Forever Innocent (23 page)

One of the doctors turned to me. “Finn is almost completely dependent on the ventilator now. Instead of growing stronger for surgery, he’s weakened. There really isn’t any hope for a recovery.”

“So you get to decide?” I asked. “You make the choice about whether he lives or dies?”

The doctor looked over at the others. “It’s come down to how long this will go on.”

“But you’re supposed to fix his heart,” Corabelle said, her face doused in tears. “You were supposed to do surgery.”

“It’s a complex surgery,” one of the other doctors said. “We don’t think the prognosis in this case is good enough to attempt it.”

“So you’re saying no?” Corabelle said. “Is that what you’re saying? No surgery? No chance?”

The woman spoke up then. “No decision of this magnitude is ever made by one person.”

Corabelle sagged in her chair, dropping her head to the table.

The first doctor stood. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said.

I wanted to punch him. It hadn’t even happened yet. Finn was still in there, breathing along with a machine, his heartbeats still registering on the monitors. He wasn’t lost. He was in there.

Corabelle ran from the room, back to the NICU. I wanted to follow her but the woman in regular clothes stopped me. “We have forms to be taken care of,” she said.

“What sort of forms?” I demanded.

The doctors filed out as she spread papers out on the table. “This is just to initiate measures to make the baby comfortable.”

“Comfortable how?”

“We’re shifting into a different kind of care now,” she said quietly.

“What if we don’t agree? What if we want another opinion?”

“Finn has been assessed by several doctors. But if you’d like to have a meeting with the hospital ethics committee, it can be scheduled.”

I sank back down in the chair. “Who are you again?”

“I’m Alice, the social worker.”

“So you see this sort of thing all the time?”

“This is part of my job, yes.”

“If Finn was your baby, would you do this?”

She sat in the chair next to me. “It’s hard to let go. Only you as Finn’s family can decide when you’re ready, when you feel you’ve exhausted all your options.”

“But they won’t do the surgery.”

She set down the pen. “They don’t feel it would be successful, and it is a difficult, painful, long surgery.”

I held my head in my hands, staring at the sheets of paper. Finn would be cut open, his heart sliced up, and all for nothing. That’s what they were saying.

I snatched up the pen, scrawling my name everywhere there was a flag. They’d already prepared all of this before the meeting, so anything we said wouldn’t have changed what happened. Even so, her words nagged at me.
Only you as Finn’s family can decide.

When the woman finally picked up the papers, I hurried after Corabelle. She was in the NICU, leaning over Finn’s bed, stroking his head. “We didn’t get much parenting in, did we?”

I came up behind her and put my arms around her waist. “We crammed in all we could.”

Finn’s chest rose and fell with the ventilator. I’d never gotten used to the sound, a choppy mechanical wheeze. A nurse arrived and shot something into his IV. “We’re giving him a stronger medication. He’ll rest very peacefully now.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but not long after that, I could see he had changed, his arms flatter against the bed, his legs very still. He was more than asleep now. He was out.

“What did they do to him?” Corabelle asked. She picked up his limp hand.

I knew they had sedated him, and that this was the beginning. “You should call your parents now,” I said. “They should be here.”

Corabelle fumbled with her phone. I knew I should probably call my mother, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She might bring my father, and I didn’t want him there.

The staff didn’t allow calls in the NICU, other than in emergencies, so Corabelle left the ward. I was alone with Finn, seeing the same things Corabelle had seen. He already seemed gone. The machine continued its helicopter sound. I tried to picture him somewhere else, asleep in the crib at home, the butterfly mobile fluttering above his head. He was healthy and fine, and if I wanted to, I could pick him up, stick him on my shoulder, and carry him around with me, warm and breathing and curled into my neck. I’d never held him. No one had. I wasn’t sure any of us would.

A nurse walked by, and I reached out to stop her. “So what happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

I could see she didn’t know what had been decided earlier that day. “When they turn all of this off.” I gestured vaguely at all the machinery.

Her eyes grew wide. “Let me get someone who is updated on Finn.” She stroke briskly away.

The nurse Angilee popped around the corner. “I’m so sorry, Gavin. Finn is such a beautiful little boy. You two can decide what time we remove the ventilator. We usually do it around eight in the evening, as that is a quiet time here. Does that give your family time to be here? Or do you want another time?”

I tried to answer her, but my mouth had gone completely dry. “I will ask Corabelle if eight works.”

She took my hand, her dark fingers surrounding mine. Her braids were tied together in an intricate weave, like a halo on her head. “Do you want to have Finn baptized?”

“I don’t know,” I croaked out. “I need to ask Corabelle. Our families aren’t very religious.”

She squeezed my hand. “Let me know. We have a chaplain here. I’ll just need some notice to make sure he can fit it in sometime today.”

“So what happens?”

“Well, first we’ll seat Corabelle in a chair, and then we’ll take off the monitor wires so we can move Finn out of the bed.” She pointed to the disks on his chest. “He’ll still be on the ventilator.” She let go of me and moved around the machines to point out the thick air tubes that led to his mouth.

“This we can move with him, and we’ll untape it. When you both are ready, we’ll take it out.”

I gripped the edge of the bed. “Will he die right away?”

“Not usually. He’ll breathe a little on his own for a little while. But he won’t be pumping enough oxygen.”

