Chapter 25 Daisy - The Moral Line
DAISY The Moral Line
I wasn’t working, but Cape Carolina Medical was small enough that no one balked at my wanting to be a part of Sarah’s care. That said, I wasn’t technically a part of her care.
After a series of tests, the attending, a locum tenens doc I didn’t know who was filling in in the ED, pronounced that Sarah had endometritis.
As I suspected, he concluded, without so much as asking her, that she had contracted an STI, not that she had recently given birth.
Which I guessed maybe I couldn’t blame him for.
Seventeen-year-old pretty preacher’s kid presents with endometritis…
Recent childbirth is not the place the mind goes and, in his defense, he was the only doctor in a town he didn’t live in, in an ED so packed patients were being treated in the hallways.
That meant Sarah had dodged a bullet. Again. The IV of antibiotics, fluids, and pain meds combined with fever reducers seemed to help right off the bat. I had sent Mason home because I wanted to talk to Sarah alone.
But I couldn’t seem to shake Drew. He was so sweet, standing by her bedside, but I also knew that he had no idea what was actually going on with his girlfriend, and I was confounded by that.
She had endured a pregnancy and childbirth without ever letting him know?
It made me wonder if he was the father or if perhaps that was what she was trying to hide from him.
“Sarah,” Drew said, around nine o’clock, “I don’t want to leave you.
I can call my parents, but I’m going to have to tell them where I am.
There’s nothing they would let me stay out past ten on a school night for besides a very sick friend. ”
“No,” she said adamantly, looking stronger. “I don’t want them to know.”
He kissed her cheek and said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to call your mom? She would want to know you were sick. She would want to come home and take care of you.”
Sarah’s eyes filled, but she said, “Nope. No way. I don’t want them to worry.”
Now that I felt confident she was going to live, I was having all sorts of feelings about this. Drew walked out, and Sarah and I were finally alone.
I took Sarah’s hand. “Sweetheart, forgive me for being presumptuous, but I’m assuming you gave birth behind the school and left your baby in a dumpster?”
She burst into tears, which was all I needed to know.
“I didn’t mean to leave her,” she said, sniffling.
“I thought I was bleeding to death, and I was scared, and I was going to come right back for her and take her to the hospital, but then, by the time I got cleaned up, she was gone. I truly didn’t know what had happened to her until my mom came home from dinner at the Thaysdens’, going on and on about a baby Coach found in a dumpster. ”
I squeezed her hand. “Sarah, this is serious. You were pregnant and gave birth. You needed medical care. You need care for your mental health.”
“But I don’t want to go to jail,” she whispered. “And if I tell anyone, aren’t they going to arrest me?”
“And Drew?” I asked, avoiding her question, my mind connecting some dots.
“Drew doesn’t know.”
“Is it… his baby?”
“Of course it’s his baby!”
I laughed at her incredulity. I guessed being faithful to your high school boyfriend was the moral line, and I had finally crossed it.
“Then, sweetheart, your baby was safe surrendered to the hospital by her father.” I peered at her so she would get the idea.
Should this ever come up, that would be her saving grace, and it was almost nearly true.
Maisy hadn’t been alone for very long. Even those few minutes broke my heart.
But, as much as I wanted to be angry with Sarah for her selfishness, she was sick and young, and likely in total shock.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she nodded. I took her hand. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” I didn’t know if that was true. But it felt like the right thing to say.
“But my mom will kill me if she finds out,” Sarah said. “Like, you don’t even understand. My parents would die…”
“But Jesus is all about forgiveness,” I said, trying to sound light, even though I was serious.
“And my parents are all about perfect daughters. They will not forgive me. Not ever.”
I rubbed my eyes. Saving the patient was always first, but we were here, she was being treated, and, young and healthy as she was, I was pretty sure Sarah would bounce back from this, at least physically.
But mentally? I wasn’t so sure. At least, not without the help of parents and friends and teachers or someone.
I didn’t want to betray her trust. So I wouldn’t tell, right?
If I looked way deep down inside, I had to admit that part of me didn’t want to tell because then what?
What if Sarah’s parents or Drew’s wanted to keep Maisy?
What if Sarah changed her mind and decided to try her hand at single parenting?
