Текст книги "Forever Innocent"
Автор книги: Deanna Roy
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
Chapter 33: Gavin
I stared at the picture of Corabelle and me for a minute, trying to remember the last time we had an image together. We’d missed prom. I’d skipped graduation. It must have been some random shot. I didn’t have much of anything from those days, not even a snapshot of us. Just the picture of Finn from the funeral.
“So we’re on a plateau, right?” Corabelle asked.
“Well, that would be a compliment to this little chink in the mountains.” I stretched out on the blanket, hands beneath my head. A few stars were already emerging in the twilight.
“So, Mr. Geology Major, tell me what it is then. A mesa?”
“Not really big enough to qualify for that either.”
Corabelle settled next to me. “So what created this little flat space?”
“Same as the mountains, tectonic shifts in the mantle. Pushed the ground upward.”
“But what makes it flat?”
I swiveled my head to take in the landscape around us. “Probably wind and erosion. We’re in the path of a natural tunnel, so it wore down faster than the hills around us. Although it could have been formed this way from the start, when the ground goes straight up while being pushed. Sedimentary rock tends to split.”
“Huh.” She laid her head on my shoulder, and I wanted to hold on to the moment forever.
“So, Gavin?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“What are you going to do with a degree in geology?”
I chuckled. “You mean if I ever manage to finish?”
“How many hours do you have?”
“About sixty.”
She sat up. “That’s all? Four years to get sixty hours?”
“I work full-time. I couldn’t take a full load.”
Corabelle settled back down. “Wow. You’ll be in San Diego for another four years easy, at that rate.”
I didn’t know what she was thinking, but it sounded like she was making plans around me. “I can transfer, if you want to go somewhere else.”
She got very still, and I wondered if I assumed too much. Only a week had passed – a very good week, and with crazy moments. I smiled to myself remembering the race down the library stairwell yesterday. We were good together. I couldn’t help but think we were back to our old plan. “Corabelle, you tell me what you want.”
Her face pressed into my shirt. I reached for her ponytail and twirled it in my fingers.
“I want to go back in time,” she said.
“And do what? Figure out which night got us Finn and not do it?”
She didn’t answer, so I stared up at the sky, growing darker to reveal more of the stars. I wouldn’t mind a trip to the past, at least to the funeral. “I wouldn’t go away,” I said.
She lifted her head. “What?”
“The funeral. If I could go back in time, I’d stay. I would be there for you.” And not go to Mexico, I added to myself. That was worse.
“I don’t know what all I would change,” Corabelle said. “There are so many things.”
“Like what?”
She got still again, so I waited. The North Star was visible among the others, bright and almost twinkling.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t want Finn. That wouldn’t be right,” she said. “He had his little life.”
Until I signed it away. My whole body tensed, but I forced it to relax again. No point going there.
She wanted to talk about him. I could do that, for her. “I was so panicked when you told me your water broke. But you did great.”
“I wasn’t screaming like the lady in the next room.”
“Man, she had some lungs.”
Corabelle turned onto her back. “You got to see him first.”
“I was closer to that end.”
She punched me in the ribs. “I didn’t want you to look.”
“My kid was going to come out. It’s not like I hadn’t seen those parts before!”
“But they were all gooey and bloody.”
“True. I wasn’t thinking of licking them or anything.”
She smacked me again. “Gavin!”
“He slid out pretty easy, really.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Well, it looked easy. His little head started to pop out, then everything sort of stopped for a second. I was a little confused, because he was all white.”
“It’s called vernix.”
“It was not what I expected. I almost dropped the camera. He looked like a snow baby.”
“I didn’t really get to see that.”
“They cleaned him off pretty quick, got the worst of it.”
“They took him away so fast.”
Because he was sick, I thought, but didn’t say it. Corabelle turned in to me again, her head on my chest, rising and falling with my every breath.
I knew the doctors were tense about it. They were supposed to let Corabelle hold the baby, but instead they got him cleaned up and into a plastic bed right away. We only got a few minutes with him before they rolled him down to the NICU.
I stayed with her a little while, so she wouldn’t feel deserted, but when her parents came in, I took off down the hall to see when we would get him back. I didn’t know how anything worked. We hadn’t even finished birthing classes when she went into labor. The doctor on call wasn’t ours and said we should probably go to a bigger hospital, but then the baby just started coming.
