Orchard Grove Christian Women's Fiction Box Set (Books 1-3)

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

There’s something funny about those six weeks we spent in the NICU, because it was summer when Natalie was born and early fall when we left, and to this day I can’t keep track of the time of year. Just this week, I ran to Walmart to get some more diapers. I could have asked Jake to do it on his way home from work, but I needed an excuse to get out of the house. Away from his mom.

So I grabbed the cheap Walmart brand. Natalie’s still in a size zero, but I think she’ll be moving up in the next couple weeks. I can tell the ones she’s got are getting a little tight. I was checking them out — I think I’d picked up some noodles too, something Patricia needed for that night’s dinner — and the guy at the counter told me merry Christmas after I’d paid. And even though the whole store was flaunting those cheesy tinsel decorations and scrawny artificial trees (which I really shouldn’t knock because Jake and I don’t even have a tree set up, scrawny or not), I seriously was surprised that it was December. For some reason, my brain was still stuck in August. But that’s the other thing. Even though I thought it was August or maybe September at the earliest, I couldn’t have told you if that meant Christmas was coming up in a couple more months or if we’d just celebrated it a few weeks earlier. It’s such a disorienting feeling. I get it all the time, like I was in the hospital so long that something in my biological clock went haywire and that’s why I never know what day or month I’m in. Heck, I’d be happy if my brain could just keep me in the right season.

It doesn’t help that I’m stuck inside so much. We’ve gotten some snow, so you’d think it’d be pretty clear in my head we’re in winter, but even those visual cues don’t help. And Orchard Grove’s so ugly this time of year. The snow never sticks around long enough to look nice. I guess that’s one thing the East Coast has going for it, enough snow to actually cover everything, litter and dead tree limbs and all. Here, it’s just enough of a dusting to make things slushy for the week. You think of white when you think of Christmas weather, except out here it’s really more brown than anything else. Brown with a hint of gray.

The most wonderful time of the year.

Of course, when Natalie was born, it was still August, and I’m sure that’s why my brain’s all screwed up. It’s like I haven’t moved on since then, like I’m trapped in this eternal in-between zone. What’s that kids book where it’s always winter but never Christmas? That’s how I feel. Like even though we sang The First Noel before the pastor started preaching this morning, I’m still going to wake up on Christmas totally shocked to find myself in December. What happened to Labor Day? Halloween?

I remember Thanksgiving, but that’s only because Patricia was here and barricaded herself in the kitchen for the whole day, so I had to take over Natalie duty. Stand guard over her crib with that suction machine so every time she started to choke on her spit I could shove a tube down her throat and yank it all out. Man, that thing’s gross, how at the end of the day you’ve got to empty this canister that’s like three hundred cc’s of just drool and secretions. But without it, my baby can’t breathe, so that’s what we do.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out nice. Patricia’s not a bad cook, really, just a persnickety one. You know who she reminds me of? Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. I’m not joking. Because Rabbit always pretends to be helpful, but it’s just his excuse to be bossy, and even when he is actually doing good, he does it in such a cross, mean-spirited way.

I sigh, trying not to be too obvious. I hate that I think about Patricia all the time. Hate that my husband’s Mommy Fear has caught me, too. It’s like we tiptoe around her, him and me both. I almost think that’s why he hasn’t initiated anything in the bedroom yet. Like he’s afraid she’ll ground him or something.

I’m just glad I didn’t have to grow up in a home like that.

I’m staring now at the decorations around the church. You can tell someone took their time to make the sanctuary look nice. Not homey nice like you’d expect if you walked into a log cabin with a roaring fire and three or four generations plus all the aunts and uncles and cousins squished around the piano singing Silent Night. More like what you’d expect if you walked into a fancy Seattle department store. Like even out here in the middle of central Washington the church ladies paid someone to make the sanctuary look perfect. Even though you can appreciate the professionalism, you don’t quite get the feeling like you’re about to sit down and open presents with family.

Something about the pastor’s wife catches my eye, and I wonder what she thinks about Granny’s little microphone coup. Is she embarrassed? God knows I’d be. But maybe she’s like her grandma. Maybe she’s one of those holy rollers and doesn’t mind as much. She’s so young. Was I ever that little? I can’t believe I’m already talking like that, like my better days are all behind me. Are they? I sometimes wonder.

But things won’t always be this hard. Natalie’s either going to improve or she isn’t, and either way it’s going to get easier.

It has to get easier.

It’s funny. A lot of my friends, people my age, were surprised when I said I was keeping Jake’s baby. They knew we hadn’t been together that long. I was making ten dollars an hour changing Depends and soiled bed sheets, and he had his thirty-hour a week gig at the convenience store. Not the kind of income you’d expect for a family bringing a child into the world. It’s actually a good thing we didn’t make more money, though, because then we wouldn’t qualify for state insurance, and we’d be bankrupt ten times over before the year’s up.

As it is, we pay for Natalie’s diapers, and we pay for gas to get her to and from her doctor appointments. Everything else the state covers, even our stay in Seattle. It’s funny. I didn’t expect Jake to come out there. But then one afternoon I went to the Ronald McDonald House to pump, or “express my milk” as the nurses called it, and there he was, checking in at the front desk. Or at least getting ready to. We ended up sharing a room, which had its ups and downs for sure. I was on “pelvic rest” for the first month — that’s the actual medical term my OB used, so we couldn’t get too romantic or anything — but we sometimes cuddled at night and that part was pretty nice.

