Hannah's Gift (3 page)

DR. MARKOFF CLEARED HIS THROAT AND ADJUSTED HIS
glasses. He was Dr. Edman’s partner, one of Hannah’s pediatricians. He was sitting on the edge of his chair across from Claude and me. His shoulders were stooped, his face gaunt and strained. His wiry hair was disheveled, two-day-old creases wrinkled his trousers, and his shirt was missing one of its buttons. He didn’t seem to notice or care.

“I’m speaking to you as a father, not as a pediatrician,” he began, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees. He cleared his throat again; I studied him more carefully. He looked as if he was about to cry.

Claude and I exchanged glances.

“My daughter Danielle was diagnosed with leukemia last year. She’s two years old. My wife is with her now at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where she’s getting a stem cell transplant. We’re trying to save her life.”

In one breath we went from a gathering of two parents and a doctor to two fathers and a mother who belonged to a club no one wanted to be in.

“You are going to have to make thousands of decisions from now on that no one but the two of you can make; some of them may make a difference whether Hannah lives or dies. The best advice I can give you is this.”

He looked directly at Claude and me.

“Make the best decision you can with the information you have
at that time.”
He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair.

“‘At that time’ is the critical part. You’ll see what I mean. You can drive yourself crazy saying, ‘If only we had known this, if only we had known that.’ The point is, you
didn’t
know, so just keep telling yourselves, ‘We did the best we could with what we knew. We did the best we could with what we knew.’”

I could hear a deep truth in his words. As I let them seep into my heart, something softened in me and fell away. I realized that Dr. Markoff’s rule applied not only to the decisions we had to make about Hannah’s treatment, but to every other area of my life as well. My fear of making mistakes could no longer paralyze me; from now on, it would be enough to do the best I could with what I knew.

WILL WAS CURLED UP ON MY LAP, OUR ARMCHAIR
touching the side of Hannah’s bed. His blond crew cut tickled the bottom of my chin. His body had been long and solid from the day he was born, but it was his soft green eyes that most people noticed first and remembered.

Hannah was watching us from the bed, propped against a pile of pillows. A plastic line ran from her arm to an IV pole. She had spread her pink blanket over her legs and was wearing a rhinestone crown and her pink-flowered “robe j’s.”

I cleared my throat. The weight of the moment crushed against my chest.

“Hannah, the doctors have figured out why you are feeling so sick. There is a lump in your tummy called a tumor. A tumor happens sometimes when a few of the cells in a person’s body grow the wrong way and don’t do what they’re supposed to do. The doctors are going to take it out, and then give you medicines to try to make sure the bad cells don’t come back.”

“Is it going to hurt?” Hannah asked, her brow wrinkled and her lips pursed into a worried pout. I paused. In the past, I had often coped with difficult situations by glossing over them, trying to find something good in them, praying that if I could avoid the truth long enough, it would go away. This time, though, I wanted Will and Hannah to be able to trust me. I couldn’t start lying to them now.

“Yes, Hannah, it probably will hurt, but the doctors and nurses are going to do everything they can to make it hurt as little as possible. They have special medicines that will make you sleep while they take the lump out, and other medicines that will help your body rest while it gets better.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I’m not tired!!” Hannah protested.

“You don’t have to sleep now,” Will said gently, “only when they take the lump out. Right, Mom?” he asked, turning to me.

I smiled and nodded.

“Oh.
That’s
okay.” Hannah sighed, sounding relieved.

“Mom.” Will was still looking at me, his eyes filling with tears. “Is a tumor the same thing as cancer?”

“We don’t know yet, Will,” I said, starting to cry. “The doctors can’t be sure until they take it out and look at the cells under a microscope.”

Hannah was watching us silently.

“If it’s bad news you’ll tell us, right, Mom?” Will asked.

Hannah sat straight up and looked into my eyes without blinking. I took a breath. I couldn’t help wishing that Claude had been able to be here with me, but he had told
me he didn’t trust himself to know what to say. I appreciated his honesty, and I also knew that if ever there was a time when the two of us had to respect our differences, this was it. We were like two people in a one-man life raft in the middle of a dark ocean.

Will and Hannah were still waiting for my answer.

“Yes, Will,” I said. “Even if it’s bad news, I’ll tell you the truth.”

Hannah smiled and leaned back into her pillows.

