Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 23

Well, I made it through the day with just Patricia and me. And Natalie, of course. She did well, actually. I don’t think we had to suction her quite as much as usual. I wonder if that means her swallowing is finally improving. If she’s able to swallow her saliva, then one day she might be able to handle real food ...

I can’t get ahead of myself, though. Best to assume she’ll have that G-tube for the rest of her life. But days like this, it’s sometimes hard to remember my resolve. I held her for a while this afternoon while Patricia was out grocery shopping. That woman always complains we don’t have enough fresh fruits and veggies on hand. She doesn’t know we’re on food stamps because Jake’s too embarrassed to tell her, but the one good thing about Patricia bunking in with us is she buys most of the groceries. Otherwise, I don’t know how we’d afford the extra food. Not that she eats much. That woman is skinny as a flagpole and about as feminine.

Anyway, while Patricia was out, I was online for a little bit, but there wasn’t much for me to say, so I took Natalie out of the crib and held her for a while. She stayed awake for a full twenty minutes or so. I wasn’t watching the clock real close, but I think it’s the longest she’s gone. And that whole time she was with me, I didn’t have to turn on the suction machine once.

Hashtag blessed, right?

Part of me wanted to jump online right away and tell everyone how well she was doing, but another part of me wanted to keep it to myself. Something special just between my daughter and me.

My daughter. That’s so stinking weird.

Jake came home from his shift around two, and I think maybe once we’re in bed tonight I’ll tell him about Natalie’s good day, but right now he’s tired and kind of grumpy. That’s ok. He gets that way when he’s hungry. He probably went the whole shift without eating. He does that to save money, which I guess is nice on the one hand because we need every penny we can scrape up. But on the other hand, I’d rather him come home in a slightly better mood, so it’s something of a lose-lose.

Patricia’s setting lunch on the table right now, so at least I won’t have to put up with his bad attitude for long. I swear that boy gets hormonal when his blood sugar drops too low.

It’s funny because Patricia makes this big stink about eating together, to the point where if Jake doesn’t get off work until eight or nine at night she’ll actually hold dinner until then. But it’s not like we’re this big happy family feasting around the table and sharing our deepest thoughts or even talking about our days. Mealtimes are quiet. Patricia will sometimes offer some sort of unsolicited advice she picked up from her heroic efforts raising twins without a living soul in the universe to help her out, but other than that we don’t really say anything.

Now that I’ve met Patricia, I feel like I understand Jake better. Why he’s so quiet. It used to trip me out back in the NICU. We’d eat dinner together every night before he’d head back to the Ronald McDonald house and play Candy Zapper on his phone and I’d return to the NICU to talk to the night nurses as they were starting their shifts. We’d sometimes go an entire meal without saying anything more than, “You ready?” when we were done.

I asked him about it once, asked him why he was so quiet. I had just said goodbye to Sandy the day before, and if there’s one woman who doesn’t know how to eat a meal without yakking someone’s ear off, it’s her. I think that’s why I noticed how silent Jake was in comparison.

“Just thinking,” was all he said, and I wanted him to tell me more. Don’t ask me what I was expecting. Some sort of big share-fest where he’d reveal all the things he was afraid of and I’d tell him all the things I was sorry for but hadn’t found the guts to bring up yet. And we’d cry because we were both so relieved to get certain things out in the open, and then I’d hug him and tell him how glad I was he came to be with me in Seattle because once Sandy left, I realized even more pointedly how much it would suck to be out there totally alone.

But I kept chomping on my fries, and he kept poking at his Jell-O, and neither of us said anything until we were finished eating and I asked, “Ready to go?”

And that was it.

I used to think it’d be so romantic to fall in love with a perfect stranger. To trust those emotions so well that even if you didn’t know his name you could look at him and be convinced that he was the one for you. It sounds sweet and dreamy, but what you don’t think about is how lonely it is to fall in love — or at least think you’ve fallen in love — with someone you know, only to find out months later that you’re nothing but strangers.