Long Bright River(117)

The child was born yesterday. She still doesn’t have a name.

Our father has told us she’s in the NICU for now, until her condition is better assessed.

Kacey can see her as much as she wants. She’s been cooperative with the doctors. Everyone knew, going in, to monitor the baby for signs of withdrawal.

Mrs. Mahon looks at me, before we get out of the car. She puts a hand on my hand. Holds it there firmly.

—Now this will be hard for you, she says. It will make you think of Thomas, and remember the pain he was in. You’re going to be mad at Kacey all over again.

I nod.

—But she’s doing her best, says Mrs. Mahon. Just think: She’s doing her best.



* * *



—

There is one memory I have of my mother that I’ve never shared with Kacey. When I was small it felt too precious: speaking it aloud, I feared, might make it disappear.

In this memory, I can’t see my mother’s face. All I can recall of her is a sweet voice talking to me while I took a bath. We were playing a game. Someone had given us plastic eggs one Easter, and I was allowed to take them into the tub with me. They were yellow and orange and blue and green, and they were split down the middle into two halves. I could take them apart and put them back together again so they didn’t match: yellow with blue, green with orange. Everything out of order. Oh no oh no, my mother would cry, teasing me. Put them back together again! And for some reason, this was the funniest thing in the world to me. Silly, my mother would call me. The last time I was ever called anything so young-sounding. I remember the smell of my mother, and the smell of the soap, like flowers in sunlight.

When I was younger, I used to think it was this single memory that saved me from Kacey’s fate, that made me the way I am and Kacey the way she is. The sound of my mother’s voice, which I can still hear, and its gentleness, which I always took to be evidence of her love for me. The knowledge that there was once a person in the world who loved me more than anything. In some ways, I still think this is true.



* * *



—

In the hospital, Mrs. Mahon and I are given visitor badges. We ring a small bell, and we’re admitted into the ward. We’re following a nurse named Renee S.

We see Kacey, first, at the end of a hallway. She’s out of bed already. Our father is standing next to her. The two of them are looking through a glass window at what I presume is the NICU.

—Visitors, says Renee S., brightly.

Kacey turns.

—You came, she says.



* * *



—

Renee swipes her badge through a reader and opens the door. A doctor greets us quickly on her way out.

Inside the NICU, it’s dark and quiet. White noise is on in the background.

There are two basin sinks to the right of the door and a sign over them instructing us to wash our hands.

We comply, all of us. While Kacey is scrubbing, I look around. The room has a central aisle that divides two rows of plexiglass bassinets, four on either side. Machines and monitors flash steadily but silently. At the opposite end of the room there is another nurses’ station, slightly removed, lit more fully.

There are two nurses in the room, both at work: one diapering a baby, another entering something on a computer that sits on a rolling, waist-high stand. An older woman, a volunteer or a grandparent, sits near us in a rocking chair, moving slowly, a newborn in her arms. She smiles at us but says nothing.

Which one of these babies, I wonder, is Kacey’s?

My sister turns off the water. Then she turns around and walks across the room to one of the bassinets.

Baby Fitzpatrick, says a name tag at the head of it.



* * *



—

Inside is a baby girl. She is sleeping, her eyes closed and swollen from the work of being born. Her eyelids flutter a little, and she turns her perfect face from left to right.

All four of us stand around her, looking in.

—Here she is, Kacey says.

—Here she is, I repeat.

—I don’t know what to call her, Kacey says.

She looks up at me, plaintively. She says, I just keep thinking, That’s what she’ll be called for the rest of her life. And it stops me.

The room is very quiet, all of the sounds in it faraway, as if underwater. And then, from behind, there comes a high-pitched cry, a wail of pain.

Thomas, I think, reflexively.

All of us turn toward it. The cry comes again.

It’s a sound I’ll never forget: the newborn cry of my son. How many times a night did it drag me from sleep? Even in his waking hours I would flinch, in anticipation, every time his small brow furrowed.

I glance at Kacey and see that she’s a statue, unmoving, eyes fixed.

—Are you all right? I whisper, and she nods.



* * *



—

The crying child is five feet away from us. We watch as a nurse materializes, leans down into the bassinet, and lifts into her arms a tiny baby in a blanket and cap.

Where, I wonder, is his mother?

—There, says the nurse. Oh, now, there.

She places the baby on her shoulder, begins to sway. I think of my mother. I think of Thomas. My body remembers both being held and holding.

The nurse pats the baby firmly on the diaper. She puts a pacifier into his tiny mouth.