Starting that night, bouquets arrived in my room nonstop—from Clare and my parents, from my friend Emma and her husband, from my cousins. Miko’s colleagues kept coming in every hour on the hour to slap him on the back and to say she looked just like him (she didn’t). And what little time we got to sleep, we slept squeezed together in a hospital bed, with Mika between us. We took her home after only one day. Maybe it was hormones, but I felt like royalty as I lay down on my bed. When my mother arrived the next morning and insisted upon waiting on me, making me my favorite desert foods, a milder version of her tortilla soup and cornbread as only she could make it, I felt even more the princess. I suppose every young mother who’s happy feels that way.
And we were happy.
We are happy.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be as completely happy as someone can be who’s never been creased through her center by agony; but I don’t think I’m altogether the worse for it, either. I’ll never know, because I’ll never be anyone else. I know this. In my work, I’d already had and would always have to live with seeing things that would make my cousin Bridget, for example, run away screaming. And in my life, well, there would always be a “despite” in my happiness. But at least I lived with a man who knew it.
Epilogue
A first-year intern feels as though she’s been standing up, almost steadily, for five straight years. I don’t care what kind of shape she’s in, how many miles she logs on the road or the treadmill. She becomes so deadly exhausted, so depleted, that she can literally catch a few moments’ real sleep in the interval it takes for a nurse to bring a fresh tray of instruments and dressings. I’d mastered the art. I could even use one part of my mind to respond to the questions of patients who were chronic or sick with things only a psychiatrist could help—and who were in no immediate danger—with what sounded like sensible answers, while another part of me actually was asleep. An ER doctor in training, who faces impossible demands but also impossibly exhilarating rushes of salvation, is doubly blessed, or cursed, by the unrelenting velocity of the forward motion. Shifts end, but patients arrive. Hours are devoured. I’d thought that the four years of medical school would never end; and back then, I’d had time for the occasional run or workout or movie or . . . sit-down meal. Now, I looked back on those years as an oasis. Students go home. For me, a three-to-eleven can end with the sunrise. Everybody tries not to let it happen, but it does. You get involved with a patient, and even with an attending on, you don’t want to leave until you know the outcome.
That night was Christmas Eve.
Millie Aberg brought everyone hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows.
I was dreaming of my home in the Pine Mountains, of the Sissinellis’ fifteen-foot-high tree near the fireplace. I couldn’t be there, but later, after I put out the presents from Santa, including a rag doll Mama had made, with long straight brown hair, I would curl up on my futon with my cat, Athena, and call them. I’d listen to my brother’s beautiful soprano as he sang “O Holy Night” to me from far, far away. Rafe had inherited his singing from Heavenly Father, not from Mama or any of us. Only an hour and I would trudge the mere block from Seattle Mercy to my home. I was getting ready to sign out when I was interrupted by a harsh whisper from one of my medical students. I expected the students to be grouchy—Christmas Eve in an emergency room is something I would wish on no one—but, as I always told them when times got rough, they knew that going in.
“It’s always like this, Christmas or Easter or Halloween, when they bring them in,” I heard Anita Fong tell Stacey Sweeney, one of the nurses. “Can’t they tell if a kid has strep that bad before nine o’clock at night?” Anita was brilliant, but edgy and impatient, too impatient, too often. I was afraid that the people behind the green curtain would hear Anita’s complaints. Parents sometimes did hesitate too long, but I thought that was often because they had gone to the pediatrician so many times too promptly, only to be told that their child had a virus and needed orange juice, not antibiotics. But as I waited, Anita came out with the five-minute swab and said, “Well, she’s got it good. Merry Christmas. The pus in that kid’s throat looks like stalactites.”
Anita disappeared back inside the curtain, where I heard her telling the parents, over their murmurs, that they needed to be aware, and sooner, of their child’s symptoms, because strep could potentially lead to serious complications. Anita said, “This little girl is going to have a throat that feels like she swallowed glass.” This was over the top. I could have let her handle it on her own. Not every doctor has to have the patience of a Martha. But I swept back the curtain and, trying to lift my cheekbones into the semblance of a bright smile, asked, “Is everything all right in here, Doctor Fong?”
Juliet was, what, nine by then? She was still so exquisite, I had to catch my breath as much from admiration as surprise. She had long straight blond hair and eyes that I could tell would change from blue to green, depending on the color of the sky or the color of her clothes. She sat up in bed, with a red Popsicle in one hand and the other clutching a cold pack to her throat. I tried to back away, close the curtain before they turned around. But they turned too quickly, and Scott looked into my eyes for what seemed like all of time but what was probably ten seconds. Kelly tried to throw a blanket over the face of her baby, no more than eight or nine months old, asleep on her chest in his front pack, as if to shield him. But then she let the blanket drop, and tears shimmered at the corners of her eyes, and it seemed as if she would speak. I knew she mustn’t speak.
“I see you’re all in good hands,” I said. “And if she takes her medicine, Juliet will be fine to open her presents Christmas morning. But make sure she stays away from her sweet little brother there.”
The little girl sat up straight and pointed at me with her Popsicle. “How do you know my name is Juliet?” she asked.
“Santa told me,” I said. “I have a little girl of my own.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mika.”
“That’s a pretty name. Why’s her name Mika?” Juliet asked. “Is she nine?”
“She’s two. It’s a combination of her daddy’s name and mine,” I said. “Merry Christmas.” As if sensing something in the room besides the six of us, Anita Fong fell silent. I stepped back and let the curtain drop.
There are no coincidences. If something happens and we don’t understand the reason, that doesn’t mean there is no reason. It means that the reason will later be revealed, likely not in this life. There were twenty cubicles on the ER at Seattle Mercy, and officially my shift was over. Why should I have walked into that one? It was obviously because there was something I was meant to discover. Not all parents who bring their children to the emergency room on the night of Christmas Eve are neglectful or neurotic. Some are only busy or tired or extra careful or have a child who’s not a complainer. At least, the ones who come are concerned and not ashamed of it. The ones who never bring their children at all are the ones who worry us. Juliet was immaculate, well nourished, bright. Scott and Kelly had cared for her well. They had been the parents she was supposed to have. For me, that meant I was forgiven. In the locker room, I knelt at the bench and prayed that Becky and Ruthie, in celestial bliss at the celebration of our Savior’s human birth, would bless Juliet, and the baby boy, and their niece, my little girl, and their little brothers.
I had never known where Scott and Kelly moved after they left San Diego. I’d never wanted to know. The unavoidable explanation for our meeting at Seattle Mercy was that it was essential, not only for the three of us, but for someone greater than the sum of all of our lives, to make us aware of what we had made of them.
I got up, lifted my coat from its hook, and, taking care not to glance back at the cubicle directly across from the charting station, crossed my name off the board. Wrapping Sister Barken’s mohair scarf around my neck, I stepped out into the misty night.
The chilly rain that had soaked Seattle all that day had finally ended. I looked
for the Big Dipper. Through a remnant smudge of cloud, I could see only part of the ladle, like a broken cage of stars.
Jacquelyn Mitchard, Cage of Stars
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