“He’s going to suffocate?”

Angilee came back around and rubbed my back. “We will not let Finn be in any pain whatsoever.”

“He’s sedated, isn’t he?”

“He has been since he was given the ventilator, for his safety.”

“But it’s more now.”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“He doesn’t feel anything?”

“Nothing at all.”

So he really was already gone. Anything we said to him, any touch we did. I had made that choice. I had signed the paper and now it was too late to even say good-bye.

“He’s still with us, Gavin. He’s still here.” She pulled a clipboard from the shelf above the machine and wrote his statistics on it.

“How long will it take, once he’s off?”

“That’s up to Finn. He’ll decide when he’s done.”

Corabelle came back, her eyes all red. “Mom wants him baptized. Can we do that?”

“Absolutely,” Angilee said. “Come here, child.” She wrapped Corabelle into a deep hug. “Is she going to ask her minister or should I get the chaplain here?”

“I guess someone here.”

“I’ll call him. He’ll come talk to you about it.” She pulled away from Corabelle and looked into her face. “So much to bear for someone so young.”

Corabelle started crying again, and Angilee walked her over to me. “I’ll be back. Someone will be with you pretty much from now until it’s time.”

Corabelle looked over to me. “When is it time?”

“Eight o’clock, unless we want to change it.”

She whipped around to look at the clock. “Eight more hours! Eight more hours!” Her legs seemed to give out, and I helped her to the rocking chair. “What can we do in eight hours?”

I didn’t have an answer for her.

“I have to read him a storybook!” Corabelle said, popping back out of the chair. “And sing him a nursery rhyme.” She walked up to the enclosed crib. “I have to teach him ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’” She looked up at me, and I knew I’d be haunted by her expression for a long time as she said, “We’re never going to take him to Disney World, are we?”

I stood next to her, wishing I were anywhere but there, but at the same time, that I would never have to leave.

Chapter 34: Corabelle

Gavin was awfully quiet on the rock as we lay beneath the stars. I nudged him finally. “Do you want a sandwich?” I asked him.

The half moon let out so little light that he was only a shadow in the almost complete blackness. “Maybe in a minute.” His voice sounded off.

“You okay?”

He didn’t answer, which I took to mean he wasn’t. “What is getting you?” I asked.

“Just remembering that last day.”

“The funeral?”

“No. With Finn.”

“Oh.”

“Remember Angilee, the nurse?”

“She was good,” I managed to get out.

“Once things got started, she didn’t leave us for a minute.”

“She must have worked past her shift.”

“I think so.”

“She got us that crazy chaplain.”

His belly moved beneath my hand, a gentle laugh. “He was something.”

“God bless this holy child! Alleluia!” I mimicked the animated speech of the minister, who’d made Finn’s baptism seem like a tent revival.

We both laughed halfheartedly. My mom had wanted the baptism, and I was glad we did it. We got pictures of him and could celebrate his one little life event. Mom brought a white lace bib to put over his chest and the wires, and a little satin hat.

For once I never wanted a prayer to end. The chaplain had arrived at 7:30, and I knew that as soon as the baptism ended, they’d start the process of disconnecting Finn. As the chaplain went on and on about suffering and salvation, I kept my eyes on the baby. He seemed so relaxed, so perfect, like a doll waiting for someone to pick him up to play.

Everyone murmured, “Amen,” and I snapped my head up to check the clock, the mental countdown still running. Ten more minutes with Finn.

The chaplain signed a certificate and gave it to my mom. He shook everyone’s hands, and I took my turn absently, unwilling to look away from Finn’s face.

Another nurse arrived, and Angilee began pulling the curtain around our space, closing off the view from the rest of the NICU. My belly started heaving, but I was too dehydrated to cry anymore. I finally understood what people meant when they said they didn’t have any tears left.

As the rest of the ward disappeared, the noises inside seemed louder, the endless ch-ch-ch sound of the ventilator. I couldn’t see the clock anymore.

“Corabelle, you sit here in the rocker,” Angilee said. “It’s time to hold your baby.”

I sank into the chair that had become so familiar to me that my body practically molded itself to it, a wooden frame softened with blue cushions tied to the base and the back.

The other nurse flipped several switches and the screen over Finn’s bed went dark. “Just the monitors,” she said. Through the curtains, I could hear the faint sounds of matching beeps of babies who were still being watched, babies who would one day go home.

Gavin stood behind me, hands on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure it was fair that I got to hold Finn. What if he died instantly? I looked up at him and tried to speak, but my throat was too dry. He gazed down at me with understanding, seemingly more worried about my welfare than that of Finn. I just accepted it and waited.

The nurses carefully removed the little discs on his chest. Finn didn’t flinch or move at all. He was so sedated. I wasn’t sure he’d even hear anything I had to say, or if he was even vaguely aware of anything I’d done that day — wash his little head with no-rinse shampoo, read him
Goodnight Moon
. I tried twice to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle,” but I couldn’t get past the first line.

Eventually they got him down to just the ventilator going into his mouth, the tubes snaking from a complicated connector up to a machine above. Angilee rolled a cart closer to me, holding the tubes in her hand. The other nurse picked Finn up from the bed and wrapped him in a blue blanket.

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.