At first the nurse at the window didn’t want to let me into the NICU. They didn’t know who I was and Finn had Corabelle’s last name taped to his bed. Apparently I was supposed to have some wristband.
Finally one of the nurses recognized me and let me through. I wanted to go over to him right away, but she made me stand at a sink and scrub my hands and arms and even use a little pick under my fingernails before I could go into the area where the beds were.
I couldn’t even see him. He was surrounded by doctors and nurses. When I finally got a glimpse, I could only see his little hat, a stretchy thing with white and blue stripes. He hadn’t cried, I realized. Babies were supposed to cry when they were born.
The nurse who let me in made a space for me in the circle around the plastic crib and tried to explain what they were doing as they attached disks and put something down his throat. But I couldn’t follow her, and I couldn’t stay calm. Finn looked terrible, things stuck to his head and a giant tube taped to his mouth. The sounds of the machine were awful, like a helicopter flying.
The nurse gave me a card with his weight and measurements to take back to Corabelle. Despite my horror at everything, I didn’t want to leave. The NICU was strewn with rocking chairs between the plastic incubators. This row was completely empty, so I sat in one to wait.
I heard a lot of words I didn’t know. I could tell they were worried about oxygen levels and his heart. When several of the doctors moved away and I could see Finn again, terror washed over me. He wasn’t pink like before. He was gray. Was he dying right there?
I jumped up and grabbed one of the nurses in pink scrubs. “This is my son. What is happening to him?”
Another woman, this one with a doctor badge, took my shoulder and pulled me out of the way. Another team arrived and began working frenetically, packing up the machines like they were going to move him. “We’ll have a meeting with you and the baby’s mother shortly.”
“But I’m standing here now!”
She barely even looked at me, checking things off some damn piece of paper. “We are taking him to do some more tests, mainly pictures of his heart and lungs. I can’t give you a conclusive answer to what the baby is facing right now, but I promise you, we will come down and talk to you as soon as we can.”
I wanted to snatch the folder from her. “Finn! His name is Finn! Why are you putting tubes on him?”
“His first Apgar scores were low, at four, and now Finn has dropped to a three.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a measure of the health of a newborn baby. Ten is the highest.” She glanced over at the team, who were now moving the bed out of the room. “Was anything wrong at any of the sonograms?”
I ran my hands through my hair, panic rising fast. “No, he was always healthy, always fine. Until he came early.”
She nodded and flipped through the chart again. “Go see to the mother. We’ll be there soon.” She gave me a smile, like that would be reassuring, and said, “Try not to worry.” Then she tugged her phone out of her pocket, clicked on something, and walked away.
“Her name is Corabelle,” I tried to say, but the doctor was already gone.
I stood rooted to the floor, unable to move. On the other aisle, a few women sat by more plastic beds. One of them looked at me sympathetically, and I couldn’t stand it.
The pink-scrubs nurse came back in. “Mr. Mays? Let’s go back to your room. There isn’t anything you can do for Finn here.”
“How long will he be gone?”
“Probably a while.”
“Is he going to die?”
She led me back to the sliding doors. “We’re going to do everything we can.”
I was kicked out. The hallway morphed into a horrifying wall of mirrors, every room decorated with pink or blue ribbons announcing the birth of happy, healthy babies. Mine could be fighting for his life right now, dying, or dead, and I wouldn’t even know.
I gripped the front of my shirt, so overwhelmed with fear that I thought I was having a heart attack. My chest was tight and I could barely breathe. I leaned against the wall. Corabelle was probably all snug in her bed, happy and waiting for them to bring Finn back. What would I tell her?
My lungs sucked in air and I forced myself to be calm. She was going to need me, and I couldn’t let her down.
Corabelle had known the minute I walked back into her room that something was wrong. “Where’s Finn?”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “They’ve taken him for some tests.”
“What kind of tests?” Corabelle’s dad asked.
“Pictures of his heart and lungs. He’s having some trouble with his oxygen levels, I think.”
“I’m going to go see what is going on,” he said.
“You need some sort of wristband to get into the NICU.” I held up my empty arm.
“I’ll get that taken care of.” He strode from the room.
Maybe they would take him more seriously than a teenage boy. Corabelle was sobbing in a way I’d never seen her do, great heaving gulps.
“Oh, baby,” her mom said, “it’s the hormones. After I had you I cried for hours a day. It’ll get better.”
