Chapter Thirty-Four
The other babies on the maternity floor who were born when you were went home the next day or the day after.
The ones whose moms had C-sections got to stay an extra day or two.
But mostly the names on the doors, the balloons in the rooms, the cooing grandparents snapping pictures in the rocking chairs rolled over every day or so.
But you and I stayed. Your father stayed. Maisie and the kids and even Roger came every day, Dr. Kim and her team.
Well, her team minus one.
On day three of you, I confessed as much to my children. It was a strange time to own up, so maybe it was the perfect time to own up. I had just had a baby. I was still in the hospital. No one could be mad at me in this moment.
“I never told you,” I admitted to my children slowly, “because I didn’t want to worry you, but after we all met with him, Dr. Blankman called me back in.
Alone. He made some … intimations. It was very unpleasant.
So I said I didn’t want him on my team anymore.
” I thought their irritation at my keeping this from them might be tempered by admiration that I’d taken care of it myself.
But Alice looked smug. “That’s not why he’s not on the team.”
“It is.” I was pleased to have acted so against type.
She shook her head. “Dr. Blankman had his license revoked by the state medical board for HIPAA violations.”
I gasped. “How did they know?” This was astonishing.
“I called them.”
This was less astonishing. “How did you know?”
“Mothers know everything,” Oliver and Pierre chorused from the corner where they were playing with Lola’s hamsters after all.
“I also filed a complaint with the state AG’s office.” Alice smiled. “I’m confident they will pursue vigorous and successful legal action. Though additionally”—her smile got wider and wider—“I’ll be seeking significant compensatory damages as well. Just to be sure.”
“Sure that what?” I said.
“Sure that he learned his lesson.”
The remaining doctors were satisfied by—impressed with, gobsmacked on account of—your progress, but they wanted us to stay for observation anyway, for making absolutely sure, for basking in the miracle that was you.
The miracle that was me, in contrast, was waning.
For one thing, my progress was slower. My abdomen had been cut open—major surgery for anyone, majorer at my age.
My incision was slow to heal, my risk of infection and side effects high.
And even aside from the cesarean, for months my organs had been requisitioned elsewhere, my blood flow diverted, my joints taxed beyond design.
And though that’s true of all recently pregnant bodies, mine wasn’t bouncing back, bouncing in general no longer much on the table.
Now that I wasn’t pregnant anymore, I was no longer miraculous.
Just old. Just tired. Just me. All the magic gone.
All of it but you.
I hadn’t quite believed in you until you arrived.
You were so improbable. You were so fraught.
You occasioned, before your ballyhooed entrance, so much attention, so many opinions, vitriol and greed and grasping, reverence and amazement and awe, confusion and denial and disbelief.
You were still a pupacorn when you taught everyone, not just about the beginning of life but also, especially, about the end.
Not just about what we know but also, especially, about what we don’t.
And how to keep starting over again anyway.
But when you got here finally, you were just a baby, brand-new in the world like every other baby. Beguiling and bewitching and not giving a crap about being a miracle or anyone’s crusade or the meaning of life. Your beginning, in the end, was the same as any other.
Still, the prospect of returning to normal seemed not just unlikely but absurd.
That had been true the first three times I’d given birth as well—you looked at the new life in your arms and realized the one it was replacing was gone, done as dinosaurs—but it was different with you.
As you had been doing all along, you plucked up the very notion of normal and blew it away like wishing on a dandelion gone to seed.
You were the most popular baby on earth.
Everyone wanted a piece of you. The hospital held a press conference every day, updating the whole world on how you were.
They elided the details, emphasized the positive, and sated no one.
The horde camped outside, unmoved and unmoving.
So we had to camp inside, unmoving as well.
On day seven, your father left to fetch us ice cream—it was time—and you and I had our first real hour to ourselves. You spent it napping in my arms. I spent it watching you do so. Then there was a quiet knock on the doorframe and a head poked into our hospital room.
It was Mr. Sir.
Electricity jolted through the whole of me with such force I worried it was too much for your tiny body to handle.
But we were no longer tethered, and you slept on.
I wrenched myself upright, clutched you tighter against me, and searched wildly with my other hand for the call button without taking my eyes off him.
Mr. Sir sidled inside and closed the door.
So I stopped watching him and started scanning the room for my shoes.
I hadn’t needed them in days, but I would if I was going to run.
