When the Lights Go Out(79)

Something happened today.

I had eaten my lunch—roast beef on rye from the hospital’s cafeteria—sitting all alone at one of the smaller round tables, nibbling quickly, quietly and staring out the window at the visitors and outpatients who came and went through the revolving front doors, realizing how utterly alone I felt as the other tables spilled over with groups of four, five, six, all involved in conversations that didn’t have a thing to do with me. Oh, how I felt so alone. When I was through eating, I set my tray beside the trash can and then went to visit the babies in the nursery.

A drug addict needing her fix.

As I stood there, peering through glass at the newborns sound asleep in their knitted blankets with their knitted hats, one little one in particular caught my eye, the name in the bassinet reading Jade Cutter. It was the name that caught my attention, not necessarily the baby herself, though she was perfect in every way, from the roundness of her head to the redness of her cheeks. But more so, it was the slip of pink paper in the bassinet that caught my eye, the one that listed her name, date and time of birth, pediatrician, and the names of her parents.

Joseph and Miranda Cutter.

Joe and Miranda.

They’d had their baby girl. They’d had their baby girl and they didn’t tell me.

She was swaddled in a pink cotton blanket, eyes closed, mouth parted as she breathed in her sleep. A single hand had forced its way from the blanket, but Jade seemed unmindful of this, unlike other infants—I’d come to learn from my time spent observing them in the nursery—whose limbs needed to be controlled so that they could sleep. There was dark hair, a mound of it, that sneaked out from the edges of the pink hat and, though they were shut tight, I had to imagine her eyes too were dark like Joe’s, though these, of course, were things that often changed over time.

And in that moment little Jade’s eyes parted and she gazed at me, it seemed, and I was stricken with a sudden, purposeful, persistent need to hold her in my arms.

I stepped into the nursery, greeting the ladies there by name. There were two of them, one older and one younger, both of whom I knew fairly well. How many months had I been stopping by, telling the tale of how I was working hard to earn my degree so I could be one of them, nursery room nurses who tended to newborn babies? How many times had they let me into the nursery, allowing me to watch as they changed diapers and swaddled with the expertise of someone who’d done it a million times? How many times had they let me stroke an infant’s cheek in his or her sleep, never once needing to remind me to wash my hands because I always remembered?

But not this time.

“You’ll need to stay in the hall, Eden,” the older of the two nurses said, a woman by the name of Kathy, and I felt a stabbing sensation in the chest as she pointed to the floor, to an imaginary line that dissected the nursery from the hallway tiles.

That’s the line where I was to remain behind.

“But, Kathy,” I attempted to argue, but she held up her hands and told me that there had been complaints that they’d been too lax of late, and hospital officials were cracking down on security protocols, and I wondered now if the babies were fitted with tiny security devices on their wee wrists or ankles to keep someone from walking out the front door with them. Someone like me.

“But it’s just me,” I reassured her, holding up my badge, reminding her that I work here.

Except that by that time, she’d turned her back to me and was attending to an infant who’d begun to fuss; she wouldn’t let me in, and I could feel my hands begin to shake in withdrawal. There was a tightness in my chest and my head suddenly hurt. For a minute or two, I couldn’t breathe. My heart was palpitating, strong, irregular beats that left me light-headed, though neither of the nurses seemed to notice; no one noticed but me.

And then Joe was there coming to my rescue, as he appeared at the nursery to come lay claim to his baby girl.

“Joe!” I said too loudly, thrilled to see him, knowing that he was my key to that baby. Joe would get Jade out of the nursery; Joe would let me hold and coddle baby Jade as I needed to do.

He said hello to me, and what a nice surprise to see me, and at this, I felt a smile spread widely across my lips. My heartbeat slowed; the tension in my head and neck began to ease.

“Miranda called you to tell you the news?” he asked, but I said no, that I was working, that I had just come to visit the babies in the nursery when I saw baby Jade.

“Congratulations!” I said, offering an awkward embrace. Joe was not a man I knew well, and what I did know came from Miranda’s own complaints about him. How he was a jerk, a lousy father. But I couldn’t let this deter me now.

“How is Miranda?” I asked, and Joe replied as expected: Miranda was tired, Miranda wanted nothing but to sleep and already I imagined her, sore over her infant’s need to eat.

Kathy glided the rolling bassinet out the nursery door to Joe’s waiting hands, and when I made an attempt to follow, to accompany Joe to Miranda’s room where I would sit on the corner armchair with Jade in my arms as I’d once done with Carter, he said to me, “Another time, Eden? My parents are here,” meaning that they already had company, that Joe’s mother and father were here to see baby Jade.

That I wasn’t welcome in the hospital room with Joe’s mother and father because as everyone knows, three’s a crowd.

“Just for a minute?” I pleaded, staring at Joe, who looked worse for wear in that moment, tired and jaded. I could see it in his eyes: four children was too much.