Now that I think about it, we were probably closer to each other there in Seattle than we’d been before. Certainly closer than we are now, although a lot of that has to do with the fact that Patricia is like the Christmas fruitcake that you can never get rid of. I was surprised Jake bothered coming out. At first I thought it was just because he was worried about Natalie. I’d known from the beginning he would make a good dad. But he didn’t even go to see her that first day. I think he was scared to, and I don’t blame him.

Jake thinks it’s weird I haven’t cried much since that code blue, but he doesn’t know about the first day. I’d started bleeding during the medevac flight to Seattle. I mean, of course I’d bleed, but this got sort of serious. Soaked right through a huge hospital-grade pad and the disposable undies the nurse had given me before I checked out. There were some pretty big clots, too, and the flight nurses were worried about me. So once we landed in Seattle, they whisked Natalie off to the NICU, and I had to get checked out by one of the OBs there. It was this drab-looking man, almost like that teacher guy from Ferris Beuller, you know, the guy with the monotone? He sort of talked like him too, and he was pretty upset that my OB back in Orchard Grove had discharged me so early. As if I would have let the flight crew take Natalie on that jet by herself. I guess there was a problem with my stitches, and I really wish the local doc had fixed that up before the epidural wore off, because ow.

But anyway, after that I had to go talk to all these people about paperwork and logistics, and I’d forgotten my bag at the Orchard Grove hospital. I mean, who would be thinking about that sort of thing? Well, it took a lot of phone calls to get all the numbers and stuff they needed to bill insurance, and by the time I was finally free to see Natalie it had been probably three or four hours.

So I walked to the NICU. I really needed a wheelchair or something, but I was too embarrassed to call that number they have on those courtesy phones. I mean, I’m young and healthy and don’t need someone to push me around. Except I overdid it that first day and had to go back to that Ferris Beuller guy the next morning. Thankfully he didn’t stitch me up again, just gave me better pain meds (which I took) and told me to take it easy (which was a pretty good laugh given my situation at the time).

Anyway, when I finally reached the NICU that first day, I felt like everything down there was about to fall right out. I mean, stitches or no stitches, I had just pushed a six-and-a-half-pound baby out a few hours earlier. I knew I was a mess from all that extra bleeding, but even though the nurse at the Seattle OB’s gave me a whole bag full of pads, there was nothing she could do about my pants. But I already told you I’d left my bag at the hospital in Orchard Grove, so what choice did I have? There’s a trick I learned growing up that if you feel out of place or intimidated, it’s best to pretend you’re the most arrogant brat the world has ever seen. That’s the only way anyone is going to take you seriously. Let down your guard, and they’ll trample you in a heartbeat. So I walked up to the NICU station, pretended that not only did I know my pants were a bloody mess but I actually planned it that way, thank you very much. I told the person there — she’s called a HUC, such a strange word, isn’t it? — that my daughter had just arrived from Orchard Grove and I wanted to see her.

“What’s your daughter’s name?” the HUC asked with her cute little manicured fingernails poised over her keyboard, and my stomach dropped even more forcefully than it had when the medevac jet landed in Seattle.

“Umm ...” What kind of mom doesn’t even know what to call her own child?

The HUC blushed. I hate it when people get embarrassed on my behalf. “You know what?” Her voice was too chipper, like she was trying to sell me some of those health oils that are all the rage these days, particularly amongst perky secretary types. “If she just got in here, they probably haven’t had time to enter her information into the system yet. It’s probably under your name?” She said the last part like it was a question, so I told her who I was and studied her face when she frowned into the screen. Why was she looking like that? Could something have happened to my child from the time we got off the jet until now? It was only a few hours. And we were at the best medical center in the state. I mean, I can understand a baby dying at the hospital in Orchard Grove. But here in Seattle ... There was no way anything could happen to her here.

The girl must have found whatever it was she was looking for, because suddenly she was all smiles again. Smiles and dimples, and she told me to follow her, but she walked so fast I remember nearly crying because I was in so much pain.

When I was sure I couldn’t take another step without ripping every single one of those new stitches out, she stopped in this little room with an incubator. “Ok, wait right here, and I’ll go find your nurse.”

My nurse. As if I was the one who had stopped breathing. As if I was the one who needed a ventilator tube shoved down my throat just to stay alive.

Before I could ask her anything else, Miss Chipper was gone, and there was a split second where I found myself wondering why she’d left me here in this room with some random child.

You’d think I would have recognized my own baby, right? But I’d only held her for those couple of minutes right after she was born. I was so tired then. Maybe if that epidural had worked half as well as it should have, I could have gotten some sleep or at least some rest before the delivery. I wouldn’t have needed that nap so bad. I would have been awake to notice something was wrong.

Maybe if I were a better person, a better mom, none of this would have happened.

It was my fault that I was here. It was my fault that Natalie had stopped breathing.

It was my fault that I didn’t even realize the child lying in that incubator was my own.