Kalila (16 page)

A survivor.

Wind rushes your veins.

You are entering the unknown.

The future keeps on coming. They can't take that away.

Dr. Vanioc steps into the den to find that Diane has mounted a Colville print she bought online. It's hanging on the feature wall. He snaps open a beer, drops on the couch, puts up his tired feet. There's not much more than a moon and a cow. His head is aching. The cow is sleeping in a field.
The child's lungs aren't clear
. The sky has windblown clouds.
As long as you keep parameters sterile and artificial you are taking a chance
. The cow is in the foreground,
a different kind of chance
, a cattle shed on the horizon.
But then when has Dr. Vanioc taken a chance at all?
He squeezes the pain against his backbone.
The parents are right in how they've interpreted
— the cow's back gently contours, rhyming with the hills.
But in someone that small a judgment can be inaccurate
— Bill Vanioc drops his feet. This picture should be peaceful, pleasing — Diane!

Diane appears in the doorway with Cy and a plate of cheese and crackers. The baby, face smeared, grins, reaching for Dr. Vanioc. Isn't it nice? Diane goes on about the tonal contrasts. They make the earth more luminous than the moon; and so the picture feels enchanted. The baby grabs Dr. Vanioc's face. He doesn't feel enchanted. He feels exhausted, hypnotized. He's drinking his beer too fast and on an empty stomach.
If she asphyxiates
— his son's tiny fingernails scratch and scratch.

Dinner and
W5
. The plight of immigrants in our country. A cow dozes above Diane's onyx bowls set on a weathered sky-blue entry table. Reality has shifted. Overqualified for jobs.

February 26. Thirty-three below. A play of light. Ice fog with sunny breaks. Rustle of snowfall.

Kalila's coming home.

One last time I step into the neonatal landscape. Survey the clutter, the thick black cords entangling, endless outlets clutching behind countless little beds. I have spent hours talking with the nurses, the doctors, the psychologist, the Upjohn organization who, like a big fat fairy godmother, will pay the bills.
Yes, we know it will be hard. Yes, we're grateful
. What do they want? Grovelling?

A baby carriage in the corner. An empty rocking chair. No abandoned glass slipper, no spinning wheel prick here. No poisoned apples. This fairy tale will have a happy ending.

Baby Krueger, kitty-corner to Kalila, propped at an angle, is fed through a gastronomy tube as well. His father never visits. Ghost-thin and awkward, the mother curls over her baby's emaciated body, fine hair masking her face. There's a nervousness in neonatal this afternoon. Like the restlessness of cows when one is led off to the slaughter.
Left on your own with your baby. It could happen
.

One last feeding lesson. 4 cc of Prosobee dribble down the elevated tube. I pour Prosobee from the narrow flask. Liquid gives in to gravity. The baby mews, moves softly in her bed. That little voice. 2 cc MCT oil spill down the tube. 1 cc digoxin.

Kalila stares up at me while the Prosobee drips. She senses something is afoot. Her legs kick once. Her orange Nerf ball springs across the isolette. I tighten the clip to slow the drops, pull up the stool, open the isolette hatch, and draw the little one onto my lap, tubes trailing like ribbons, like first prize at the fair. Kalila's small hand opens in a stationary wave. Goodbye, neonatal.

I hum, begin to sing.
Sail, baby, sail far across the sea
. Kalila gawks. Heads shoot up, the babies skittish. Kalila stares harder, a frown of concentration creasing her tiny forehead. You see? Just mention escape and this baby's on alert.

If you have any problems, the Dutch nurse says, stopping by Kalila's isolette, just call the hospital. She wrings my hand. You're very brave.

The social worker hovers, clipboard in hand. Marriages break up at times like this.

Screw off.

I'm here if you want to talk.

I turn my back. I am marching Kalila out of this hostile country, deserting its roads of tubes and intravenous lines, its trails of glass boxes, beeping machines, brown walls, closing doors, bequeathing them to the less determined, to those who don't know how to fight to win.

I replace the sleeping child in her glass cupboard, ride down the elevator, and step into a frigid blue-white world. Wind eddies the snow in swirling spirits. Storm in the forecast. In the time it takes to run across the giant parking lot to my car, my left cheek freezes. The Toyota's stiff motor barely turns. Five-thirty p.m. Dusk threads itself across the heavens.

