– Sammy –
Choices that can’t be un-made
I slide coins into the coffee machine in the communal coffee lounge, then I watch as the mud-like liquid drips into my overpriced paper cup. Steam rises from the top of the black machine as it coughs and splutters and expels my caffeine, and though I’ve had ten cups before this one and I know it tastes pretty damn bad, I still salivate as I wait for it to finish pouring. Bad tasting or not, my eyelids won’t stay open without it.
Ed steps up beside me with downcast eyes and his jowls sagging with fatigue and age. “How’s she doing?”
I sigh and think of that sweet baby in the NICU only a few yards away from where we stand. As the ventilator tube helps her breathe and the feeding tube helps keep her strong. As Barbara the nurse predicted, her skin was in fact almost translucent and her sleep is non-existent some moments, then others, too deep and we worry for her survival.
Baby girl Lytto is in the incubator, lonely and unable to maintain her own body temperature, thus needing the special bed to keep her stable. It’s been three days since she was born, and though I went home to my bed on the second night and I got a full eight hours, I haven’t left this hospital since eight a.m. yesterday.
Shari has been a crying mess, but on top of the guilt of a premature baby, plus the hormone dump of having just given birth, add in being sore and exhausted, she’s also detoxing from her own addiction… just like that poor baby is. Her husband, the father of the baby, is nowhere to be found, and though Shari is allowed and encouraged to see her baby, she’s refusing, claiming exhaustion and asking to be left to rest.
With Shari’s permission, I’ve been allowed to sit with the baby whenever she’s allowed out of the incubator, and we’ve been doing some of the kangaroo care the special care nurses have been encouraging. I’ve had the pleasure and the heartbreaking pain of falling in love with a sweet baby girl as she sleeps on my chest, burrowing against my bare skin to borrow my warmth, and subtly army crawling along my torso until her face rests just above my heart. A heartbeat is the only clear sound she’s heard her whole life. It’s no wonder the sound brings her comfort.
I turn back to Ed as my coffee finishes pouring. “She’s doing okay.”
“She have a name yet?”
“Nah, not officially. Though Shari told me she liked the name Lily a while ago. She mentioned it again yesterday. She didn’t say ‘this is what I want to name my baby,’ but she mentioned it was a pretty name, so I guess maybe that’s what she’s leaning towards.”
He nods slowly and orders his own coffee. “How’s she doing physically?”
“The baby?” I clarify. “Or Shari?”
He scoffs dispassionately. “The baby.”
“She’s… okay. Today was the first day she started coming down off the drugs in her system. The nurses said it’s normal, but still, she’s struggling. She’s not settling very well, fighting us, then she’s exhausting herself and passing out for hours, so deep that her alerts are going off because she’s not breathing properly. And her bottom is red raw with diaper rash. She’s in pain.”
Ed sighs deeply. “I hate these cases.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s not fair.”
“Is she breastfeeding?”
“Is Shari expressing?” I clarify again, since the baby is too small to actually latch on or feed herself. She’d exhaust herself and actually lose more weight if she tried. “Nope. Said she doesn’t want to.”
I watch the angry color rise in his cheeks. “She’s not done making selfish decisions?”
“Ed.” I sigh and place my hand on his arm. Ed has children, and he has grandchildren. I’m sure seeing an innocent baby suffer like this hurts him, but even so, “It’s not our place to make those judgements. We’re just here to…” I trail off, because I want to make those comments too. I want to call her selfish, because she is being selfish, even if it is a mental illness that led her to take drugs the first time, or it’s a mental illness that stops her from quitting now. I know she wouldn’t make these decisions if she could fight it, but it still hurts that the baby suffers because of her mother’s decisions. “We’re just here to support the baby.”
“Alright… Well.” Ed looks to his left and studies the corridor that way, then he looks to the right and does the same. “Are you heading to the baby or Shari right now?”
“I was going to go see Shari. Perhaps try and get her to reconsider her stance on expressing. It could only help, and I want to help the baby, so…”
“Yeah.” He turns to the left. “I’ll go to the baby for a bit, then I have to get back to the office.”
“Alright.” I don’t know why he’s here at all, to be honest. He doesn’t normally spend a bunch of time on hospital visits, especially when it’s not even his file. I hold my already half empty coffee cup tightly in my hand and make my way down the hall, then through two security locked doors until I emerge into Shari’s ward.
Steeling myself and trying to push aside the judgements I was silently making only moments ago, I knock softly on the heavy door. I wait a full minute, but when she doesn’t answer, I push it forward quietly and step into the dark room.
The TV is on, a low murmuring coming from the corner that no one pays attention to. Shari lies in the bed staring at the wall, awake, breathing, but simply staring. Her gaze doesn’t move at my entrance, she simply continues to rhythmically pick at the white waffle blanket that covers her. The blanket rises over her long feet, dipping along her legs and hips then rises again over her still visible, though small, baby bump. The blanket sits an inch or two below her breasts, but her breasts draw most of my attention. They’re huge, swollen and the skin looks painfully stretched out. Blue veins crisscross like a road map across her skin, and her chest lifts and falls as she breathes rhythmically.
