Briana's Gift Read online

  Mom glances at her bad hands. “Maybe I should sit in that rocker and let you hand her to me.”

  Mom sits, holds the baby and begins to rock. I notice several rocking chairs in the unit.

  Colleen explains. “We have volunteers who come in and hold the babies and rock them. Some of these preemies are here for months, and the birth mother may have kids at home and simply can’t be here all the time. So these surrogate grandmothers take on the holding, rocking and feeding duties because babies need to be held and cuddled or they won’t thrive.”

  I look around and see that some of the babies are way smaller than ours, and with many more machines around their incubators. I’m glad our baby is in better shape.

  “Would you like to give her a bottle?” Colleen asks.

  She gets one ready and instructs us to hold the baby upright when we feed her. The bottle looks like one I’ve used to feed my old dolls, but the nurse tells me these special bottles have small nipples because preemies have tiny mouths. Mom does the honors, but we have to keep waking our baby up. She’d rather sleep than eat.

  As I watch, it hits me that I’ve stopped thinking about the baby as Bree’s and begun thinking of her as ours. She is ours.

  “It would be nice if she had a name,” Mom says, aiming her words at me.

  I shift from foot to foot. My job. “I’m still thinking,” I say. “It needs to be right.” I’ve discarded dozens of names already. None from the naming book seems to fit her.

  Mom stares at the baby. “She looks like Bree.”

  Mom’s hinting, but I don’t think it’s the thing to do. “It’ll make us sad to call her Briana,” I say.

  “Probably so,” Mom says with a sigh.

  For once, Mom and I agree.

  On Monday I have to face Stu at school. Melody too. I wonder if he’s told her what I did. When I see them in the hall before the first bell, they have their heads together in private conversation. I panic. What if he’s telling her right now? I rush up. “Hey there. What are you guys up to?” My voice sounds overly cheerful. “I got to hold the baby yesterday,” I say before they can answer my first question.

  “That’s awesome,” Melody says.

  Stu hasn’t said anything. He just looks at the floor.

  To Melody, I say, “I’m going to ask your dad if I can ride into the city with him every day over the break. At Thanksgiving he said he’d give me a ride to the hospital and back.”

  “It’s a plan,” Melody says.

  Is she being standoffish? I can’t tell, so I say, “I’m asking the baby’s doctor if you two can come up and see her.”

  “I’d love that,” Melody says, suddenly all smiles. “We’ll come together.”

  Stu won’t make eye contact with me.

  The bell rings and I’m glad because we’ve run out of things to say. “See you in band,” Melody says, and heads off to homeroom.

  I start off too, but Stu falls in step alongside me because, after all, we are in the same homeroom. My mouth goes dry. “I guess we should talk,” he says.

  “If it’s about Saturday, forget it.” I feel all squirmy, like bugs are crawling under my skin. “I was just having a meltdown. The funeral and all. Thanks for the loan of your sweatshirt. Hope I didn’t ruin it.”

  “You’re all right now?”

  I flash him a smile. “Of course I’m all right. Good as new. How about you?”

  He looks relieved. It hurts me that he looks so relieved. “I’m all right too. It was just that I didn’t expect that to happen.”

  “Me either. Guess I lost it. Sorry.” We’re at the door of our classroom. I face him. “Friends?” I hold out my hand.

  He takes my hand and shakes it. A grin lights up his face. “Always,” he says.

  I enter the room first, forcing myself to smile at kids as I walk to my seat. Inside, my heart is hurting. My kissing him hasn’t meant a thing to him. Not one thing.

  Our school concert goes off without a hitch—except for a first grader who barfs all over the stage during part one. Once it’s cleaned up and the furor dies down, the program sails along without a hitch. I play my solo perfectly, thanks to so much practice, I’m sure, and afterward, Melody and her parents, Stu and his family and Mom and I go to the IHOP and gobble down pancakes.

  When I ask Melody’s dad for a ride to the hospital throughout the holiday school break, he says, “I’ll pick you up Monday through Friday mornings at seven-fifteen and have you home by six.”

