Would the baby have come now, weeks early, if I had convinced Mr. Hickman? If I hadn’t failed?

Mom called the hospital on the drive in, so they were ready when we got there. They had a wheelchair ready for Nonny, and she and Mom went through swinging doors in the back. Dad and I waited in the waiting room.

Waiting room.

Suddenly, after the explosion of what had just happened, waiting was all we could do.

Waiting

I waited and thought about babies that come early.

I waited and thought about babies that are hurt.

I waited and thought about daddies who have to work far, far away trying to fix a financial black hole.

I waited and thought about mothers who are in pain.

I waited and thought about how this time it might be my fault.

I waited, thinking every minute about how my plan had failed and how delivering a baby takes a long, long time.

Big Doctor Words

I learned a new Big Doctor Word.

Cyanosis.

It means that the baby’s nails and lips and skin are a bluish-gray color.

It means that there is not enough oxygen in the baby’s blood.

Doctor Who Was Wrong

Maybe the Doctor was wrong.

Maybe the bad things do ruin the good things.

Maybe sometimes there are just too many bad things happening at once.

Maybe it’s like your friend is swimming in grief and hard, hard work and you don’t know where the life vests are. And the textbook people won’t listen to you. And you figure out all the things you can’t do.

And your sister has a baby too early.

And you didn’t do anything to help.

Septal Defect

Here is the reason why the doctors took Nonny’s baby away:

Think of your heart like a house. Two rooms on the bottom floor, two rooms on the top.

Nonny’s baby has a hole in her house. A hole between the rooms on the top floor.

That is called an atrial septal defect.

And the doctors told us they had to open her up. Patch up the holey wall in her heart.

The next morning we were in Nonny’s hospital room, waiting, frozen silent like the TV nobody had thought to turn on. Dad stood against the wall. We’d offered him a chair a long time ago but he’d refused. Couldn’t sit down, he said. Mom sat by the window, looking at her hands. Thomas arrived about three minutes before they took the baby away. He was lying next to Nonny in the bed, one arm around her shoulder and one across her chest like he was a seat belt and Captain America’s shield rolled into one. Nobody had moved in a while.

I thought that when we got home I would take down my posters of the muscular system and the Milky Way. Muscles got tears and holes. Stars hadn’t heard my wishes. I’d tried to be a defender and my defenses had failed. I had failed. I couldn’t do enough.