I wasn’t sure how to take that. On the one hand, I wouldn’t have to see her. On the other, didn’t a child want her mother to fight for her? Would I have felt better if she had scheduled to volunteer every time I was working just to be close to me? But that wasn’t fair. I was an adult. I should be able to articulate what I wanted and, if I couldn’t, I couldn’t blame her for not being able to read my mind.
“Great,” I said, looking down at Maisy again.
“But I did just want to say again that if you would be willing to talk, I really would love to.”
Did I want to talk? Maybe Amelia was right. Maybe Julie could say something that would make me feel better. But maybe not. And I certainly didn’t want to feel worse.
“Great,” I said again.
Julie sighed. “Look, Daisy, I know you carry around a lot of scars, and I get it. I totally do. But everything isn’t as it seems. If you’d just let me explain—” She stopped herself, maybe because she saw the pain in my eyes. It wasn’t for her, not really. Or maybe it was. Because seeing her here, now, standing in front of me, made me realize: “I was baby Brian,” I whispered. “And his mother was you.”
She looked confused, and, just like that, it all came flooding back to me—those memories, those moments that I tried to push aside, my last days in that Charlotte hospital.
The sight of Abbott Taylor lying in that hospital bed, deep into labor, explaining to me that, yes, they knew the doctor had said that the baby had a heart condition that would likely be fatal, but that shejust had faith and thisfeeling. She had to see the pregnancy through; she had to keep the baby. She had to give him a chance.
And when her faith and her feeling hadn’t proven correct? When, two days into his NICU stay, we knew the end was inevitable for baby Brian? What had Abbott and her husband done then? I would never, ever, for all my days, forget thatmotherlooking up at me, tears streaming down her face, saying, “I want to remember him like this, Daisy. If these are the only days I ever get with my baby on earth, I want to remember him alive and normal.”
She was only twenty-four. She was facing any human’s worst-case scenario. And yet, in that moment, I felt like I would explode with rage. What kind of mother would leave her child? It was yourjobto be there for the hard stuff. And, instead, for the last four hours of his life, I was the one to hold baby Brian, to keep him comfortable, to pray over him, to sing to him, to carry his cold little body to the morgue.
And so, it wasn’t that I couldn’t handle a patient dying—it was horrific, but I’d lived through it before. It was that his own mother wasn’t even there that I couldn’t get over.
I was so lost in the moment that I had almost forgotten I was here, now, in Cape Carolina, until Laura took Maisy from me. Holding her, she knelt down in front of me. “It’s okay, Daisy. It’s okay. There was nothing you could have done.”
Julie was still standing, staring, silent. And that was when I realized I was crying. “I know,” I said. “I know. But, Laura, I did the thing we shouldn’t: I judged those parents so hard for making a choice that might have been the right one for them. Their lives are ruined and maybe it was right that they have their last moments with their son when he was happy and alive. Before he was blue and then gray and then cold.” I wiped my eyes, and Laura squeezed my knee. She wasbalancing Maisy just so. But we were baby nurses. We could do pretty much anything while holding a baby.
I looked up at Julie. “You were baby Brian, and I was that mother,” she said, tears coming to her eyes now too.
I hated myself for becoming so emotional in front of her, for letting her see how scarred and damaged I was from her leaving me.
“Dais,” Laura said. “We try, but we are only human. We can’t control every thought we have. We can’t control our judgments. We just have to keep doing our best and letting everyone else do theirs.”
I nodded, getting myself together, feeling somewhat cleansed by letting out what had been trapped inside me so long. It suddenly all made sense. None of this was about Abbott. It was about Julie. And a feeling of dread washed over me. I had let my own stuff cloud what I should have done. I shook my head. “Losing him was so hard, but I also feel bad that I never checked on Abbott. I didn’t go sit with her, didn’t console her.”
“You couldn’t, honey,” Laura said. “It’s okay.”
I nodded, trying to keep tears from pouring down my face again. “I just want to apologize to her, you know? To tell her I was wrong to abandon her like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Julie said. “I didn’t know…”
Laura looked up at her and, curtly, in her nurse-in-control voice, said, “Julie, maybe we pick this up again another time.”
Laura stood up, and Julie nodded. But, before she left, she leaned down and hugged me. And as I took a breath, I could smell her. My mother. The memory flooded back, and I hated myself for how soothed I felt by her hug, by her touch, by the fact that the person who should have been closest to me in all the world was here.
She pulled away and left silently. Laura handed Maisy and the bottle back to me, and, with her in my arms, all felt right with theworld. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have no idea why that just exploded out of me.”
“Oh, honey,” Laura said, “losing a patient is never easy, and especially not like that. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it.”
I looked down at the baby. “I think maybe that’s why I feel so close to Maisy now, you know? It’s like I’ve become the patron nurse of motherless children.”
Laura laughed. “And thank God for you, Daisy. You are a gift to every child and every person who crosses your path. Don’t forget that.”
It was so affirming. Because there were certainly days when I didn’t feel that way, when the guilt over abandoning that mother haunted me. I knew she felt my judgment, but it was only now that I could fully realize how all-encompassing her pain must have been and why I had been so judgmental in the first place. “I only wish I could apologize to Abbott,” I said again.
Laura nodded. “Maybe one day you’ll get a chance to.”
I doubted it. I looked down at Maisy and then gasped, noticing Allison Scotland walking by the window. I stood up, trying to regain my composure. Allison was standing outside the nursery with her clipboard. I opened the door and held it with my foot, still navigating holding the baby and the bottle.
She looked up and smiled. “Well, isn’t this just the sweetest sight? Aren’t you off today?”