  That means no sleeping in from now until school starts again, but being with the baby is worth it to me. Mom asks, “Are you sure this is smart, Sissy? I mean, every day?”

  She’ll be busy tying up year-end accounting chores for many of her clients and won’t come unless it’s a weekend.

  “Well, yes,” I say, embarrassed that she brings it up now in front of everybody.

  She doesn’t mention it again until we’re alone at home. “I think you should reconsider going to the hospital so much.”

  “Why? I want to be with her, and I have things to learn…. You know, how to take the most excellent care of her for when she comes home.”

  “But you’re returning to school in January.”

  “Then it’ll be your turn,” I say, smiling. “And you’ve already got experience with babies. I don’t.”

  “Sissy—”

  “Oh, Mom, I don’t mind losing a little sleep.” I hug her from behind. “I’m going to be the best aunt in history. And don’t worry. After school starts up again, I’ll take charge every afternoon as soon as I get home.”

  I trot upstairs before Mom can say anything else and ruin my good mood.

  On Tuesday Dr. Kendrow runs into me in the unit. “The nurses tell me you’ve taken up residency here.” She smiles as she says it, so I know she’s teasing me.

  “I like being around our baby.”

  “Do you play your flute for her?”

  I hadn’t thought about it. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.” Before she can leave, I ask, “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s doing well.”

  “I can’t wait to take her home. Everything’s ready and waiting for her.”

  “I’d like to see her gain a little more weight.”

  “She drinks all her bottle when I feed her,” I say hopefully.

  “And her blood work looks good too. Just a while longer. Be patient.”

  I ask, “Can two of my friends come and take a peek at her? Just a quick peek. They won’t be in the way.”

  Dr. Kendrow thinks about it, turns her smile on me. “Perhaps just a quick look. I’ll let the nurses know you have permission. Just tell them before your friends descend on the place.”

  The hospital prefers that people not use cell phones on the floors, so I call Melody from an outside line at the nurses’ station. I tell her about the okay to visit and she shrieks. “Really? I can’t wait!”

  “We can ride in with your dad and have breakfast in the hospital cafeteria,” I suggest. “The waffles are great.”

  “Hang on,” she says. “Let me see if Mom can come get us.”

  I wait, think about calling Stu and wonder if he’ll want to come.

  Moments later, Melody comes back on the line. “Mom says she’ll pick us up because we still have some presents to buy, so we can go straight to the mall from the hospital. So it’s a win-win situation. I get to see the baby. I get to shop.” She pauses. “Do you want to come with us?”

  It doesn’t feel like a real invitation, like she really wants me to come to the mall, but I want to stay at the hospital for the rest of the day anyway. “No,” I tell her. “Colleen says I can give the baby a supervised sponge bath.”

  Melody says she’ll call Stu and let him know. I’m disappointed, but Melody’s taken it out of my hands. It’s probably better anyway that I don’t call him. I have to return to thinking of him as only a friend.

  We hang up. A calendar at the nurses’ station has the days crossed out in red, and I’
m surprised to see that there are only five more days until Christmas. I haven’t been keeping track at all.

  I start to return to the unit, but instead stand rooted to the floor. Across the way, talking with Dr. Kendrow, I see a woman who looks familiar. In a nanosecond I recognize her. My mouth goes dry as I watch them cross to our baby’s incubator and peer inside. It’s the attorney who came to our house last fall. It’s Sheila Watson.

  Before I hide, Ms. Watson looks up and sees me. She smiles, waves and heads straight to me. “Hello! You’re Susanna, aren’t you? Remember me—Sheila Watson?”

  Reluctantly I nod.

  “Briana’s baby is just lovely. Her doctor tells me she’s doing really well.”

  “How did you know about her? About her being born?” The inside of my mouth is dry as a desert and I can hardly get the words out.

  “There was a write-up in the paper months ago. Your sister was something of a medical phenomenon, you know. Then I read in the obituary column that she had died, and I heard that her baby was in intensive care.”