I knock again, because I feel awkward. Just a soft tap, tap, tap, but still, she doesn’t desert her watch of the wall. I take a step closer, then another as I make my way toward her bed in the center of the room. Her left hand picks at the blanket, her nails bitten painfully short on the thumb and middle finger, drawing blood and pulling at skin. Her right hand lies limp beside her body, resting beside the TV remote, though she’s not holding it, nor reaching for it. “Shari?”
Her eyes continue to watch the wall, something riveting that only she can see playing out behind me. If I couldn’t see her moving chest, I’d worry for her safety. “Hey, Shari? How are you feeling?” I take her spare hand in mine gently, and only at my touch does she blink, then slowly, she turns her head and focuses on me. I smile as bravely as I can manage, though I can admit, her behavior is scaring me. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
“It’s hot in here,” she croaks out in monotone. She doesn’t make a move to toss her blanket aside, she just continues to pick at it as beads of sweat sit on her wrinkled brow.
“Do you want me to take your blanket?” I move my hand from hers and start to peel the blanket away, but her previously lazy hand stops mine. “Or maybe I could open a window?” I look around the room until my eyes stop on the window, but I realize immediately we’re on the ninth floor and I’m fairly sure it can’t be opened.
“It’s okay. I’m tired anyway.” She smacks her lips, licking the dry and cracked skin to moisten it. “I’m ready for sleep.”
“Did you want to come see the baby?” I bravely step forward and brush loose strands of hair out of her eyes. I’d never normally touch a client like this. Hell, I’d never normally spend this much time on a single case. I have stacks of folders that look just like hers on my desk. I have things I need to do, yet here I am, spending time with her baby or trying to talk Shari into getting out of bed to see her.
Even Ed is here.
There’s something about Shari and her baby that forces us both out of our routine, and I don’t understand why. I slowly attempt to pry the blanket away again. “You could get up. I’ll help you have a shower.” I peel the blanket back far enough, then I startle at the blood-soaked sheets beneath her. “Oh shit.” My eyes snap to hers, though she remains impassive. “Shit.” I slam my hand down on the call button to get a nurse in here, then I turn my eyes back to the mess. “Shari, what’s happened?”
“Just my period,” she replies blandly. “S’okay.”
It’s not okay. The rest of us don’t sleep in our mess like that. We get up and we change a pad. We shower. We go to the toilet.
Nurse Barbara comes rushing through the door, then stops with a squeak when she spots my hands and the mess beneath them. I move Shari’s hospital gown aside as Barbara walks toward us, then flicking the nurse call-button off, she gently shuffles me away. “When was the last time you got up? You need to get up, honey. Shower. Move around.”
“Did,” Shari mumbles weakly. “Got up, went for a walk.”
“When?”
Her hand comes up lazily, waving us off. “Before.”
Barbara’s disbelieving eyes meet mine, then she begins fluttering around the bed, peeling the blankets away completely, and removing the TV remote and setting it aside. “Alright, hon. We’re going to go have a shower, okay?” She uses all her strength to push Shari to sitting, and though she goes, Shari offers no help.
I stay outside the bathroom while they work in there together. The shower runs and Barbara speaks loud enough to be heard through the door, but although Barbara speaks as though she’s getting answers, I don’t hear Shari at all.
I lean against the wall and study the bed, the crisp white sheets marred by the gruesome blood as it soaks and spreads in a circle more than two-feet round. I spoke to Shari yesterday, and though she wasn’t acting a whole lot different to today – lethargic, almost bored, nonresponsive – at least she was getting up to use the bathroom. My eyes slowly sweep around the room, taking in the ugly print on the wall, a hand wrapped around another as though in an artistic embrace, though the blues and greens of the print are faded and make it look tired. There are posters everywhere, illustrating how to resuscitate a patient, how to breastfeed, numbers to call to reach lactation consultants, who to call if you suspect you’re suffering from post-partum depression. I continue to study the room, then my eyes stop on paperwork sitting on the lunch tray pushed up against the opposite wall.
The white envelope on the bottom, and the stack of papers on top, seem so out of place, so corporate, the complete opposite to the room’s occupant. I step toward it, and though I vow not to touch, I can’t deny my curiosity.
My eyes are immediately drawn to the logo at the top - Montgomery Law - and a million memories wash through my consciousness; Arthur Montgomery. Megan Montgomery. Sneaking out of the Montgomery house to go find the guys…
Once upon a time, Montgomery Law used to be Ricardo and Sons, then Ricardo and Montgomery, then once I got my folks out of town and Mr. Montgomery bought my dad out, I assume it simply became Montgomery Law.
