21. Lily
21
LILY
I didn't care what hospital policy was or what the doctors would think. I didn't even care if it affected my job and the hospital administration came into the room. I delicately adjusted all the lines and tubes Noah was hooked to and lay in bed with him, holding him. Dad finally returned from the cafeteria with some food, but I had no appetite. I was too emotional.
"You should really eat, Lily." Mom tried to gently coax me away from Noah, but I wasn’t leaving his side until they took him out. He was scared and they had given him something to calm him so he wouldn't get too worked up. So he was drugged and not as responsive as normal, but if he needed me, I'd rather be in bed with him than eating.
"Mommy, I not want to go." The words were void of emotion, but I could tell if he hadn’t been slightly sedated, he'd have been crying or panicking. I knew my son too well, and I hated how this made him feel.
I pushed a few of his bangs off his forehead and cupped his cheek, then kissed his forehead. "I know, baby, but you'll be sleeping the whole time. When you wake up, Mommy will be here and you'll feel better."
When he was sick like this, it made me feel so vulnerable. Mothers wear their hearts on their sleeves when it comes to their children. There were just too many things he could possibly suffer for me to stop worrying until he was back in my arms. And even then there were more risks—infection, complication with anesthesia, recurrence again.
Noah closed his eyes with an unhappy look on his face, and I looked up when the door swished open. Dr. Butler walked in, followed by two nurses and another man, the one I'd seen in the hallway with Ethan just after I had told him the truth. I didn't move a muscle. I was firmly planted next to my little boy who needed me. Noah's hands were in fists around my T-shirt, anyway. I'd have had to pry him away just to sit up.
No one gave me a disapproving look, but the two doctors did come stand by my side while the nurses busied themselves around the room. I didn’t pay any attention to what they were doing. I knew this was the group come to take Noah down for surgery, and I wondered where Ethan was. He should have been here.
"Dr. Carter, it's time to get Noah ready for the procedure." Neither one of the men wore their white coats, and the nurses had changed from scrubs into street clothes. My heart swelled at the way they showed so much concern for Noah's mental wellbeing. Not many places would go to such lengths to help a child feel at ease.
"He's a little scared still, even with the meds." I pushed myself up onto an elbow but remained reclining next to him. "Noah, baby, it's time for you to take a nap for a while, okay? These nice men are going to help you feel better." I knew if I said any words that he knew were related to doctors, he would panic and make his blood pressure go haywire again. It was so important for him to stay calm.
"Okay, Mommy," he croaked, and I saw how drugged he was. He could barely hold his eyes open. One nurse smiled at me as he put a syringe into Noah's IV and injected what I could only imagine was probably a light sedative to increase the sedation for Noah until he saw the anesthesiologist.
When his eyes were shut tightly, I slipped out of bed and straightened my clothes and hair. Dr. Butler gestured to the other doctor. "This is Dr. Adams. He'll be working with Dr. Matthews to perform the surgery. The two of them will readjust the position of Noah's organs that have been displaced by the hernia, the stomach and parts of the small intestine, and then they will repair the hernia in the diaphragm."
Dr. Adams stretched out his hand and said, "He's in good hands, Momma. Dr. Matthews and I will take the best care of him."
I shook his hand but I was confused. "Isn't Dr. Matthews going to come and brief me on the surgery?"
"That's why I'm here. Matthews is already in the scrub room getting ready to go into the OR. What we'll do is…" His voice droned on as he explained the delicate procedure and exactly how they would make the incisions and repair the damage.
My mind was scattered, though, remembering the look on Ethan's face when I told him Noah belonged to him. The shock and pain in his eyes seared my conscience, doubling the agony I was in. I didn’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself because that wouldn’t help anyone, but I felt like a hiker with a broken leg. I just wanted my hiking party to stop so I could sit and rest for a minute. The pain was too much to handle.
I crossed one arm over my belly and rested my elbow on it, covering my mouth. I was sure every parent whose child was going into surgery felt similar feelings, but I doubted very much that their hearts were also dealing with something like this at the same time. I was exhausted. I wished they had a drug that could knock me out for about a week so I could just wait for the worst to pass and wake up when I felt more emotionally capable of handling things.
"So we'll be in there between three and four hours," Dr. Adams continued, and I came back to the reality that my little boy was about to be cut open. "He'll go straight to ICU when he's done, which means no Grandma and Grandpa in there. But hopefully, he'll only be in ICU for eight to twelve hours before he gets his own room. From there, Dr. Butler can keep us updated on his condition."
"Uh, thank you," I managed to squeak out, and Dr. Adams nodded. I didn’t know him at all, but if Ethan called him in to help, I had to trust him.