I hadn’t known I was capable of this level of selfishness. Plus, I reasoned, in the best possible scenario, I would be fostering Maisy for a few weeks until she was adopted. Wouldn’t I rather her be back with her family than shuffled off to strangers?
“Where is she?” Sarah whispered.
“Where is who?”
But I knew. Oh, how I knew. Sarah wanted to know where her baby was. I told myself that I was protecting her by not telling her that she was only a floor away from the baby she’d abandoned.
I pulled a chair up to her bedside. “Sarah,” I said, “what do you want?”
The tears again.
“Do you want to be a mother to your little girl? Because if you do, that’s something we need to get out on the table right now.”
She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I mean, she’s mine, and I feel so bad just leaving her…”
“But you can’t see how you would take care of her all alone?” I filled in.
Eyes still closed, she nodded. “I can’t take care of her without my parents, and I know my parents would never let me keep her, even if they did know, which they never can because they would kill me. They would never help me, and it would just…” She started crying again.
I sighed. “Maybe you aren’t giving them enough credit.
I mean, parenting is all about doing what’s best for your child even when it hurts you.
” Saying that out loud hit home. A core truth.
One that I had wanted so desperately to say to the mother of my last patient in Charlotte.
But looking at Sarah now, I realized that maybe things were more complicated than that.
Maybe I had been wrong. And the idea of that began to hurt in a different way.
She opened her eyes then. “That’s what I’m doing now,” she said. “I love my parents, but I would never choose for my child to be raised by them.”
Well, now, that was interesting. I knew I was the adult, and I should be guiding Sarah. But I also knew that I couldn’t make this life-altering decision for her.
“Are there any other family members who might want to step in?” I asked.
She shook her head, eyes closed.
I looked down at my phone. It was almost ten o’clock.
Tomorrow, I had my home visit with DSS. And then I would be keeping Greer and George for four nights.
I couldn’t walk into tomorrow exhausted.
I had to leave. But then I thought back to the night after the only mother I had ever known left, when I woke up with stomach pains and a fever in the middle of the night.
My dad had never solo parented. Sickness was Mom’s thing.
And so he loaded me into the car and headed to the hospital.
I was so sad and confused already, so adding sick and scared on top of that was not ideal.
They made Dad sit in the waiting room while they took me back to run some tests.
I remember the way the nurse stroked a cool cloth on my clammy forehead, the way my mom would have done.
She talked to me in such soothing tones.
Just her “Honey, you are fine. Everything is okay” made me feel better.
In retrospect, it was a small town. She probably knew me, knew that my mom had just taken off. But she never left my side. When I woke up the next morning, whatever virus had overtaken me had subsided. But that nurse was still there.
When I saw her, I burst into tears. It was the first time I had cried for my mom.
I’ll never forget what she said to me. “Honey, there are times in our lives when we have to reach so far down inside ourselves for strength that we don’t believe we have.
But, when we look, we always find it. And those times make us kind.
They make us humble. Because they teach us that everyone around us is facing a silent battle. ”
I made a pact with myself then. Well, two, really. One, I was never going to cry again over the mother who’d left me. If she didn’t want me, I didn’t want her. Two, I was going to be a nurse. I was going to take care of people the way this woman had done for me.
I had made good on both promises.
And now, it was time to return what had been given to me.
Sure, I had a big day tomorrow. But I didn’t want to leave Sarah alone and scared.
She would likely be discharged tonight, and then what?
I wasn’t going to let the girl Uber home alone.
She didn’t need to spend the night alone either.
I leaned back in my chair, resigning myself to the fact that it was going to be a long night. I was in this now, like it or not.
Sarah’s eyelids were heavy from the pain meds.
“You get some rest,” I said. “I have to go check on something.”
She nodded, and I wondered if she had gotten any sleep at all since Maisy was born.
I doubted it. She needed this. Her body was wracked and exhausted, and any medical professional worth her salt could tell you that stress and anxiety wreaked havoc on the physical body.
I wanted to be upset with her, but I simply could not bring myself to do it. So, for now, I would let Sarah sleep.
As I walked out of the room, I knew I wasn’t checking on something. I was checking on someone. She was almost seven pounds, and, if I was honest, I couldn’t imagine living a single day of the rest of my life without her.