Page 56 of Forever Christmas
Chapter 21: Corabelle
I’m a nervous wreck, never working on my thesis but instead scouring the Internet, the university libraries, and anything else I can get my hands on for information on fetal heart conditions.
The paperwork we got from the doctor’s office shows a diagnosis, and I look it up. Atrial septal defect.
Everything says what Shelly told us. It willprobably close up. If it’s small, they won’t even bother to fix it. Tons of people walking around with this. Yada yada.
But I’m caught in some obsessive loop. Every time I sit down to study something else, or cook dinner, or run the vacuum, I think of another question, a new scenario to research. And I end up on my duct-taped laptop, reading CaringBridge entries and health forums.
Tina comesover a couple times a week and we sit in a vigil with our candles lit. She’s hugely pregnant now. Her baby is due in November, about three months ahead of mine. The quiet time helps both of us.
We haven’t even come up with a name. Gavin jokingly calls him “the potato.” Which makes me crazy. I don’t know where he got that idea.
I’m not easy to be around. I’ve made zero friends in my final classes,even though my last literature course is full of fun people who like to get together and talk shop. Once more, I feel separate from everyone with my growing belly and my debilitating sickness. Not to mention the fear.
I’ve taken to walking the path from campus to the ocean just to stand on the shore and watch the waves pound the beach. Beauty and power live there, overwhelming all else. It makesme feel small and insignificant, helping diminish the crippling terror that creeps over me all the time.
One day in class, Professor Sparks walks the room with his anthology of Emily Dickinson, reading from her works. He stands right in front of me as he tells me this poem, then asks me to write about whether or not it speaks to me personally.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
I hatehim. I hate the assignment, the idea, the ridiculous notion that hope could exist without me to nurture it.
The idea that I should have to hope.
Why can’t I just trudge along in misery and pessimism if I want to?
But it’s my last class. This professor is also my thesis advisor.
I have to at least consider the one thing I’d like to completely ignore.
Hope.
I pace my apartment, the singlesyllable on my lips. Hope. Hope. Hope.
A thing with feathers.
It never stops.
I pause in front of the picture of Finn. If hope has kept so many people warm, then why do I feel cold? Abandoned? Lost?
Like Finn in his grave.
I have to lie down before my stomach revolts one more time.
But the word remains.
Hope.
I hate it. I want to relegate it to all the other four-letter words I never use.
Maybe I’ll replace it with hell.
That sounds good.
Hell is a thing with feathers.
This makes me laugh. I picture Edgar Allan Poe’s raven now.