  I hadn’t read about Bree in the paper and no one had mentioned the article to me until now. My news comes from text messaging and e-mail, and it concerns my friends and school. Once in a while I watch the TV news, but it’s usually pretty depressing, so I don’t watch often.

  One thing I’ve learned hanging around the hospital is that without a patient’s approval no one on staff talks about a patient to the media, or for that matter, to anyone else who wants information. “How do you know Dr. Kendrow?” I’m bold now, asking questions I would have been too shy to ask months ago.

  “I was told she’s head of this unit.”

  “Why would she let you see our baby?”

  “Because I was given permission to see her.”

  “Who gave you permission?”

  Sheila smiles, reminding me of someone being indulgent with a very slow learner. “Why, your mother, of course.”

  I hit my front door with a bang, yelling, “Mom!”

  She’s in the kitchen warming a casserole for our supper. “You don’t have to shout, Sissy. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.” She glances up, sees my face and, looking alarmed, asks, “What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”

  “Would you care?”

  “What are you talking about? Yes, I care.”

  “Then why did you let that…that lawyer in to see her?”

  Mom’s face turns pink. “You saw Ms. Watson?”

  “She was looking at Bree’s baby. At our baby! She wants her, doesn’t she? She’s trying to get her from us! And you…and you…” I break down.

  “She called, asked if she might go see the baby. I didn’t see anything wrong with that.”

  “She has reasons for wanting to see her,” I shout, “and you know what they are!”

  Mom goes to the table, pulls out a chair and sits in another. “Sit down, Sissy. Let’s talk.”

  I don’t want to sit and talk. I want to scream. I go to the chair, though, and sit. “So talk.”

  “You have no idea how difficult it will be to raise a baby—”

  “I told you I’ll help raise her.”

  “You’re fourteen—”

  “Fifteen in March.” I’m thinking she’s going to use immaturity as an argument against me, but she doesn’t.

  “And when you’re eighteen you’ll go to college, or off to begin a job. The baby will only be four years old. Think about that. And think about this too.” She holds up her hands, the joints knotty with arthritis. “Look at me. I don’t know if I can change her diapers, much less prepare her bottles, dress her, potty-train her, bake her birthday cakes.” She shakes her head. “And Dr. Kendrow’s told me that when she comes home, she’ll need constant monitoring. She’ll have to be fed every three hours. Every three hours around the clock, then every four hours, and so on until she can finally switch to ‘on-demand’ feeding. This can take months!”

  I see that Mom’s scared. I’m scared too. I’m scared of losing the baby, not of taking care of her. “We can’t just give her away to strangers.” My voice is quivering. “She’s family.”

  Mom goes so quiet, I hear the kitchen clock ticking off seconds across the room.

  “I’ll take the night shifts,” I say stubbornly.

  “You have no idea,” she repeats. “The—the responsibility of it all.”

  I feel sorry for her, but I also have to fight for our baby. “We can do this, Mom. We have to try!”

  Mom stares across the table—not at me, but at the wall behind me. “She’s fragile, Sissy. What if—” She stops, starts again. “What if she—she dies? That can happen, you know, with a preemie. They can die of that sudden infant death syndrome. I—I can’t lose another child, Sissy. I just can’t.”

  Her face crumples like tissue paper and she starts to cry really hard. She buries her face in her hands and I watch her shoulders shake with every sob. I don’t know what to do for her. There’s nothing I can do for her. The hole Bree left in our lives and in Mom’s heart is too big to fill. How can I expect a tiny baby to fill up such a deep, dark hole? I get up, leave Mom at the table and go to my room, where I cry too.

  I act cheerful and happy the next day when Melody, Stu and I ride to the hospital together. I don’t want anyone to know that Mom’s considering giving our baby up for adoption. We ride the elevator up to the neonatal unit and Colleen meets us at the desk. “You must be Susanna’s friends.”

  I introduce them and wash up. Melody and Stu wash their hands too. Babies are bundled in their plastic units, most of them red-faced and crying. They sound like mewing kittens. “Everybody’s hungry,” Colleen says. “And we’re short-staffed today.”

  I lead Melody and Stu to our baby’s incubator and see that she’s sleeping through all the noise.