I wasn’t so sure. The sides of the bed kept me from crawling in next to her like I wanted, so I just perched on the end, my hand on her ankle. “They asked about the sonogram. There wasn’t anything wrong, was there? I don’t remember it.”
“We just had two,” Corabelle said, clutching the tissue her mom handed her. “They didn’t say anything about a problem. They said he was fine.”
The wait was excruciating. Corabelle cried herself to sleep. I moved to a chair in the corner. Her mother sat on the foam sofa that converted to a bed. Her father returned after a while, shaking his head. “I couldn’t get anything out of anybody, other than I can’t see him right now.” He glanced over at me. “I had to tell them you two were married. Otherwise Gavin doesn’t have any part in this. I didn’t know that.”
I swallowed and glanced at Corabelle. She hadn’t been wearing her ring when we left for the hospital, so she didn’t have it now.
Her father sat on the sofa. “We just have to wait.”
Corabelle’s mother buried her face against his shoulder. “I should have been in here when he was born,” she said. “We should have gotten here faster.”
“That wouldn’t have made a difference,” her father said.
“But I would have gotten to see him!” She brought a handkerchief to her nose. “What if something happens?”
“You’ll get to see him.” He put his arm around her, and I envied his ability to pull her close. Corabelle seemed so far away.
A nurse came in and Corabelle’s dad and I both stood up.
“I’m here to check on Mom,” she said.
“What about the baby?” I asked.
She frowned. “He’s in the NICU.”
“They took him out.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Corabelle’s arm. As it inflated, Corabelle stirred.
“Where’s Finn?” she asked.
The woman waited for the machine to beep. “I’m going to find out just as soon as we check this.” She placed a gadget in Corabelle’s ear. “You’re looking good. Any pain?”
Corabelle shook her head. “I just want to know about Finn.”
The nurse hustled out, but she didn’t return that hour, or the next. I finally wrestled with the hospital bed and lowered the side so I could get close to Corabelle.
“It’s almost midnight,” Corabelle’s dad said. “I don’t think we’ll get any news tonight.”
“I don’t want to go home,” her mother said.
“We’ll see where we are in the morning,” he said firmly. “We’ll be back first thing.”
Her mother leaned in to kiss Corabelle on the forehead. “Stay strong, honey.” She squeezed my arm. “Take care of her.”
When they were gone, Corabelle started sobbing again. “Why won’t they tell us anything? This is horrible.”
“I’m going back to the NICU. They have to know something.”
She clutched my hand, and I wished I’d gone before her parents left. I’d be leaving her alone. “Kiss him for me,” she said.
I nodded, but based on how they acted earlier, I wasn’t going to get within touching distance.
When I got back to the NICU entrance, the stern woman had been replaced by a friendlier-looking nurse. “I’m Finn Rotheford’s father,” I said.
“Do you have your things together?”
I washed over with fear. “What do you mean?”
She glanced the clock. “They should be transferring you to El Paso as soon as the ambulance is prepped.”
“No one told us.” My head started pounding, my heart trying to explode. “Why are we going there?”
“They have an NICU better able to handle your baby’s needs.”
I slammed my hands against the window. “Nobody has told us what those needs are!”
“Let me see who is available.” She picked up a phone and spoke into it so quietly I couldn’t hear. “I’ve paged the doctor to your room. You can meet him there.”
I raced down the hallway, but when I arrived, several people were already there.
“Gavin?” Corabelle cried. “They’re moving Finn!”
“I know!”
A tall man with buzzed gray hair held out his hand. “I’m Dr. Fletcher. I’m coordinating the transfer of your baby to a unit in El Paso.”
“Why are we going there?”
The doctor perched on a stool at Corabelle’s feet. “Your baby has a very serious condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. We first suspected a heart problem when we listened to his heart tones right after birth. The attending obstetrician was on top of it, which was why Finn was taken so quickly to be checked. The first few hours are very important.”
I moved to Corabelle’s side to hold her hand, for her or for me, I wasn’t sure. She wasn’t crying right then, just listening, her brown eyes wide and full of fear.
“We did some imaging of Finn’s heart and confirmed the defect. Unfortunately, this hospital is not prepared to manage the care of a baby in this condition. He’ll need a heart specialist and a surgeon, possibly within the next 24 hours.”