As a plan, it had some holes. I was just postsurgery, just postpregnancy, well post-so-much-else.
In that moment, though, nothing was going to stop me.
Certainly, at least, I would have the element of surprise.
But when Mr. Sir turned back toward me, I could see his hands were full. He had a stuffed pink bear three or four times your size, a bouquet of flowers even larger than that, and the blue hoodie tucked under his arm. He wiggled this last in my direction. “I know you get cold.”
Apparently, he had not come to haul us both off to jail. I teetered between shock and relief. He came closer to the bed.
“I hope I’m not intruding.” Then he saw your sleeping face and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I just wanted to check on you.”
“You did?” Shock, relief, and confusion.
“Hell yes! Last I saw you, you were bleeding pretty good on the floor of my holding cell.”
“I recall.”
He put his gifts down on the little rolling table and stretched his back. “Boy, I’m impressed you made that trip in your condition. Well, your previous condition. It was quite a drive. I wasn’t sure they were going to let me in, badge or no badge, but I kept on mile after mile anyway.”
“Why?” I was being too loud, and he eyed you nervously.
“Came to apologize,” he said, lightly. “Drove all those hours just to tell you I’m sorry for the unfortunate way that things went down.”
“You are?” I tried to take the shrill disbelief out of my voice and failed.
“Well”—he looked up from his toes to squint at the ceiling—“some.”
That was the Mr. Sir I’d come to know.
“I apologize that I didn’t hold you somewhere more comfortable,” he said. “I should have let you have some water and a snack. And your meds.”
“Yes,” I managed.
“At least I should have brought you a pillow or something. I never meant to put you or your little gal in harm’s way, of course.”
Of course.
“I got all caught up because you’re famous instead of using my head for something other than showing off my hat. As my wife says.”
It’s okay, you’re supposed to say when someone apologizes. I understand. It wasn’t your fault. But none of those were true, so I didn’t say anything.
“Your turn,” he prompted, but when my mouth fell open and nothing came out, he hedged, “Okay, maybe not to apologize. Mostly I was the one in the wrong. But I think you should say thank you.”
“For what?” I gaped at him.
“For saving Bob’s life.”
“We both almost died because of you!”
“But big picture.” He threw his arms wide to demonstrate. “You screamed medical exception, life of the mother, blah blah blah. We said what about the rights of the unborn. And look what happened.” He grinned and gestured at you. Perfect, beautiful you.
It took me a moment to find my voice. “I got—we got—lucky.” It came out like a growl, low in my throat. “Unbelievably lucky. And it’s hubris to suggest otherwise.”
“Hubris?” He looked like he smelled something funny, though there was nothing to smell but bleach. “Look at you. You’re like those paintings in church.”
I was too tired to explain why I didn’t get the reference. “What paintings?”
He pointed a finger gun at both of us in turn. “Madonna and Child.”
I leaned my head back on the pillows. “In that neither Mary nor I should have been able to get pregnant the way we did?”
“You’re a new mother, holy and blessed, in love with her beautiful bundle of joy. You should thank God. And you should thank those of us fighting to put abortion recruiters behind bars.”
I went with the straightforward part. “I am not a new mother. I am an old mother. And you’re wrong about the rest of it too.”
“That you’re holy? I see your argument, but—”
“That because mothers love their babies, it’s okay to make them have them.”
“But—”
“The fact that you love them once they’re here doesn’t mean not having them—before they got here, before they got anywhere or became anyone—wasn’t a reasonable choice.”
“But—”
“And anyway,” I said, “love is beside the point. Just because you love someone, doesn’t mean you can take care of them.
And just because you can doesn’t mean you should or should have to.
Love isn’t time. It isn’t health or mobility.
It isn’t money or work. Love is not a problem-solver.
Love is a problem-generator, almost always. ”
“But look at her!” He waved at you again. “She’s gorgeous. You adore that little gal, I can tell.”
“If your only argument is ‘Newborns are cute, and mothers love their babies,’ that’s your first hint that it’s completely insufficient.
” My hands were full, but I held his eyes.
“Being cute is not enough, and being loved is not enough, and being is not enough. Babies need more—so much more—than existence and resigned, acquiescent love. And then you and yours are nowhere to be found.”
“Now hey, that’s not true. You know just where to find me.” Mr. Sir winked. “On the shoulder of the road home from the abortion clinic in New Mexico, pulling over anyone I can get my hands on.”