"No problem. We'll get to the OR and get started." His smile wasn't warm enough to melt my terrified heart. I backed away as the nurses and Dr. Butler unlocked the wheels of Noah’s bed and hung his IV bags on new hooks, now attached to the bed. They pushed the large bed out the door and into the hallway, and the room suddenly felt empty.
Dad came and stood by my side with his hand on my back, and I leaned my head onto his shoulder and let a tear escape as we watched them maneuver Noah and shut the door, and when he was gone, I turned into Dad's strong arms and cried into his chest.
"Come sit down on the couch, sweetheart." Dad's strong arms guided me toward the hard vinyl pull-out sofa Mom sat on. It would be my bed for the next several days, or one like it, anyway, while Noah was recovering. For now, it was where we were waiting for the doctors to repair the hernia and bring him back to me.
"He's going to be okay." Mom took my hand, and Dad sat on the opposite side of me. "The doctors know what they're doing." Her soft touch was comforting.
"Thanks, Mom." She was trying. That was all that mattered. She just had no idea the depths of my misery, being locked inside my head with the thoughts of my little boy on an operating table being supervised by a man who was probably also emotionally distraught. I had to pray that Ethan was capable of separating his personal feelings from the professional task he was doing.
"Did you tell him?" Dad asked gently. He had no idea what had transpired or how Ethan looked when the revelation sank in. It still haunted me. I couldn't get that expression out of my mind. I had done that. I hurt him like that, and there was no taking it back.
"I did." I sighed and leaned back on the couch, feeling dread sit on my chest. "He looked shocked and hurt. He's probably really angry." If my hands were shaking so badly, how would the hands of a surgeon work under the same duress?
"How did he seem to take it?" Mom asked. She angled herself on the couch to face me better, and I closed my eyes and let her hold my hand more tightly.
"He was pretty shocked. I think he was really upset with me, but that other doctor, Dr. Adams, walked up and interrupted us." Adams clearly had no clue what had transpired between us, and if he knew, he'd have forced Ethan to step back and let him handle it all. Colorado state law was clear. Ethan was barred from practicing medicine on people he was related to. It was a means to ensure all patients got the best care and all doctors were levelheaded when treating them.
In this case, the shock alone would make Ethan vulnerable to making mistakes. I knew he was an excellent doctor and surgeon and he was ethical, too. He would stand down if he knew it was going to put Noah at risk.
"Alright, well the only thing we can do is wait for Noah to come back to us now. We'll deal with the other stuff later. Alright, sweetheart?" Dad patted my knee and reached for the Styrofoam container on the table at the end of the sofa. He set it on my lap and opened it, and the smell of the hospital’s grilled cheese wafted up to greet me.
"Dad," I groaned, "I'm not hungry."
"Nonsense. You haven’t eaten since a little before lunch and it's almost eight now. You'll need your energy for when Noah comes back."
I sat up and readjusted the carryout dish on my lap, and Dad handed Mom one of her own. Hers was a deli sandwich, and she smiled and thanked him warmly, but all I could do was sit there and tear up. The food would be tasteless and it looked even more unappetizing, but that wasn’t why I was crying. My heart was so full of emotion, it had nowhere to go and I had to let it out.
"Are you okay, Lily?" Mom asked. She wiped a bit of mayo from the corner of her lip and looked at me with such compassion.
"I ruined everything, Mom." I sobbed and covered my face and felt someone take the food off my lap. Dad pulled me against his chest in his strong arms again and spoke soothing words, but I cut him off. "Dad, please. You don't understand." I pushed him away and swiped at my cheeks. "Ethan was ready to go to HR and tell them we were dating and in love. He told me he wanted me back in his life.
"You know—both of you—how much I loved him. How badly it turned out last time—how hurt I was. He is so amazing and wanted to make it right, and my secret and the way I ran off with his baby and never told him just ruined any chance I had. He'll never love me again. And now my heart…"
The complexity of the past few months of getting reacquainted with him had collided with the past in a cataclysmic explosion that changed the entire direction of my future now. I wanted Ethan. I fell back in love with him, as if I'd ever stopped loving him to begin with. And now I wouldn't have that. I had to mourn him all over again.
"Alright, Lily," Dad sighed. "I think you need to rest. You're getting in your head too much. Do you want me to get you some sleeping tablets?" Mom was already standing as Dad set the grilled cheese on the table. They made space for me to lie down. Maybe a nap before Noah returned wasn't a bad idea. Though I doubted I'd even fall asleep, or if I did, that I'd sleep well.
"No. I'm so emotional I'll have no problem being a zombie for a few hours." I lay down with my head on the arm of the couch, and Dad pulled a blanket from the storage box near the window to cover me.
"We'll come back in a few hours. We’ll be here when Noah comes back." He kissed my forehead. "Rest now."
I closed my eyes before they were even out the door, but my heart would never shut off. It was going to hurt for days, or weeks. Maybe months.