Tessie D

Baby’s gone.

She died last week.

She lived inside of me and out in the world for only nine months, and now she’s gone. 

She started getting sick on Sunday evening, but I didn’t think anything of it. She was tired and fussy. She had a fever, but babies have fevers all the time. So I nursed her and gave her a bath in some cool water. We laid down on the bed to rest, but later in the night, I woke up to her gasping for air, her lips blue. I ran down the hall and woke up Momma and Daddy, and we drove to the emergency room in the next town. The drive was agonizing and I kept whispering to my sweet girl just to keep breathing. 

It was still dark when we got to the hospital. The nurses took us back to a room, and everything started happening so quickly—doctors yelling orders, nursing moving in and out. The room was an explosion of light and sound as alarms blared and doctors and nurses rushed to her bedside. Someone grabbed me by the arms and directed me toward the door and told me I needed to wait in the other room. One of the doctors, a tall man with a brown beard and kind eyes, told us he’d come find us soon. I kept looking back, trying to catch a glipse of her, of something, but a nurse pulled a curtain closed to the room and all I could hear the wails and cries of the monitors as we walked down the hall.

So we sat there in stiff chairs talking to no one. I just kept looking down at the floor praying. Eventually, I noticed people coming in with broken arms, split lips, and stomach aches. But, the nurses never took anyone back. The lobby filled up but it seemed like nobody would ever come to find us. An announcement went over the intercom for Code Blue and I knew it was for the baby and that there was nothing I could do. I walked back to the waiting room and paced the floor. All of it was my fault. Her life. I brought her into this world only to watch her leave it. Her life was just a fleeting moment in the history of the universe. I did not love her as I should have. For months, I wished she’d never been born. I’d feed and care for her, never feeling the love that I was supposed to. When it finally did come, when smiled and reached for me, I felt a pull toward her that I’d never experienced before. I’d nestle my nose into the fold of her neck and she’d giggle, her entire body vibrating from the pleasure of our closeness. She’d sleep next to me in bed and I’d stroke her round cheeks and watch her eyelids flutter. 

Eventually, a nurse into the lobby and asked us to follow her through the double doors and into a room with a sign on the door, “Quiet Room.” 

 The nurse told us to wait there and a few moments later, the tall doctor came in. The blue stitching on his white coat said, “Dr. Charles R. Frazier, Emergency Medicine.” 

“Are you the mother?” He asked looking toward Momma.

“No, I am,” I said, stepping forward. 

Dr. Frazier looked toward me but his face did not register any surprise. I was used to people thinking that my baby was Momma’s.

“Okay, well, your daughter is very sick. When did her symptoms start? How long has she been running a fever?” 

I told him that she started feeling sick just a few hours ago and that she had suddenly started having trouble breathing. 

Dr. Frazier just nodded along and looked down at his hands. When he looked back up, we made eye contact, and his face softened. 

“We evaluated your daughter when she came in and she tested positive for the flu.”

“Well, that can’t be that bad. People get the flu all the time,” I felt panicked and the words coming out sounded high pitched and shrill.

“Normally, yes. But, your daughter is very young, and I would spectuate that she hadn’t had her flu vaccine yet?”

“No, her doctor told us to wait until the fall when the vaccine would work better. Something about how people don’t get the flu until later anyways.”

“Yes… and no. It’s not common to get the flu this early in the season, but it happens. Unfortunately, for your daughter, she was so little and her immune system was not mature enough to fight the virus effectively. She went into a cytokine storm and eventually respiratory distress. She stopped breathing, and we had to perform CPR on her. Unfortunately,…” 

I can’t remember what he said after “Unfortunately.” Just that my baby is gone.

Dr. Frazier took me, Momma, and Daddy back to the hospital room. In the middle of the bed, swaddled in a thin white blanket, laid my sweet baby. All of the wiring and tubing had been removed and disconnected. She was so still, she could’ve just been sleeping. Her eyes and mouth were closed, and her tiny lips puckered. She was as still as a doll on a shelf in a toy store. The three of us stood by her bedside. Momma quietly began to cry and reached for my hand. Daddy put his hand on my shoulder and stood behind me. I could see him bow his head in prayer. I reached out and stroked her pale cheek, smooth and still warm. 

