The Empty Jar(61)

“Lena, you can relax now,” a voice I recognize as Dr. Stephens’s hums. “In just a few minutes, you’ll be meeting your daughter. Rest. Just rest.”

I don’t want to rest. I want to see Nate, to hear him and feel him, but sleep is relentless in its pursuit of me. And I’m too weak to fight.

“I love you, Lena Grant,” is the last thing I hear before I drift off.

Nate.

********

Nate



I keep my eyes glued to my wife’s resting face as I listen to the foreign sounds of an operating room during an operation. Despite the questions and concerns chasing one another around in my head, seeing my precious Lena sleeping so quietly calms me.

It seems like she hasn’t rested well in a lifetime, even though I know it can’t have been that long. But it feels like it. It feels as though the days since her diagnosis have crept by like years, but also that they’ve flown by at the speed of light.

I want desperately to rewind the clock, back to a place in time where there was solid ground, firm footing. I long for the days when our biggest worry was where to spend Christmas and what color to paint the sunroom we added on to the rear of the house. Any time before today, before now.

Now is the beginning of the end. Even more than the diagnosis had, this feels like the beginning of the end.

Once Grace is born, everything will change. I can’t be sure how, but in my gut I know it will. Lena has fought to carry this baby. Will she give up now?

We’ve had a reprieve from following the progression of her disease. Will they find that she’s beyond time and treatment now?

I have no way of knowing the answers to those questions, but in the darkest part of my mind, I think I already know.

I’m so lost in thought, lost in the silky-soft texture of my wife’s hair that I’ve tuned out the goings on around me, but a sound, one single sound, brings me back. It’s a shock to my insides, one I wasn’t expecting.

It’s the cry of a baby.

My baby.

Our baby.

Every hair on my arms stands up at attention when I lean around the makeshift curtain and see the doctor place a slimy, squirmy little purple-red bundle into the towel-draped arms of a waiting nurse. The nurses turn away, but not before I catch a glimpse of the most beautiful profile I’ve ever seen.

Aside from my wife’s.

It’s Grace’s.

My child’s.

Now completely spellbound, I watch the back of the nurse. My eyes don’t leave her as she moves her arms, as she shifts this way and that, working on my daughter.

I watch and I wait, wait for the moment when I can see her again.

Suction slurps in the background. Voices ring alongside it, voices like Dr. Stephens as she asks for things like suture and staples and more light. A nurse’s as she responds. All the while, I don’t take my eyes off the place where the newest addition to my life is being held.

Then, as if she’s moving in slow motion, the nurse picks up Grace and turns with her, smiling as she makes her way to me. My heart pounds so briskly, I feel like it might rip through my chest like in Alien. The beat grows harder and louder with each step the nurse takes.

And then she’s passing me a small bundle.

With greedy hands, I reach for my baby. I take her into my arms, cradling her as I would cradle a wounded baby hummingbird. I feel as though I’m handling something so tiny and delicate. Something so precious that a deep breath could crush it into oblivion.

I stare down at the only skin visible from the tight folds of the blanket—a small, angelic face still pink from her gusty cries.

“Helena Grace,” I breathe, part in awe, part in relief.

A love second only to that which I feel for my wife courses through me. For seven months, I’ve wondered how I’d feel about this baby, about this parting gift from the love of my life. Would I be able to love it like she’d want me to? Would I see it as a reason that my wife is gone? Would I resent it?

Now I know.

Now I know the answers to all those questions.

Yes, I will love my child as Lena would want me to. That’s the only answer I need. The other questions seem ridiculous now.

As I stare down at the sweet little life in my arms, I know what the adoration of parent for child feels like. I know how it invades the hidden spaces and stretches them wide. I know how part of my heart has been lying dormant, hibernating, waiting to beat for a face such as this.

Grace makes some cute gurgling sounds, her face all screwed up like she might cry, but then she snuggles toward my chest, like she’s snuggling in for a long, quiet nap.

Love and warmth pour through me.

I hold her close and gaze down at her, willing her to open her eyes. I don’t know what to expect, only what I’ve been hoping for, what I’ve been praying for.

Then, as if she just wants to put my curiosity to rest, Grace lifts her lids and shows me that my prayers have been answered. Staring up at me from the tiny face of my little girl are my wife’s eyes. Although they’re an indeterminate color right now, I don’t have to see the color to know that they’ll be just like Lena’s.

In this very moment, in this split second of a life measuring forty-two years thus far, I know I’m a goner.

If I hadn’t known it before, it’s clear the instant Grace looks up at me with eyes as familiar to me as my own. I know without a doubt that I can and will love this child enough for two parents.