  “Oh my gosh!” Melody says. “She’s so little.”

  Stu just stands and stares.

  My hands itch to hold her, but I don’t, so we watch her sleep. Her stocking hat is pushed back, showing off her mass of black hair. Her tiny mouth makes sucking motions and I wonder if babies dream, and if they do, what could they dream about?

  “When can you take her home?” Melody asks.

  I’m glad I’m not looking her in the eye when I say, “Dr. Kendrow will decide, but remember, she wasn’t supposed to be born until next month.”

  I hear a rumbling noise and we both look at Stu. “Sorry. I’m hungry,” he says, red-faced.

  Melody and I laugh, and I say, “Let’s go eat.”

  On the way out of the unit, Melody stops and stares at the smallest baby in there. He’s surrounded by machines, and tubes are coming out of his mouth and nose. Melody’s eyes go wide and unblinking. “Is—is he all right? I’ve never seen anything so tiny.”

  I know a little bit about him because I hang around all day. “He was born way too early,” I tell her. “His mom was only twenty-eight weeks along when she had him.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Three weeks old. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Can he catch up?” This from Stu, whose hand is almost twice the size of the baby’s whole body.

  I remember that Bree’s baby was around twenty-eight weeks when her aneurysm burst. Still, Bree held on to her baby for another seven weeks. “I don’t know,” I say to Stu. “I just know he’s got a long way to go. He’ll be here for months.”

  “Why’s that tube in his mouth?” Melody asks.

  “It’s a feeding tube because he’s too little to suck a bottle. The one coming from his nose is giving him oxygen.” Both Stu and Melody stare down at the baby and I can tell that they’re upset. I’ve come here for days, been at Bree’s bedside for weeks before this. I’ve seen things other girls my age rarely see, and I have a perspective that far exceeds that of my friends. I feel like we’ve been running a race and I’ve sprinted ahead of them, taken a shortcut that was rocky and hard and that’s left me bruised. Now I’ve arrived at the finish lin
e ahead of them and have to wait for them to catch up. “Come on.” I hook my arms through theirs. “The waffles here are pretty good.”

  The cafeteria smells warm and buttery. It’s full of people—residents in green scrubs, visitors, hospital workers. The clatter of trays and cups mingle with the low buzz of voices. We get in line and I force myself to buy food I know I can’t eat just to keep my happy act going. We pay the cashier and find a table in the middle of the hubbub. “When’s your mom coming?” I ask as we settle down.

  “Nine-fifteen,” Melody says.

  It’s eight-thirty now. Stu seems awfully quiet, and I’m wondering if he’s self-conscious around me. I hope not. My feelings for him have taken a backseat to the baby and the prospect of giving her up. I’m pushing a piece of waffle into my mouth when I notice that Melody and Stu have stopped talking and are watching me. “What?” I say. “Did I dribble syrup?”

  They’re sitting across from me, their shoulders touching. I look from one to the other.

  Melody clears her throat. “I…um…we have something to tell you.”

  I see their expressions. Both look nervous. My heart begins to thud with a kind of dread. Whatever’s going on is going to slam me, and I know it. I set down my fork, wait for the hammer that’s about to fall. “Tell me.”

  Melody glances at Stu, reaches over and laces her fingers through his. “We—Stu and I are…going out.”

  Her admission hangs in the air between us. Going out. A way to announce they are dating exclusively. That they’re boyfriend-girlfriend. A couple. Together. More than just friends. I bounce my gaze from face to face. This isn’t a joke. “How long?” I ask, and hope I sound curious, not devastated.

  “A while,” Melody says, biting her lower lip. “Since the summer.”

  Pictures flash in my mind like a deck of cards being shuffled. I see Melody and Stu at the pool, their towels inches apart…rubbing suntan lotion on each other…the looks they gave each other at the tree sale…their constant togetherness. I remember Halloween, and the way they were both “busy,” and I’m certain now that they had been busy with each other. How could I have been so stupid as not to catch on before now? I can’t look at Stu, so I concentrate on Melody. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?”