Читать книгу Hannah’s Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived - Maria Housden - Страница 17

OUR WORLD HAD SHRUNK TO THE SIZE OF A HOSPITAL floor, but I didn’t mind. My brain was busy replacing no longer needed facts, such as the cost of a package of diapers, with new ones, such as the proper doses of certain medications; it didn’t have room for much else.

Hannah was restless. We decided to go for a stroll through our new neighborhood. As she swung her legs over the side of the bed, I lunged to untangle the IV tube from the toe of her shoe before her foot hit the floor.

“Wait a minute, Missy,” I said, leaning over to unplug the IV pump. The unit began to beep. I pushed the “silence” button and wound the power cord around the pole.

“Hurry up, Mommy,” Hannah exclaimed, hopping from one foot to the other. “I hear Baby Shondra crying. I think she wants her mommy.”

I wheeled the IV pole away from the wall and checked to make sure the tube wasn’t caught on anything.

“Okay, we’re ready,” I said.

Hannah held my hand in one of hers, and with the other lifted the edge of her nightgown like a princess, to keep the hem from dragging on the floor. We walked slowly as I maneuvered the awkward equipment into the hallway and followed our usual route. Turning right out of her room, we strolled past the supply closet and the conference room, stopping in front of the open doors of the pediatric intensive care unit. It was empty now, but not for long.

“Remember, Hannah, here’s where you’re going to wake up after your surgery tomorrow.”

Hannah took a couple of steps into the room. I followed. Respirators, monitors, breathing tubes, and carts of medical supplies lined the walls. The room smelled like an emergency. It was hard for me to imagine Hannah there. I forced myself to do it.

“You’ll be in one of these beds, and I’ll be sleeping next to you in the big blue chair. Some tubes will be connected to your body to help you breathe, and some to help you sleep. There will be lots of beeping and other noises. A nurse will be with us all the time to make sure everything is okay.”

“I want Nurse Katie or Nurse Amy,” Hannah said, “and I want to wear my red shoes to surgery. Be sure to tell the doctors that.”

“I’ll tell them, Hannah, but I’m not sure they can do it.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” she cried, stomping her foot on the linoleum floor. “Surgery has too many rules. I can’t eat dinner. I can’t wear my robe j’s. I can’t wear my red shoes. That’s not fair,” she repeated.

“I see what you mean, Hannah. That is a lot of rules. I’ll tell them what you said and see what they can do.”

We continued our walk; past the playroom, around the corner, stopping briefly to choose a book from the library shelves, and then around the corner again. This was the busiest street in the neighborhood: room after room of sick children and their families. A few parents looked up as we passed, exchanging wan, dazed, or sympathetic glances with me. Each room was a story in itself. I never tried to figure out who was here for what. My own story was enough. Hannah’s pace quickened. I struggled to keep up, the IV pole clattering along beside me. The nurses exclaimed in unison when they saw Hannah coming.

“Baby Shondra has been missing you,” Nurse Patty called from behind the desk.

A tiny baby was lying in a bassinet in front of the nurses’ station, her cries lost in the flurry of activity. She was two months old, with translucent blue eyes, dark brown curls, and pursed rosebud lips. She had also been declared severely brain-damaged; she would never be able to see or hear.

Her parents had explained to the nurses that they could not care for such a baby.

The hospital had filed the necessary paperwork, but until a foster home was found, she slept in the hospital hall. Busy nurses fed, changed, rocked, and held her whenever they could. Mostly, when she wasn’t sleeping, Shondra cried.

“It’s okay, Baby Shondra,” Hannah murmured, leaning over the edge of the bassinet, close to the baby’s screwed-up, bawling face. “Your mommy will be back soon. And guess what,” she added brightly, “I brought you something to read.”

Shondra’s cries became whimpers. Hannah stroked Shondra’s cheeks and poked her finger through Shondra’s clenched fist. Shondra stopped crying. The nurses looked away as I lifted Shondra out of her bassinet. I knew that they weren’t supposed to allow me to pick her up, but they were grateful for the help. As I cuddled the baby close to my chest, I couldn’t help wondering if her parents felt as disappointed by life as I did. Weren’t bad things only supposed to happen to bad people? What had I done, what had these little girls done, to deserve this?

Hannah was already sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, waiting. I sat down carefully next to her and laid Baby Shondra across our laps. Hannah picked up her library book and opened it to the first page.

“Once upon a time there was a princess,” she began, making up her favorite story as she pretended to read.

Then, turning the book around, she held the page open, inches from Shondra’s face.

“See, Baby Shondra, see? It’s a beautiful princess, just like you and me.”

She turned to me and grinned. I kissed the top of her head.

“I love you, Missy,” I whispered.

“I know, Mommy. I know,” she whispered back.

As I sat on the floor, listening to Hannah spin tales into Shondra’s soundless world, I realized that I, too, had been telling stories to deaf ears. The truth didn’t care about my expectations, about the way things were supposed to be. It was what it was. As in the moment in the emergency room, when my miscarriage had become the reason I could go with Hannah to her X-rays, I was reminded that it is my expectations, the story I weave around the truth, that make what is happening seem better or worse, good or bad, fair or not fair.

Looking at Baby Shondra, now asleep on Hannah’s lap, I realized something else, too. Hannah’s sense that every little girl was precious and loved wasn’t just a fantasy she had made up; it had emerged out of a deeper truth. Love is bigger than tumors or blindness, and it was a feeling that Hannah trusted and knew.