Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6

Natalie came home from Seattle and got put on an apnea monitor. Makes this horrible, piercing siren noise whenever it can’t detect her breathing. Usually it’s false alarms. It hardly wakes me up anymore, especially now that Patricia has moved the air mattress into the nursery. She says it’s because I need to catch up on my sleep, but by the tone in her voice, I know what she means is I’m a lazy, no good baby mommy that her son had the unfortunate opportunity to knock up.

I’m going to talk to Dr. Bell about it this week, actually. Not Patricia, of course — the apnea monitor. Jake and I already signed one of those DNR forms that says we don’t want heroic measures, you know, when the kid needs CPR or something. The neurologist and the pulmonary specialist were all for it, the lung guy in particular. Since Natalie can’t even swallow her saliva, it’s only a matter of time before all the germs in her mouth make their way into her lungs. So if she doesn’t die from choking, it’ll be the pneumonia that does her in. Jake and I both agreed. We didn’t even fight about it. The way the doctor put it, we knew we were doing the right thing. For Natalie, I mean. That was before we left Seattle, before Patricia moved in. She doesn’t know about the DNR, and frankly it’s none of her business. I shouldn’t feel guilty for signing it, shouldn’t feel like I’m just abandoning Natalie because she’s too hard to take care of. That’s not the kind of mom I am. The kind of mom who ditches an unwanted baby in a bathroom trash can.

It’s for the best. I know it is. And whenever I start to doubt myself, I remember what that neurologist said, that even if we prolong her life, the chance of Natalie being anything more than a vegetable is ridiculously low. I appreciate the way he didn’t mince words. Didn’t feed us false hope. Just sat us down and gave it to us straight.

Dr. Bell, the pediatrician here in Orchard Grove, she’s the only one who thinks we should wait, give Natalie more time to develop before making up our minds about the DNR. She’s the one who gave us the apnea monitor, and that’s what I need to talk to her about when we go in to see her Wednesday. Because it’s completely unnecessary if you think about it. Let’s say the monitor goes off, and let’s say it’s a real event, not a false alarm. Then what? We don’t start CPR. That’s the whole point of those forms we signed. We could call the ambulance, but what are they going to do? Stand around singing Kumbaya while they watch her turn blue and then that horrid shade of gray? Think about it for a minute. If your kid’s going to die in the middle of the night, do you want the bells and whistles going off just so you’ll be awake for it? Wouldn’t you rather just get up in the morning after a long night’s rest and find out that ...

Never mind. I wonder how long that granny lady’s going to keep up her Holy Spirit babble. She’s quoting Scripture now, at least I assume it’s Scripture. I don’t know. Maybe she’s just ad-libbing. The pastor’s standing off to the side with this awkward look on his face that makes me want to chuckle. You can tell he doesn’t know quite what to do. If Grandma Lucy weren’t a relative, I’m sure he would have found a way to seize control of the mic by now. That’s just the kind of man he seems to be, the kind who takes charge. Doesn’t waffle.

Not like Jake. I swear, that boy can never make up his mind about anything, especially now that Mama’s around to do all his thinking for him. Even in the NICU, Jake’s whole doctor knows best attitude drove me batty. I mean, picture this. Our baby was only three weeks old and just a few hours out of surgery where they put a tube right into her stomach so they didn’t have to feed her through her nose anymore. And my old foster mom Sandy was there for moral support, flew all the way from Boston to Seattle to be with me. So she and I were having lunch together in the cafeteria while Jake stayed with the baby. And right in the middle of our coffee, he texted and said something like, I think she’s in pain. I mean, he was right there, probably all of two feet away from the nurse, and he was texting me about it.

So I told him to tell somebody Natalie needed pain meds. I didn’t think anything else about it until later in the evening when I went over to see her myself. She didn’t cry (still doesn’t, actually), but she was obviously uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you be if someone sliced a four-inch hole in your abdomen and stitched a tube to the inside of your stomach?

I told the nurse, “I thought you guys gave her more pain meds,” and she said no, the morphine was giving her problems. Natalie couldn’t keep her oxygen levels up, so she could only have Tylenol.

Tylenol? I got stronger stuff when I got a tooth pulled.

“Ok,” I said, “how long has it been since her last dose?” And the nurse looked at her chart and told me five hours. I freaked out. After getting Natalie what she needed, I stormed to Jake and demanded to know why in the world he hadn’t gotten our daughter the pain meds like I told him to. He shrugged and said, “The nurse said she could only have it every six hours.”

You know what gets me totally insane with anger? Not the fact that the doctors were so stupid they put a tiny baby on nothing but Tylenol immediately after a major surgery like that. Doctors are imbeciles. They have no idea how to tell if a baby’s in real pain or not, especially with kids like Natalie who don’t cry.

No, what gets me the most — I’m fuming now just thinking about it — is the way Jake let them do their thing, didn’t ask a single question. When I called him out on it, he got this annoying whine in his voice and asked, “Well, what did you expect me to do?”

So I told him exactly what I expected him to do. March to the charge nurse like I did, ask for more effective pain management, and when she didn’t take me seriously, demand to speak to the doctor. Wham bam, fifteen minutes later our baby’s back on morphine. And guess what? Her oxygen levels held just fine.

Six hours my butt. I wonder how Jake would feel if he ever gets himself fixed down there and all he can take afterwards is a single dose of Tylenol every six hours.

The really pathetic part is when we had that big argument, it was exactly a year from our very first date.

Happy anniversary, darling.