Corabelle sobbed then, and I gripped her hand hard. “What will happen?” I asked.
“He’ll be assessed on his ability to withstand the surgery. Then you will be given choices about going forward with the surgery or choosing palliative care.”
“You mean watching him die?” Corabelle’s voice was strained and choked.
“The team there is very good. They will do everything they can.”
“Why haven’t we already gone?” Corabelle asked. “Finn’s been here for hours.”
The doctor glanced at one of the nurses. “We had to stabilize him to survive the trip. He’s in very critical condition.”
“Oh my God,” Corabelle said. “He could die any minute?”
“His heart is not very strong. The left side is barely functional. We’ve left the ductus arteriosus open, a vessel that connects the two parts of the heart, one that normally closes at birth. This way we can keep Finn’s heart working until surgery. But it will have to happen within a few days.”
“Or what?” I asked.
“He’ll eventually go into cardiac arrest. But that is the same risk if we do close it. This gives us time to work on his heart.”
My blood was pounding in my ears so hard that I wasn’t sure I could hear anymore. I looked at Corabelle, ghostly white against her pillow. She took several rapid breaths, then sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed. “I have to get dressed.”
“You can’t leave yet. You just had the baby!” I said.
“I’m not staying here while they take Finn away!” She limped to the sofa, where her duffel bag waited, and started jerking clothes out of it.
“Can she do that? Can she go?”
The doctor looked at the nurses. “When will she get discharged?”
“Tomorrow at the earliest. Possibly another day,” one said. “She’s only six hours postpartum.”
Corabelle whirled around. “I’m walking out of here whether you sign a paper or not.”
The doctor nodded. “Did everything go normally for her?”
The nurse picked up her chart. “I didn’t attend, but everything here looks clear.”
“Let her go. Inform her OB.”
Tears streaked Corabelle’s face. “Thank you.” She turned to me. “Help me dress.”
Another nurse came in. “They are ready to transfer.”
“Never mind,” Corabelle said. She stuck her feet in her shoes. “I’m going like this.” She shoved her bag at me. “I’m riding with the baby.”
“Get her a wheelchair,” the doctor said. “Take her down.”
Once we got to the hospital, Corabelle started checking out books and making sure she understood every term. We were given a room at the Ronald McDonald House, and she printed out internet searches, peppering the doctors with questions whenever anyone made rounds.
Finn was enclosed in a clear incubator. We could snake our hands through round openings on the side and touch his hands and head wherever the wires weren’t taped. Corabelle kept a vigil, standing by him as much as she could, or sitting in one of the rockers that seemed to be a staple in NICU wards.
The room was never silent, but whirred and buzzed with alarms and machines. On the first day, I thought I would go mad with it, but eventually I learned to cope. We had nothing to do but this, no school, no job, just be there for Finn, to sit in the ward, watch them run the tests or wheel him out when he had to be assessed on some other floor.
The journey had been hard on him, and at the new hospital we saw the nurses come over to him when he had something called apnea, where he stopped breathing. Apparently during one of the nights we weren’t there, they had to do CPR to restart his heart. We were waiting for some definitive word, and we talked to so many doctors, from normal baby doctors to heart specialists. It seemed every time they made a decision, something would happen to Finn, and they would want to assess him again.
Corabelle’s mom tried to convince us to go home for prom, to try to enjoy a night out. Corabelle had a fit. “How can you even suggest that, when Finn is so ill?”
The last time we saw the neonatologist, on the morning of prom, he said the surgeon would be meeting with us. “Why hasn’t he already had surgery?” Corabelle demanded, shoving a printout in the man’s face. “Five days is the recommended maximum to keep the ductus open. It’s been seven!”
I could see what Corabelle couldn’t. The man’s face was a mask of professionalism, of detachment. They’d given up on Finn, but they hadn’t told us yet. I couldn’t bring myself to say this to Corabelle, even though I knew.
Her phone had been blowing up with messages all day. Everyone seemed to think that since Finn was okay all week, he’d be okay for the night. Several of Corabelle’s friends sided with her mother, telling her to get back home and attend her prom.
“They don’t get it.” Corabelle threw her phone in her purse. “We can’t go dance and laugh and have our pictures made. This is our whole life.” She pressed on her swollen breasts. “Besides, I can’t exactly pump milk in the middle of the crowning of the king and queen.”
