and over again.
The problem is, we don’t know what we want. None of my lists or plans included things we might want to do with our stillborn son while we have the chance.
“We should do everything we can, right?” I ask Aaron.
“I think so,” he agrees. “We won’t get another opportunity.”
So we do what we can. We say yes to the professional portraits and the Christian baptism and the castings of his hands and feet. We do it all. And yet, we know we will always wish we’d done more.
The longer I hold him, the more he changes. Fluids escape through his nose from somewhere else in his body, like a river carving new forks in its passage. I wipe the liquid up with the edges of his swaddle, and for a moment I imagine that he just has a runny nose.
Right then, Micaela, one of my closest friends, who is also a nurse in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the children’s hospital down the hall, appears. She is balancing a large, flat rectangle, covered in pale-green hospital blankets, in her outstretched hands. She is crying.
“We have to put him on ice now,” she chokes out. Only then do I notice the rectangle in her arms is a bed of ice. “But he’ll still be warm. We’ll wrap him up in this.” She tucks the swaddle up under his chin. I look at her and help with the swaddle. Should I tell her that he won’t be warm? Should I tell her it doesn’t matter? Reid isn’t in his body anymore. This is a corpse.
They say that some families take the body home. Sometimes it helps to see the child in the car seat, the nursery, the bassinet. I almost believe that I can. I’ll strap Reid in and we’ll walk through the halls toward the elevator; another new family will lean over to marvel at the tiny being we too are bringing home. Then their faces will melt with horror. “Yes, well, he died,” we’ll say. “But isn’t he perfect?”
No, no. There is absolutely no way I could manage it. I am glad they offered, though. Later, it will be the things they didn’t offer—things I didn’t know I could have done—that I will grow to regret: not taking a lock of his hair or looking at his eyes or singing songs to him, not taking every opportunity to make more memories with him as a family. But if I bring him home I’ll have to bring him back, and I don’t imagine I’ll have the willpower to do it. They will have to send someone to pry his cold body out of my trembling hands. “But isn’t he perfect?”
At four thirty in the afternoon, after fourteen hours and six minutes with Reid, Aaron and I look at each other. Our eyes are swollen and red. I’ve never seen such a look of defeat on his face. We haven’t been given a limit to the time we can spend with our son, but in this moment we know, as well as we will ever know, that we are ready to leave his body. As much as I don’t want to say goodbye, I also desperately need to.
“Are you ready?” I ask, knowing how stupid the question sounds. He nods, knowing how wrong the answer feels.
Earlier, Ava had offered to be with Reid after we left, so we buzz her now, ask her to come into the room. “We think it’s time. Could you look after him? Could you hold him for us?” we whisper into the bedside monitor.
A crackle, and then: “Of course. I’ll be right there.”
She enters the room minutes later and stands to the side, interlacing her hands, then letting them hang at her hips. She waits. Aaron collects our bags from in front of the bed. Then he bends down and kisses the smooth skin of Reid’s forehead. I reach my hands underneath the cotton of his clothing, picking him up off the bed of ice. A chill travels through my body. I draw him up to my chest. Slowly, I press him into me and take a deep breath, soaking up as much of him as I can. And then—and then I place him in Ava’s arms and walk toward the door.
As I cross the threshold I look back. All around us these guttural cries are ringing. I don’t realize that they are coming from me.
“You can come back,” Ava says, wiping tears from beneath the thick black frames of her glasses. “You can come back.”
I walk back in and give Reid one last kiss. My fingers linger on his chest, where his arms are delicately crossed. I turn to leave, but my arm refuses to follow. His hand, soft and limp in my grasp, slides gently toward the floor. His hat has fallen a little off his head, and his black hair is visible at the edge. His lips are a deep, blood red. I glance at the clock above the hospital bed. 4:45 PM. And then I turn my back and walk away. This time, I don’t—I can’t—look back.
WE ARE FINALLY alone. The echo in our apartment seems amplified in the absence of the noise that should have filled it on our return from the hospital. I look around at all the evidence of our plans. The infant tub on the back of the door, the room stacked ceiling-high with baby gear, the pregnancy books scattered across tables. Then the magnet with the paging details on it, sitting right where we left it on the coffee table.
I close my eyes and whisper to Aaron, “I need to shower, but I need help.” He holds me as we shuffle toward the bathroom. He supports me under my arms and lowers me down on the toilet. He undresses me, slowly. As my shirt brushes past my face I catch a scent that is both foreign and familiar to me. It is the scent of him—of his birth.
In Dr. Patrick O’Malley’s book Getting Grief Right, I’ll later read about a similar experience he had upon sensing something that reminded him of his infant son who’d passed. As a psychotherapist, he researched all aspects of his grief, and wrote:
That innocent sensory stimulus had cut straight to the place in my brain where the memories and feelings of Ryan would be forever stood. It is called the limbic system, a primitive part of our brain where human emotions are believed to be centered. A sight or smell might register there and is then interpreted and named by more advanced parts of our cognitive apparatus. The pungent aroma of antiseptic soap produced tears, which my brain could eventually link to the hospital.
At first, I notice the Ivory Snow. I recall the days I sat in his nursery with his hand-washed outfits in my lap. The smell of the detergent would travel on the breeze coming in through the corner window and I’d close my eyes, basking in it. Even though he only wore one outfit, I know that smell will probably always tie me to his life. It will always remind me of the days I spent washing his things and organizing his drawers.
Then I notice the Johnson’s baby shampoo that Rose washed his hair with. I summon the hazy memories of her lathering his head with bubbles and gently rinsing them out with water that spilled from the yellow plastic cup.
And another scent, one I can’t recognize, one I can only assume is death. I inhale deeply, bringing my hands up toward my nose, as close as I can. “I still smell like him,” I whisper to Aaron.
“Me too,” he whispers back.
A single tear rolls down my cheek. I don’t want to wash it off. I don’t want to be one step closer to reaching our first day without Reid. I don’t want any of it. The minute I enter that shower it will all be gone. The beginning of erasing what little proof I have of his existence.
Once in bed, I look at the packets of sleeping pills beside me. They have given me enough to put me into a deep, medically induced sleep, nothing more. I punch two out into my palm and stroke their shiny blue surface before placing them on the tip of my tongue.
I wait for sleep to come, but it never does. My insomnia is as much biological as situational. I am supposed to be up all night with a baby depending on me for survival. I know that he has died. But my body doesn’t.
In the morning, Susie comes over. I am still in bed, the covers drawn up underneath my chin. She sits next to me and talks about the birth, discussing the stiches and some of the changes my body is going through. I ask her to tell me about her son, the one who died, and listen closely as she does. When it is time for her to leave she hands me a brown paper bag, crumpled at the top to keep whatever it is holding contained. “You’ll want to wash these,” she says.
I peer inside. Neatly folded at the