Transported
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Six years on, moments from Henry’s last few days will pop into my head with such resounding clarity that I feel as though I’ve just been transported back in time.
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At 2 AM, I wake up for a diaper change and a bottle. I see his little squishy face staring up at me while he drinks in the dim light. He goes right back to sleep and I am happy that I can go back to bed.
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I am waiting in front of my office for my husband to pick me up, still not fully grasping his panicky phone call. Surely my baby didn’t have to be picked up from daycare in an ambulance. He couldn’t possibly be at the hospital. There must have been a mistake.
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The front desk attendant at the emergency room looks up my son’s name and instead of directing me where to go, she tells us the social worker will be right out. Once the social worker arrives, she insists we wait for my husband. We do not go back to our son. We go to a room with a couch and plenty of Kleenex boxes and a promise that she will be back once she has an update.
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I am sitting in a room while my unconscious baby is laid out on a table for a CAT scan. The faces of the nurses and the doctor and the social worker and the police officer are looking out from behind a glass window. My husband and I are not protected from the radiation—there are no protections at all anymore. We sit right next to the table and my leg will not stop bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down.
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I watch the traffic outside his hospital room window, trying to wrap my head around the fact that other people’s lives are still going on. I am living on adrenaline and coffee. I cannot fathom doing something as mundane as driving to work in the morning, yet all of these cars are full of people doing just that. How can they not know that in that hospital they just passed, babies are dying?
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The nurse tells us we should ask questions when the medical team meets in front of Henry’s room to discuss his case. When I interrupt to ask, “Will he ever wake up?” she nods encouragement.
“No,” replies a doctor.
The echo of that ‘No’ is so loud, I only half-hear the other people in his room shuffling out to give us privacy. I lower my forehead to his mattress and hold on to his limp, warm hand.
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The last night I am with him, we are crowded onto his narrow hospital bed. The nurse working that night shift moves around us as she does her scheduled checks. I spend hours touching and memorizing his face, his hands, his toes.
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We relish these memories, as impossible as they are. They are the only connection between our babies and us, their parents—a nightmare and a life preserver all at the same time.
How do you go forward holding memories of your lost child? Do they do more than make you sad?