“Thanks, Mom,” Will said, flinging his arms around my neck.

“Mommy, I love you,” Hannah said.

“I love you both,” was all I could say.

OUR WORLD HAD SHRUNK TO THE SIZE OF A HOSPITAL
floor, but I didn’t mind. My brain was busy replacing no longer needed facts, such as the cost of a package of diapers, with new ones, such as the proper doses of certain medications; it didn’t have room for much else.

Hannah was restless. We decided to go for a stroll through our new neighborhood. As she swung her legs over the side of the bed, I lunged to untangle the IV tube from the toe of her shoe before her foot hit the floor.

“Wait a minute, Missy,” I said, leaning over to unplug the IV pump. The unit began to beep. I pushed the “silence” button and wound the power cord around the pole.

“Hurry up, Mommy,” Hannah exclaimed, hopping from one foot to the other. “I hear Baby Shondra crying. I think she wants her mommy.”

I wheeled the IV pole away from the wall and checked to make sure the tube wasn’t caught on anything.

“Okay, we’re ready,” I said.

Hannah held my hand in one of hers, and with the other
lifted the edge of her nightgown like a princess, to keep the hem from dragging on the floor. We walked slowly as I maneuvered the awkward equipment into the hallway and followed our usual route. Turning right out of her room, we strolled past the supply closet and the conference room, stopping in front of the open doors of the pediatric intensive care unit. It was empty now, but not for long.

“Remember, Hannah, here’s where you’re going to wake up after your surgery tomorrow.”

Hannah took a couple of steps into the room. I followed. Respirators, monitors, breathing tubes, and carts of medical supplies lined the walls. The room smelled like an emergency. It was hard for me to imagine Hannah there. I forced myself to do it.

“You’ll be in one of these beds, and I’ll be sleeping next to you in the big blue chair. Some tubes will be connected to your body to help you breathe, and some to help you sleep. There will be lots of beeping and other noises. A nurse will be with us all the time to make sure everything is okay.”

“I want Nurse Katie or Nurse Amy,” Hannah said, “and I want to wear my red shoes to surgery. Be sure to tell the doctors that.”

“I’ll tell them, Hannah, but I’m not sure they can do it.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” she cried, stomping her foot on the linoleum floor. “Surgery has too many rules. I can’t eat dinner. I can’t wear my robe j’s. I can’t wear my red shoes. That’s not fair,” she repeated.

“I see what you mean, Hannah. That is a lot of rules. I’ll tell them what you said and see what they can do.”

We continued our walk; past the playroom, around the corner, stopping briefly to choose a book from the library shelves, and then around the corner again. This was the busiest street in the neighborhood: room after room of sick children and their families. A few parents looked up as we passed, exchanging wan, dazed, or sympathetic glances with me. Each room was a story in itself. I never tried to figure out who was here for what. My own story was enough. Hannah’s pace quickened. I struggled to keep up, the IV pole clattering along beside me. The nurses exclaimed in unison when they saw Hannah coming.

“Baby Shondra has been missing you,” Nurse Patty called from behind the desk.

A tiny baby was lying in a bassinet in front of the nurses’ station, her cries lost in the flurry of activity. She was two months old, with translucent blue eyes, dark brown curls, and pursed rosebud lips. She had also been declared severely brain-damaged; she would never be able to see or hear.

Her parents had explained to the nurses that they could not care for such a baby.

The hospital had filed the necessary paperwork, but until a foster home was found, she slept in the hospital hall. Busy nurses fed, changed, rocked, and held her whenever they could. Mostly, when she wasn’t sleeping, Shondra cried.

“It’s okay, Baby Shondra,” Hannah murmured, leaning over the edge of the bassinet, close to the baby’s screwed-up, bawling face. “Your mommy will be back soon. And
guess what,” she added brightly, “I brought you something to read.”

Shondra’s cries became whimpers. Hannah stroked Shondra’s cheeks and poked her finger through Shondra’s clenched fist. Shondra stopped crying. The nurses looked away as I lifted Shondra out of her bassinet. I knew that they weren’t supposed to allow me to pick her up, but they were grateful for the help. As I cuddled the baby close to my chest, I couldn’t help wondering if her parents felt as disappointed by life as I did. Weren’t bad things only supposed to happen to bad people? What had I done, what had these little girls done, to deserve this?

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.