I couldn’t stop wondering if this was God’s punishment. I spent months wishing she’d never been born, going through the motions of caring for her but secretly I resented her existence. All I could think about the person I was before she came along and wishing that I could go back in time and be the person I was before she was born. I was so afraid of those feelings and of her, too. Afraid of her vulnerabilty, my vulnerability. She was tiny and defenseless. I could make a mistake that hurt her, and I’d be responsible. And, what if I hurt her on purpose? I didn’t want to, but what if I secretly did? I was so fixated on whether I might accidentally on purpose hurt her that I took all the kitchen knives out of the house and locked them in the shed. I wouldn’t stand with her in my arms near the porch railing because because what if I accidentally on purpose tried to drop her? I didn’t want to drop her, but what if I secretly did? I kept imagining something terrible happening, the police coming to the house to arrest me, going to jail and ruining what little life I had left. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I wouldn’t do anything, that I didn’t want to do anything, the thoughts just kept intruding, playing in my mind over and over again.

I was afraid to tell anyone. Nobody asked how I was doing, so I didn’t say anything. And, I was afraid that if I did, they’d put me in a mental hospital or take my baby away. I read somewhere that some herbal medication can help with depression so I shoplifted it from the pharmacy. I figured hat petty theft was better than certfiably crazy, but it didn’t do anything.

Then, sometime during the summer, something changed. The weight that had been pulling me down was suddenly lighter, and the heaviness eased within me. I still felt moments of shame and regret, but I also felt moments of joy when she’d smile at seeing standing over her in the morning, when she’d giggle in the evenings while I bathed her, or when she’d sigh and yawn before drifting off to sleep in my arms.

Did I bring this on us? Was God punishing me for every wrong I’d ever committed? Surely, God was not so unmercifully cruel, cutting short the life of an innocent child all because of her mother’s sins. My sweet, lovely child was being punished for my sins, and I could hardly contain my shame. Surely God would never be so cruel as to punish and doom an innocent baby because of her mother’s sin. 

I keep thiinkig about those final moments in the hospital. It plays in my mind over and over, like a broken tape recorder. I begged Daddy to call someone, the preacher, anyone to come and baptize her. But, he wouldn’t do it. He said that there was not point in calling anyone. “She’s already gone. Ain’t nothing nobody else can do. Besides, nobody would be comin’ up and feelin’ sorry for us.” 

I decided then that I would baptizer her myself. I could not let my child be doomed for all eternity because of her mother’s sins. However egregious they might have been. 

I wasn’t sure how it’d be done. I’d been baptized when I was younger and I’d never seen it—or been back to church–since. But, if the point was attonement, then I could do that for the both of us. Maybe God would hear my prayers and forgive my sweet baby for any of my faults. My sins were never hers. I punished her for them at first. I didn’t want to. I just couldn’t see past my shame and love her at first. But, then I did. I could fix it now and she could be purified and redeemed. So, in the ICU, when it was just the two of us, I leaned over her and poured a few drops of water on her foread. I stood by her crib, looking down, at her tiny body, her chest rising and falling methodically and mechanically.

“Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be they name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who tresspass against. Lead us not into Heaven but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. I baptize you, Sorrow, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

I stayed with Sorrow, holding her finger for the remainder of the night. Her body so warm and flushed, like she was her own little sun projecting the warmth on to me that God seemed intent to deny her in life. Her brilliance shortlived and waning.  A particle of an atom on a grain of sand in the hourglass of Earth’s timeline. 

Walking out of the emergency room doors and onto the sidewalk, I could see the sun starting to rise in the horizon. Suddenly, as if a light had been turned off, her fingers fell slack in my hand. 

When the doctors brought me back to see her one last time, she was silent and still. The tubes removed, electrodes gone. A nurse draped a white swadling blanket over her and if I tried, I could almost convince myself that she was just sleeping peacefully, just like she would if we were at home.

She was gone. I tried to find comfort in the peace of our final moments together, knowing that she was at peace, returned to the Heavens too soon after her arrival. God would have no choice but to accept her back now because no baptism could ever have been as heartfelt and true. 

She was gone. A bastard child. An unwanted gift from Mother Nature, who cared nothing for shame and society. The sun rose that morning as it did everyday before and will everyday after. The hours will pass and the seasons will change. The hay will rise in the field, the blooms will fruit on the trees. They’ll be cut down and pulled off at their peak, only for the process to start anew. Mother Nature is consistently indifferent.