I haven’t thought of Meg’s father in a long time, but Meg and I sometimes text. She’s married now. She’s a trophy wife with nice boobs and zero responsibility beyond coordinating parties for her lawyer husband. She’s just as nice to me as she was in high school, but we don’t have a whole lot in common anymore. She disagreed with my decisions back in senior year, and in all my teenage wisdom, I shut her out when she called me on it. I now know she only wanted to help me, but I couldn’t see past my own feet at the time, and I wasn’t up to listening to logic. If I’d simply taken a deep breath like she asked me to, if I’d only considered my actions, if I’d devoted one more single day before I made big choices, my life might have worked out differently.
She called me out for my stupid choices, I called her out for being an opinionated bitch, and now our friendship is polite, but nothing deeper. We don’t share our secrets like we once did. We don’t call each other after a long shitty day, and we don’t call to gossip. We’re strangers who were once best friends, and though that’s a tragedy – because every girl needs a best girlfriend – it’s the least traumatic loss of my life.
I take a deep cleansing breath as my eyes refocus on the envelope, and with shaking hands, my finger traces along the embossed logo. I know Arthur Montgomery specializes in adoptions. And though it’s a huge coincidence that Shari chose to use that law firm, from that small town, that’s not the reason my hands shake and my heart thunders in my chest.
The ramifications of the envelope’s contents is what has me sweating. Shari’s going to give her baby up. Despite my efforts, despite my offers of help and begging that she try to bond with that sweet baby girl, she’s still going to give her up.
Just the thought of never seeing her again hurts my heart, so I mentally make plans to oversee the case and assess the potential new parents. Lily and I have bonded, and I’m not going to walk away so easily.
“I want you to adopt my baby, Ms. Samantha.”
Gasping and spinning, I come face to face with Shari’s serious eyes. Her hair is wet, her body cleaner than it was ten minutes ago, her cracked lips moist from the shower. Her eyes are hard as they pin me to the spot and her voice is stronger than it was earlier. There’s no monotone anymore, but a fiery hot demand. She leans past me and picks up the envelope. “I already got some stuff drawn up.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Shari. We aren’t transferring ownership of a car.”
“I don’t know how it works exactly.” She leans against the counter on the wall adjacent to me in a fresh hospital gown. Barbara follows her into the room, then obviously listening in but feigning nonchalance, she strips the bed and whistles softly. That’s fine with me. I need a witness to this car crash conversation.
“I just know my daughter needs a home and I want you to take her.”
“I can’t.” I really, really can’t. Pushing aside wants and desires and worries about the what if’s, I literally can’t. My problems are bigger than anyone even knows, and they revolve largely around Sam Turner, my… husband.
“I want you to make it happen, Ms. Samantha. We were meant to meet. You were meant to be my baby’s mama.”
I shake my head and start to walk across the room. “I can’t--”
“You foster babies?”
“Yes. I have. But I’m just a temporary home, Shari. I take care of kids for a night or a week, but eventually they move to their permanent homes. I’m not the person you need.”
“Well,” she shrugs casually, her attitude and faux confidence a stark contrast to her demeanor from only minutes ago. “Start with a night, then a week, then go from there. I won’t be leaving this hospital with her, Ms. Samantha. I can’t take care of her.” The confidence leaves her as tears flood her eyes. “I can’t even take care of myself. Lily needs a home. Please take care of her.”
“You’re officially naming her Lily?”
She nods softly and a small smile crosses her lips. “Lily Rosalee.” Shari turns to Barbara. “You heard all this. You know what I want, so when this becomes a thing, I want you to tell them you heard me say I want Ms. Samantha.”
“Ms. Lytto--”
“Do you know where my husband is? Has he been in?”
“No,” Barbara answers sadly. “He hasn’t been in.”
Shari nods softly again, resignedly, then she turns away and stares out the window, ignoring us as she studies the sky and Barbara finishes remaking the bed.
***
Four days post-partum, news spreads through the hospital like wildfire. Someone has committed suicide in the stairwell, jumping nine flights to their death and breaking their neck on the way down.
No one said her name. This is a huge hospital in the middle of a large city. It could have been anyone. But as I hold a sleeping Lily on my chest for the third night in a row, I cry softly as the rumors get louder and come closer, finally making their way to me and Shari’s sweet baby.
Shari Lilian Lytto committed suicide earlier today, four and a half days after giving birth to her tiny one-and-a-half-pound baby. She lasted five days without heroin in her body. Five days without hearing from her husband, her supplier, her enabler. Five days of excruciating and debilitating hunger, nausea, fever, even seizures, though I didn’t know those until after the fact. Shari lasted five days in hospital, as though the thought of him at home was enough to keep her strong, but only two hours after finding out her husband was found cold and unresponsive behind Skeeters with a needle in his arm and both his and Shari’s shares of the drug coursing through his body, she ended it.
She could live almost a week without the drug, but only hours without him. Her devastation crippling her, she chose that final selfish act, taking her own life instead of living for her daughter.
In one single morning, Lily, the baby with no official name on record yet, just the words spoken by her mother in front of her case worker and nurse, became an orphan.