Page 27 of Two Weeks
This section of the nursery was the holding area for newborns who needed a little extra heat or light or medical care. Most of them stayed here less than twenty-four hours. Then they would join their moms in a regular maternity ward hospital room—at the other end of the sixth floor adjacent to labor and delivery.
But since the maternity ward also had a neonatal intensive care unit, Lucy and her peers spent most of their time with very sick babies. The NICU, as they called it, was for infants like Nathan. Children born addicted to drugs or premature or with some other sort of medical condition.
Lucy made her way to check on Nathan. His bassinet was near the front. Two other babies with difficulty breathing were in oxygen tents. But because of his gestational age, Nathan was the most critical infant in the ward.
For a few minutes Lucy put her hand on the edge of his bed and just watched him. True, his lungs were strong. But they still labored with a series of machines for every inhale. The thing with this preemie was his will to keep taking that next breath. Like he was aware of what was happening and he was determined to grab on to life. Never let go.
She would love to know who this little one was going to be when he grew up. Probably climb mountains or cure cancer or run for president. If he could get through this, he could get through anything.
Brooke’s story came back to her. All this time she’d been thinking she wasn’t enough, that she was incomplete because she couldn’t get pregnant. And here Brooke Baxter West was carrying around the reality of her daughter’s drowning. Everyone was dealing with something. Brooke was right. Everyone had a story.
But that didn’t make Lucy’s story with Aaron any less sad. No one had tried more to have a child than they had. She took the rocking chair next to Nathan’s small bed. A dozen monitors told them whether his heart rate was at a safe level and his blood pressure was enough to sustain life. Whether he was keeping up the fight.
Lucy set the rocker in motion ever so slightly.
She and Aaron hadn’t talked about having kids when they got married just out of college. They graduated from the University of Alabama and began living out their happily ever after working their way up at the local hospital. Not till they moved to Atlanta did they talk about timing.
“I’m ready if you are.” Aaron had been sitting across from her at their small round kitchen table. His eyes had looked misty, like he was overwhelmed with feelings. “What do you think?”
Lucy hadn’t answered right away. She was a nurse, working in the emergency room at the time. She needed to keep putting in hours if she was going to get moved to the maternity ward. Where she’d always wanted to work.
But as for babies of their own, all she had known was that it was still too soon. Lucy had reached across the table and taken hold of Aaron’s hand. “Now? Really?”
“Yes.” He was young, but with his master’s degree he was already being groomed to work in administration. “We can handle it. Financially.”
She felt butterflies in her heart and suddenly she looked ahead nine months and tried to imagine what life would be like with a baby. She would have her promotion to maternity nurse by then. And once a baby came she’d work fewer hours at the hospital, for sure. Lucy never pictured working full-time when she became a mommy. And for the first time the idea sounded not only possible.
It sounded wonderful.
That night they ditched their birth control and with everything in them they believed Lucy would be pregnant a few weeks later. When she got her period, she wasn’t worried. They made a game of it. No more birth control, no more caution. They teased about how fun it would be.
Trying to get pregnant.
Lucy stared at her flat stomach. Back then they’d had no idea what they were in for. How long the journey ahead would be. It took six months of trying before Lucy began to worry. She remembered the first time she broached the topic with Aaron.
They had been on a walk in the hills near their favorite lake, and Lucy stopped. Aaron took a few more strides before he realized she wasn’t with him. He turned and came back to her. “You okay?”
The words wouldn’t form, not easily, anyway. She looked at the path beneath their feet for a long minute. When she lifted her eyes to his, she blinked back tears. The first of way too many. “I’m not pregnant, Aaron. What’s wrong with me?”
“Honey, nothing’s wrong.” Disappointment fell like a shadow over his face. He tried to hide it, so almost at the same time a smile lifted his lips. “It can take a year. That’s what I read.” He kissed her and ran his thumb along her brow. “Practice makes perfect, right? Don’t worry, Lucy. God has a baby for us. I know it.”
She had been doubtful even then. Especially about Aaron’s unwavering faith. “How do you know what God’s going to do?”
“Because I know Him, and He’s good.” Her husband’s smile reached his eyes. “He has a baby for us.”
How Aaron had kept that same belief intact for more than a decade, Lucy would never know. Back then six months hadn’t seemed that long to Aaron. He did what he could to calm her fears and help her believe.
But six months turned into one year and in the second year Aaron brought up the topic of foster care. The state had a foster-adopt program, where a baby would be placed with them and if the parents’ rights were terminated, they could legally adopt the child.
Lucy had been skeptical. She still wanted a baby of their own, the traditional way. But the more she and Aaron read foster-adopt stories on the Internet the more it seemed like a viable option. At least they’d be helping.
“We’ll get a baby handpicked by God,” Aaron had told her the day they made their decision to go ahead with the program. “And who knows, maybe He’ll surprise us and you’ll get pregnant.”
Over the years Lucy had researched enough to know that Aaron was right. Sometimes after a couple committed to adopt, or once a foster child was placed in their home, infertility could give way to a pregnancy.
Until then they hadn’t tried shots or pills or procedures. To Aaron, two years was still not terribly long. Other couples tried that long to have a baby. And once they made their decision to adopt, even Lucy expected things to fall into place.
Their house would be full of children in no time.
