Forever Innocent
Page 54

She lifted her head. “What?”
“The funeral. If I could go back in time, I’d stay. I would be there for you.” And not go to Mexico, I added to myself. That was worse.
“I don’t know what all I would change,” Corabelle said. “There are so many things.”
“Like what?”
She got still again, so I waited. The North Star was visible among the others, bright and almost twinkling.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t want Finn. That wouldn’t be right,” she said. “He had his little life.”
Until I signed it away. My whole body tensed, but I forced it to relax again. No point going there.
She wanted to talk about him. I could do that, for her. “I was so panicked when you told me your water broke. But you did great.”
“I wasn’t screaming like the lady in the next room.”
“Man, she had some lungs.”
Corabelle turned onto her back. “You got to see him first.”
“I was closer to that end.”
She punched me in the ribs. “I didn’t want you to look.”
“My kid was going to come out. It’s not like I hadn’t seen those parts before!”
“But they were all gooey and bloody.”
“True. I wasn’t thinking of licking them or anything.”
She smacked me again. “Gavin!”
“He slid out pretty easy, really.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Well, it looked easy. His little head started to pop out, then everything sort of stopped for a second. I was a little confused, because he was all white.”
“It’s called vernix.”
“It was not what I expected. I almost dropped the camera. He looked like a snow baby.”
“I didn’t really get to see that.”
“They cleaned him off pretty quick, got the worst of it.”
“They took him away so fast.”
Because he was sick, I thought, but didn’t say it. Corabelle turned in to me again, her head on my chest, rising and falling with my every breath.
I knew the doctors were tense about it. They were supposed to let Corabelle hold the baby, but instead they got him cleaned up and into a plastic bed right away. We only got a few minutes with him before they rolled him down to the NICU.
I stayed with her a little while, so she wouldn’t feel deserted, but when her parents came in, I took off down the hall to see when we would get him back. I didn’t know how anything worked. We hadn’t even finished birthing classes when she went into labor. The doctor on call wasn’t ours and said we should probably go to a bigger hospital, but then the baby just started coming.
At first the nurse at the window didn’t want to let me into the NICU. They didn’t know who I was and Finn had Corabelle’s last name taped to his bed. Apparently I was supposed to have some wristband.
Finally one of the nurses recognized me and let me through. I wanted to go over to him right away, but she made me stand at a sink and scrub my hands and arms and even use a little pick under my fingernails before I could go into the area where the beds were.
I couldn’t even see him. He was surrounded by doctors and nurses. When I finally got a glimpse, I could only see his little hat, a stretchy thing with white and blue stripes. He hadn’t cried, I realized. Babies were supposed to cry when they were born.
The nurse who let me in made a space for me in the circle around the plastic crib and tried to explain what they were doing as they attached disks and put something down his throat. But I couldn’t follow her, and I couldn’t stay calm. Finn looked terrible, things stuck to his head and a giant tube taped to his mouth. The sounds of the machine were awful, like a helicopter flying.
The nurse gave me a card with his weight and measurements to take back to Corabelle. Despite my horror at everything, I didn’t want to leave. The NICU was strewn with rocking chairs between the plastic incubators. This row was completely empty, so I sat in one to wait.
I heard a lot of words I didn’t know. I could tell they were worried about oxygen levels and his heart. When several of the doctors moved away and I could see Finn again, terror washed over me. He wasn’t pink like before. He was gray. Was he dying right there?
I jumped up and grabbed one of the nurses in pink scrubs. “This is my son. What is happening to him?”
Another woman, this one with a doctor badge, took my shoulder and pulled me out of the way. Another team arrived and began working frenetically, packing up the machines like they were going to move him. “We’ll have a meeting with you and the baby’s mother shortly.”
“But I’m standing here now!”
She barely even looked at me, checking things off some damn piece of paper. “We are taking him to do some more tests, mainly pictures of his heart and lungs. I can’t give you a conclusive answer to what the baby is facing right now, but I promise you, we will come down and talk to you as soon as we can.”
I wanted to snatch the folder from her. “Finn! His name is Finn! Why are you putting tubes on him?”
“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.”