Hannah was already sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, waiting. I sat down carefully next to her and laid Baby Shondra across our laps. Hannah picked up her library book and opened it to the first page.
“Once upon a time there was a princess,” she began, making up her favorite story as she pretended to read.
Then, turning the book around, she held the page open, inches from Shondra’s face.
“See, Baby Shondra, see? It’s a beautiful princess, just like you and me.”
She turned to me and grinned. I kissed the top of her head.
“I love you, Missy,” I whispered.
“I know, Mommy. I know,” she whispered back.
As I sat on the floor, listening to Hannah spin tales into Shondra’s soundless world, I realized that I, too, had been telling stories to deaf ears. The truth didn’t care about my expectations, about the way things were supposed to be. It was what it was. As in the moment in the emergency room, when my miscarriage had become the reason I could go with Hannah to her X-rays, I was reminded that it is my expectations, the story I weave around the truth, that make what is happening seem better or worse, good or bad, fair or not fair.
Looking at Baby Shondra, now asleep on Hannah’s lap, I realized something else, too. Hannah’s sense that every little girl was precious and loved wasn’t just a fantasy she had made up; it had emerged out of a deeper truth. Love is bigger than tumors or blindness, and it was a feeling that Hannah trusted and knew.
THERE WAS A FLURRY OF ACTIVITY IN THE PREOPERATING room. Efficient-looking people in official-looking coats were bustling back and forth around us. The huge metal doors of the operating room swung open and shut, and the anesthesiologist appeared.
Hannah’s body was limp in my lap. Her eyes were open, but they rolled lazily around in their sockets. She was wrapped in her pink blanket, wearing nothing but her red shoes. An hour earlier she had refused to wear a hospital gown.
“It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t match my shoes,” she had said.
“How’s she doing?” the anesthesiologist asked, wrapping her fingers around Hannah’s wrist, feeling her pulse.
“My shoes,” Hannah said weakly.
“What did she say?” the doctor asked.
“Hannah’s worried you’re going to take off her shoes,” Claude explained. “She made a deal with the surgeon that she could wear them in surgery.”
“Oh, I heard about that,” the anesthesiologist said. “You must be a very special patient, Hannah. Dr. Saad gave us specific orders that you be allowed to wear your red shoes. I won’t forget.”
Hannah nodded and closed her eyes. The doctor pushed another syringe of sedative into the IV line. Hannah’s head dropped against my chest with a thud. I held my breath as long as I could. Hannah didn’t move. The operating room doors swung open again, and two nurses wheeled a long gurney covered with a white sheet into the room. One of them leaned over, gathered Hannah’s body in her arms, and lifted her off my lap. Laying Hannah in the middle of the white sheet, the nurse covered the lower half of her body with a hospital blanket.
My eyes studied Hannah, looking for any sign that she was aware of being taken from me. She didn’t flinch. She looked tiny, lost in the middle of the huge white expanse. I struggled to keep from believing she might already be dead. This was the first time in five days she’d been more than an arm’s length away from me. A sob broke out of my chest. Claude held me as we watched the nurses push Hannah’s gurney toward the operating room. The doors parted to let Hannah and her attendants through, then swung shut behind them. Claude and I didn’t move, barely able to believe what was happening. A minute later, the doors swung open and one of the nurses appeared. She handed me Hannah’s shoes, wrapped in a clear plastic bag.
“She was completely sedated before we took them off,” she said. “Make sure the recovery nurse gets them, so we can put them on before she wakes up.”
She smiled sympathetically.
“She’s in good hands. It’ll be okay,” she said softly before walking away.
Claude and I were led to a curtained alcove in the family waiting area. There was no room in that tiny space for anything but two chairs and the truth.
The first hour we sobbed uncontrollably in each other’s arms. When there were no tears left, we began to talk. For years, I had loved Claude as deeply and imperfectly as I was able. From the moment we met, I had been drawn to him like a little boy’s finger to the tip of a flame. He had seemed wise and mature compared with the other men/boys I knew. He was earnest, hardworking, and handsome. He also seemed deeply hurt and unusually angry sometimes. I was, too. There had been something about our mutual hopes and hurts that had brought us together. We had married while I was still in college, when he was twenty-five and I was twenty.
As we clung to each other and waited for news from the surgeon, Claude and I knew one thing: Our children were more important than anything else either of us would ever do. They were the reason we were together, and we wanted to have more. It was a truth so deep that it cut cleanly through any doubts or fears we might otherwise have had.
“Let’s get pregnant again as soon as we can,” Claude said. With my face buried in his shoulder, I nodded.
LAURAJANE, THE NEW PASTOR OF OUR SMALL METHODIST church, was standing across from me on the other side of Hannah’s bed. She didn’t look like any church leader I had ever seen. She was thirty-one, the same age as me, with a short, thick body and a head of wiry red curls that refused to be tamed. She wore a long, green velvet dress, and a gold cross hung from a chain around her neck. She clutched a wad of tissue in her hand, because her eyes kept filling with tears.
Two days before, surgeons had lifted a tumor the size of a small soccer ball from Hannah’s abdomen. Now she was lying on the bed, tethered to a respirator and heavily sedated. Plastic tubes and the tips of her red shoes emerged from the edges of her pink blanket. Monitors with zigzagging green lines hung from the ceiling above the bed. The only sounds in the room were an occasional beep and a periodic whoosh from the respirator.
Laurajane bowed her head and started to pray. I closed my eyes and tried to quiet my mind. It was doing crazy things. In one moment it was a model of efficiency, deciphering the whooshes, clicks, and beeps of the various machines so quickly that they no longer frightened me. In the next, I couldn’t even remember when I had last eaten.
I desperately needed someone to take care of me. Since Hannah’s surgery, I hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time, and yesterday my body had given up the tiny form of our dead baby. I knew that I couldn’t depend on Claude to do any more. After five days of juggling work, errands, phone calls, visiting me and Hannah, and shuttling Will between the hospital, play dates, and home, he was as exhausted as I was.
At least my mother was now here. She and Will were moving into the Ronald McDonald House, a beautiful facility with lots of toys and activities to keep Will busy, across the street from the hospital. Claude would continue to sleep at home. It was probably just as well; he and my mother had, over the years, only barely managed to get along, and these days I couldn’t handle being a referee.
One of the monitors began to beep. I realized my mind had been wandering. The beeping stopped. I tried once again to concentrate on Laurajane’s words. It was too late.
“Amen,” Laurajane