I sat on the floor of the NICU, leaning back against the seat of her rocking chair, her knees on either side of my shoulders. My arms wound around her legs. I didn’t know how anybody did this long-term, just waited. Corabelle had talked to some of the other mothers, but their babies were all doing well, growing and getting better. She couldn’t bear it any more than seeing the curtains get wrapped around a family and a bed, rolled along a track to hide their tragedy from the other occupants of the ward. Two babies had died in the week we’d been there, and both times Corabelle had sobbed half the night.
Our favorite NICU nurse, Angilee, came and got us for the last meeting with the doctors, her face somber. Unlike the other times, when they talked to us in the ward or the hallways or the waiting rooms, this time we were led to a conference room with a large table and rolling chairs.
A nurse brought in a cart with a computer on it inside the room. Inside was one of the NICU doctors who talked to us every day, plus two other new ones, a man and a woman. They stood when we walked in.
My senses immediately went on alert. This was too formal. Something bad was about to go down. At the last minute another woman rushed in, dressed in regular clothes.
I don’t remember everything they said. They showed us an MRI of Finn’s brain they’d done during the night. They talked about lack of oxygen and mental activity, about what sort of life he might lead even with surgery.
Corabelle demanded to know why surgery hadn’t happened yet, more force in her voice than I’d ever seen. I remember staring at the image of a brain, all strange colors like they’d dyed it with Kool-Aid. Then Corabelle was standing up, shouting, and I pulled on her, tried to bring her down. “They want us to take out the tubes,” she said to me. “Don’t just sit there and let them take out the tubes.”
One of the doctors turned to me. “Finn is almost completely dependent on the ventilator now. Instead of growing stronger for surgery, he’s weakened. There really isn’t any hope for a recovery.”
“So you get to decide?” I asked. “You make the choice about whether he lives or dies?”
The doctor looked over at the others. “It’s come down to how long this will go on.”
“But you’re supposed to fix his heart,” Corabelle said, her face doused in tears. “You were supposed to do surgery.”
“It’s a complex surgery,” one of the other doctors said. “We don’t think the prognosis in this case is good enough to attempt it.”
“So you’re saying no?” Corabelle said. “Is that what you’re saying? No surgery? No chance?”
The woman spoke up then. “No decision of this magnitude is ever made by one person.”
Corabelle sagged in her chair, dropping her head to the table.
The first doctor stood. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said.
I wanted to punch him. It hadn’t even happened yet. Finn was still in there, breathing along with a machine, his heartbeats still registering on the monitors. He wasn’t lost. He was in there.
Corabelle ran from the room, back to the NICU. I wanted to follow her but the woman in regular clothes stopped me. “We have forms to be taken care of,” she said.
“What sort of forms?” I demanded.
The doctors filed out as she spread papers out on the table. “This is just to initiate measures to make the baby comfortable.”
“Comfortable how?”
“We’re shifting into a different kind of care now,” she said quietly.
“What if we don’t agree? What if we want another opinion?”
“Finn has been assessed by several doctors. But if you’d like to have a meeting with the hospital ethics committee, it can be scheduled.”
I sank back down in the chair. “Who are you again?”
“I’m Alice, the social worker.”
“So you see this sort of thing all the time?”
“This is part of my job, yes.”
“If Finn was your baby, would you do this?”
She sat in the chair next to me. “It’s hard to let go. Only you as Finn’s family can decide when you’re ready, when you feel you’ve exhausted all your options.”
“But they won’t do the surgery.”
She set down the pen. “They don’t feel it would be successful, and it is a difficult, painful, long surgery.”
I held my head in my hands, staring at the sheets of paper. Finn would be cut open, his heart sliced up, and all for nothing. That’s what they were saying.
I snatched up the pen, scrawling my name everywhere there was a flag. They’d already prepared all of this before the meeting, so anything we said wouldn’t have changed what happened. Even so, her words nagged at me. Only you as Finn’s family can decide.
When the woman finally picked up the papers, I hurried after Corabelle. She was in the NICU, leaning over Finn’s bed, stroking his head. “We didn’t get much parenting in, did we?”
I came up behind her and put my arms around her waist. “We crammed in all we could.”
Finn’s chest rose and fell with the ventilator. I’d never gotten used to the sound, a choppy mechanical wheeze. A nurse arrived and shot something into his IV. “We’re giving him a stronger medication. He’ll rest very peacefully now.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but not long after that, I could see he had changed, his arms flatter against the bed, his legs very still. He was more than asleep now. He was out.
