Two Years: The Dime Story

Two years it's been now.

I've mentioned here and there, in little hints, at her early birth and the difficulties thereafter. I don't think I've ever written, barring a personal email to a fellow blogger, of what happened those days and weeks in the hospital, and how the memory of those moments still haunt me, how they still make my heart race and stomach pitch and my feet start tapping.

It was bad, her birth; the unexpectedness, the rush, the bright lights and nurses and doctors, and then ultimately, the silence. She didn't cry when she was taken from my womb and whisked out the door.

"She'll be fine, she'll be fine", my Mom kept whispering as she stroked my hair, but they didn't sound like words of truth, they were more words of a prayer. Not the type of prayer that is murmured softly as comfort, but a prayer of begging.

They are very different, those two prayers.

Within the confines of a secure and sterile neo-natal unit (NICU) there were private sealed-off rooms for the babies most in need. When I was finally wheeled in to see her nearly eight hours after her birth in one of those rooms, I reached to touch her toe and the doctor stopped me. Too much stimulation, I believe is what she said.

The ventilator clicked. The monitors beeped. The prayers were said. ("Do you have a minister or priest you could call? Do you have a minister or priest you could call? Do you have a minister or priest you could call?") Those words, they haunt me still.

My grandfather had died about a year prior to this. After his death, we began finding dimes in the oddest places. See, he was a dime man. Couldn't give grand kids pennies, they weren't worth enough. Quarters? Too much. Always a dime from him, each time we parted.

And suddenly, dimes were everywhere. The sole item left on the driver's side of a smashed car that my cousin had just stepped out of moments before it was hit. Falling from my sister's hair one morning while she was crying in the shower. Sitting inside my grandmother's bible.

You could say the dimes were always there; I'd believe you. We often don't take note of the smallest things around us until we need to. I know this. But there are other things I know, as well.

I know that at 3:12 a.m. two days after she was born, the neonatologist came into my room.

"It's morning already"? I thought at first. I looked out the dark window and then back at her, walking in slow motion across my room, her eyes never leaving mine.

"No", I said, struggling to sit up, "No".

I felt like I was drowning then, seeing the wave that was about to pull me under, but too caught up in the currents to do anything about it.

"Jenny-fer", she was foreign and had an accent, "Jenny-fer, we must talk". Her hand reached out for mine, but I pulled mine back. I wasn't tying myself to that anchor that was about to bind me forever at the bottom of the sea.

"Tell me". The words were mine, they were in my voice, but I'm not sure how I spoke them. I remember thinking as soon as I said them that I wanted to take them back because life would never be the same again, and if only I hadn't asked to be told, it would be alright.

"Jenny-fer, Little A was resuscitated again tonight. She is needing a blood transfusion and must have more tests right away. I need you to sign here".

"Is she going to live? Is she"? I finally asked the question that I hadn't had the strength to for the past two days.

"There are things I cannot tell you, things you want to hear that I cannot say. But you must sign these papers". She held out the paper and pen in front of me.

I took them from her. "I want to see her. Now". I demanded in a voice not my own; I had to. My time with her had been so limited and rationed, and I believed, as most mothers do, if I could just see her, touch her, hold her, she would be well. "I won't sign this until you let me see her".

She begged that instead I let her sedate me, "You're always awake, crying".

We negotiated an agreement: I would be allowed to see her before the transfusion and MRI's, and after that, I would take some medication to sleep, and call someone to come and sit with me.

"You must wash up, change clothes, then we will go".

I went through the ritual that you needed to undergo before being allowed to enter into the unit. You couldn't take anything in with you, you had to scrub right outside of the door and be pushed in. You had to remain in your wheelchair. You couldn't rip open the doors and grasp your child to your chest.

The nurse slowly wheeled me into her solitary room and placed my chair against her incubator.

Whirl, click, beep, beep, beep.
Whirl, click, beep, beep, beep.
Whirl, click, beep, beep, beep.

I finally found it within myself to look up from my clenched hands and at her tiny little body.

While doing so, something caught my eye.

There, on her incubator stand, was one small, silver dime.

I gasped and reached for it. The nurse also gasped, but not for the same reasons as I.

"How did that get in here? That can't be in here". She held out her hand, expecting me to hand it over to her.

"No. It's mine. I need this". I grasped it firmly in my hands and clutched it to my chest.

"You can't have that in here, and now you can't touch her. You'll need to go scrub again". Her hand, still outstretched, began to soften when she looked at me. "You can't have that in here", she repeated again, softer, slower.

She wheeled me over to scrub again, and let me put the dime in the locker outside the NICU.

When I went back in to say goodbye to Little A before her transfusions and test, the doctor was there.

"Ahhh, Jenny-fer, you must say your goodbyes to her for now and then we talk later, after you sleep. Then maybe we will know more".

"She's going to be alright", I said, not a question, but rather a statement.

She looked at me sadly and said, "I cannot tell you these things that I don't know".

I looked back at her and said, "You don't have to tell me. I do know".

And it turns out, I did know.

Happy Birthday Little A. May your life be filled with dimes.