NEED to BREATHE

Chapter 2

I mean butterflies. So I serenade: Fly, fly, butterfly. I have no wings, but I’m gonna try. To fly like a butterfly--

Manda cries and shakes herself into shimmies. She can’t quit crying. The nurses tell her to calm down, that the baby needs her to calm down! “But, I hear a song,” she says.

Mick says he does, too.

They let Mick and Manda feed Claire with a little bottle when she’s nine weeks old, when the suck-and-swallow instinct finally kicks in. Weigh time is midnight and it’s like an event to stay up for, ringing in the New Year or something. The nurses pump on their toes and hold hands as they watch the needle settle on a number on the scale--has she gained, has she lost? When Claire finally reaches four pounds and twelve weeks, she graduates out of the incubator and into a bassinet. Those nurses throw a party in the break room, complete with balloons and finger-food and soda. They turn up the radio and blow bubbles, toot their funky-striped party horns and cram cake like there’s no tomorrow or the next day. They figure: phooey if we get in trouble. They invite Mick and Manda, hang a “congratulations” banner and--

The alarms sound off.

It turns out to be severe reflux that slows Claire’s heartbeat. So from now on I whisper: Breathe and beat. You can do it, little lungs. You can do it, little heart. While you’re playing in the sandbox, doodling with crayons or finding friends, there will always be your life rhythms, your life songs, like a drum.

Going thum-thum-thum-thum.

They move her back into the NICU as Mick says, “Few steps forward, few steps back.” That’s the ways of the days. Pendulums swing like pendulums do. Get some sleep, I tell them. She’ll be fine because I am here. Semper Fi, I salute, I am here.

Mick and Manda don’t really sleep, per se. It’s more like they’re resting their eyelids. Their pants are corduroy, bell-bottomed and slung low on their hips. They haven’t been washed in a week. Their faces are dark, weary and worn. They are so thin you can see their collar bones, lost so much weight, spent all their money, breathed into those plastic CPR dummies so much they got a bad taste in their mouths.

“So when she goes home,” a doctor says, “you can do all the things these nurses do. We didn’t put so much into this baby only for her to go home and…And. You know.”

She reaches five pounds and the D-word is in sight: discharge. It’s at that point Mick and Manda’s friends throw a baby shower, full of the usual things, like receiving blankets and clothes, rubber duckies floating in pink punch. They also get some fun things like “Spit Happens” and “Dr. Drool” bibs, a Boogie Baby wrap and a onesie screen-printed with “Poop Factory.” Sorority sisters give Manda a diaper bag printed up like army fatigues and apology cards that say, “Sorry you can’t sleep.”

But Mick finds something in a local shop he can’t resist, apart from all the gifts and the gags: a pacifier printed with “Daddy’s Girl.” He scratches his head and cradles his chin in a hand, imagines it in her mouth, the words bobbing up and down as she sucks. Daddy’s Girl, he thinks. You survived…and I’m a daddy.

He holds it in his hand and sees her, in his mind, riding horsy on his knee. He asks the medical staff when she’ll be able to use a pacifier, and at what age can she rough-and-tumble? The doctors and therapists don’t answer him. They are too busy talking about apnea, oxygen tanks, home nursing visits, preferential parking stickers and developmental follow-ups. “You’ll want to get to know your local rescue squad,” they say. “Inform them you have a preemie. Here’s the hospital’s number, how you can reach us in the NICU.”

They place calls and have conflicts with insurance companies and Medicaid. “You’re paying what? And we owe what?” Mick rubs through his hair. He keeps a constant headache these days, the kind that makes his teeth hurt.

Social workers come in, calling them “Mr. and Mrs. Harper,” asking where they are going to take the baby, how capable they are, do they know what they’re doing, and--the lack of wedding bands. “Oh. Are you two not married? Sorry I assumed.”

Mick and Manda look at each other. They don’t answer that question. Not even when the newspaper sends a journalist to do a special story on them since Claire is the smallest baby to survive at the hospital. They take photo after photo of the family, but Mick and Manda find it hard to smile.

They are too tired.

In the story, they are referred to as “Mr. and Mrs. Harper.”

“I guess we should get married,” Mick says.

“Is that a proposal?” Manda says.

He pauses for a while because he isn’t exactly sure of where they’ll live or how they’ll finish school or what will become of their various Mount Everests. He stares into infinitude, where thoughts become chaff and time has no meaning. Too many crises have ruptured their relationship, so romance is rare. It’s in the weak smiles only, in the hyperbole of touch.

I suggest to Mick: Hit the floor with one knee, take her hands in yours and formally ask.

So he does. “Marry me?”

She sniffs, swipes her eyes with the back of a hand and says, “We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we--” and she cracks a smile so small you could almost miss it--“since that romp on top of the washing machine.”

So she agrees and he buys her a ring, a one-third carat cluster from the pawn shop. The manager gives him credit on a handshake because heck, it’s the best Mick can do, and together they make their plans. They are still planning and calling and arranging and panicking when The Day finally comes and the medical staff says, “Remember the precautions: She still has a very weak immune system,” they say. “And will always have weak lungs. She can only have a few--if any--visitors for the first several weeks. Limit contact with other kids. Don’t take her out to public places for a while. Always wash your hands before holding her. And last, but not least,” say the nurses…

“Take care of yourselves.” You can see tears in their eyes as they give Mick and Manda hugs. “You’ve been like family,” they say. “Keep in touch. Call us for anything, hear?”

Mick and Manda stand there, like a knife just sawed their sinews or scored a line down their hearts. They are stumped, stumbling over “thank you” and “what-would-we-do” as they prepare to take their baby out of her protected, her aseptic, her speckless mise en scene, where she’ll have her first exposé with the germs and the gunk and the grime that is…

The world.