“What did they do to him?” Corabelle asked. She picked up his limp hand.
I knew they had sedated him, and that this was the beginning. “You should call your parents now,” I said. “They should be here.”
Corabelle fumbled with her phone. I knew I should probably call my mother, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She might bring my father, and I didn’t want him there.
The staff didn’t allow calls in the NICU, other than in emergencies, so Corabelle left the ward. I was alone with Finn, seeing the same things Corabelle had seen. He already seemed gone. The machine continued its helicopter sound. I tried to picture him somewhere else, asleep in the crib at home, the butterfly mobile fluttering above his head. He was healthy and fine, and if I wanted to, I could pick him up, stick him on my shoulder, and carry him around with me, warm and breathing and curled into my neck. I’d never held him. No one had. I wasn’t sure any of us would.
A nurse walked by, and I reached out to stop her. “So what happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
I could see she didn’t know what had been decided earlier that day. “When they turn all of this off.” I gestured vaguely at all the machinery.
Her eyes grew wide. “Let me get someone who is updated on Finn.” She stroke briskly away.
The nurse Angilee popped around the corner. “I’m so sorry, Gavin. Finn is such a beautiful little boy. You two can decide what time we remove the ventilator. We usually do it around eight in the evening, as that is a quiet time here. Does that give your family time to be here? Or do you want another time?”
I tried to answer her, but my mouth had gone completely dry. “I will ask Corabelle if eight works.”
She took my hand, her dark fingers surrounding mine. Her braids were tied together in an intricate weave, like a halo on her head. “Do you want to have Finn baptized?”
“I don’t know,” I croaked out. “I need to ask Corabelle. Our families aren’t very religious.”
She squeezed my hand. “Let me know. We have a chaplain here. I’ll just need some notice to make sure he can fit it in sometime today.”
“So what happens?”
“Well, first we’ll seat Corabelle in a chair, and then we’ll take off the monitor wires so we can move Finn out of the bed.” She pointed to the disks on his chest. “He’ll still be on the ventilator.” She let go of me and moved around the machines to point out the thick air tubes that led to his mouth.
“This we can move with him, and we’ll untape it. When you both are ready, we’ll take it out.”
I gripped the edge of the bed. “Will he die right away?”
“Not usually. He’ll breathe a little on his own for a little while. But he won’t be pumping enough oxygen.”
“He’s going to suffocate?”
Angilee came back around and rubbed my back. “We will not let Finn be in any pain whatsoever.”
“He’s sedated, isn’t he?”
“He has been since he was given the ventilator, for his safety.”
“But it’s more now.”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“He doesn’t feel anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
So he really was already gone. Anything we said to him, any touch we did. I had made that choice. I had signed the paper and now it was too late to even say good-bye.
“He’s still with us, Gavin. He’s still here.” She pulled a clipboard from the shelf above the machine and wrote his statistics on it.
“How long will it take, once he’s off?”
“That’s up to Finn. He’ll decide when he’s done.”
Corabelle came back, her eyes all red. “Mom wants him baptized. Can we do that?”
“Absolutely,” Angilee said. “Come here, child.” She wrapped Corabelle into a deep hug. “Is she going to ask her minister or should I get the chaplain here?”
“I guess someone here.”
“I’ll call him. He’ll come talk to you about it.” She pulled away from Corabelle and looked into her face. “So much to bear for someone so young.”
Corabelle started crying again, and Angilee walked her over to me. “I’ll be back. Someone will be with you pretty much from now until it’s time.”
Corabelle looked over to me. “When is it time?”
“Eight o’clock, unless we want to change it.”
She whipped around to look at the clock. “Eight more hours! Eight more hours!” Her legs seemed to give out, and I helped her to the rocking chair. “What can we do in eight hours?”
I didn’t have an answer for her.
“I have to read him a storybook!” Corabelle said, popping back out of the chair. “And sing him a nursery rhyme.” She walked up to the enclosed crib. “I have to teach him ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’” She looked up at me, and I knew I’d be haunted by her expression for a long time as she said, “We’re never going to take him to Disney World, are we?”
I stood next to her, wishing I were anywhere but there, but at the same time, that I would never have to leave.
