’t remember everything they said. They showed us an MRI of Finn’s brain they’d done during the night. They talked about lack of oxygen and mental activity, about what sort of life he might lead even with surgery.

Corabelle demanded to know why surgery hadn’t happened yet, more force in her voice than I’d ever seen. I remember staring at the image of a brain, all strange colors like they’d dyed it with Kool-Aid. Then Corabelle was standing up, shouting, and I pulled on her, tried to bring her down. “They want us to take out the tubes,” she said to me. “Don’t just sit there and let them take out the tubes.”