One night to go.

I pull out of the hospital parking lot in a cloud of white exhaust, slide left onto Twenty-ninth Street, the terrible never-ending present vanishing in wisps of fog.

By the time I jerk up to the house, the interior of the car is almost warm.

You hover at the living room window, ache in your joints, peer through an oval frame of frost, burst open the front door, run out without your jacket, carry in the toy-loaded baby seat, slip on the front steps, trip over Skipper's skittering paws, the porch so cold.

A world of sharp edges. You've cleaned and rearranged the house. So many places a child might come to harm. You've started supper, your cooking a nervous habit. The house smells of sweet and sour. Maggie drops her coat and boots. While you set the table, Maggie stands in the baby's room, peach-and-cream wallpaper. Orange is the most stimulating colour, the physiotherapist said.

While you ladle the food, Maggie wanders to the front window to look beyond to the duplex where your neighbour slouches in the window mornings, scratching his underwear. Where a little girl lives.

Tomorrow your own will live across the street.

Sweet and sour pork ribs. Rice. Green beans. Baguette. Brodie spoons food into his mouth. Odd to be eating at a time like this. Sharing this Last Supper, remembering five months of grim and bloodless battle.

Brodie reaches for his glass, and as he raises his milk, the tears slide.

We'll do all right, Brodie.

I know.

I lie in bed and listen to the crunch of tires on the street, to Skipper's snuffly breaths. Imagine tomorrow's negations. No waiting for the phone. No long drive to the hospital. No walk into that cold neonatal country where dreams are unloaded at the door. A gaping space across from Baby Krueger's isolette. Will he sense Kalila's absence? Will he wonder where she's gone? Will the doctors, doing their rounds, experience a brief jerk of emotion? The chart for Kalila, thrown away? Her part played in hospital history over?

Last night, Marigold's girls burst through the door. A celebration. Last chance to babysit for a long time. Brodie popped their favourite disc into the DVD player, the two snuggled between us, Skipper scrunched at our feet, all chomping popcorn that still strews the carpet, and watched Mary Poppins and Eli dance their way through life's tribulations.

There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times … and all of them, as children know, penetrate each other
, Eli said. The girls drew against us, fresh-wind scent in their hair.

Outside, wind growls itself into a storm.

I twist to look at the alarm clock. Two a.m.

Four months, twenty-seven days.

Ten more hours.

It is near noon when the white-and-yellow ambulance jerks onto the street piled high with snowdrifts.

Maggie!

Maggie at a run.

You watch at the window, skittering heart, the driver jumps down, kicks up a snow spray. You, out this morning, six a.m., scraping the sidewalk, head lifted to the west. White clouds scuttle a whiter sky. You've spent the morning hunched over physics lab reports, drinking coffee, scrawling with your red pen. The tall thin passenger flings open the back doors, lifts out a small glass box. They stumble through the drifts, a baby between them, airborne, gazing at white sky. Her container touches down. Snow-scraped cement.

Calgary, meet Kalila!

Kalila, Calgary!

Two strangers push a tiny child up the sidewalk, natural light enfolding itself round her for the first time, two awkward, swearing men, wheels catching in the snowdrifts, swoop this baby into air as they back up the stairs and stamp into the porch, fighting the awkward angles. Skipper crouched under the kitchen table, whining. The neighbour, face seamed, rumpled sweater, squinting across the street.

And it's happening. A tiny princess rolls through your living room, her coach trailing a track of dirty melting snow across the waiting carpet.

The moving men unload Kalila in her winter nursery. Two icemen, breathing out of sync, smelling of snow and cold and outdoor boots, unload a glass-box baby, oxygen tent zipping, tubes and hoses sorted, Kalila already tumbled into exhausted sleep, deep breathing on her back, hospital nightie abandoned, in a surprising little dress of lacy forest-green, a five-month-old newborn, arm flung above her head.

She sleeps just like her Grandma Watson! Maggie whispers.

The men tuck in the tent around her, turn the oxygen up to fifty-three per cent. For half an hour. Get her breathing.