Chapter 19: The Form

I read the form three times under the little light over my bed.

Blair Anne Thornton.

In the box for the woman who had just pushed for forty minutes.

"Can I keep this?" I asked the nurse.

"It's the only copy." She hesitated. "Records will want it back by eight."

"They'll get it back."

She looked at me over her glasses for a long moment.

Then she nodded and went out.

My mother woke up at six with a crick in her neck.

I showed her.

She read it once, folded her glasses, and went into the bathroom. I heard her run the water again.

When she came out she had washed her face and combed her hair with her fingers.

"What time do they get in?" she said.

"The nurse said eight."

"Then we'd better be down there by quarter to."

At seven-thirty a nurse helped me into a wheelchair.

I had a hospital gown and a cardigan my mother had brought, and the form folded in my lap.

My mother pushed.

Nathan was already in the corridor outside the NICU, asleep sitting up in a plastic chair.

He woke up when he heard the wheels.

"What happened?"

I handed him the form.

He read it and handed it back without a word, and walked beside us.

The NICU front desk was a long, curved counter by the double doors.

Behind it, two nurses were changing shift, going over a clipboard.

Parents were scrubbing their hands at the steel sinks along the wall. A father in a hard hat. A young mother in slippers.

Mitchell was standing at the end of the counter.

He had changed his shirt. He'd shaved.

Virginia was beside him, leaning on the cane, in the camel coat.

The lawyer in the gray suit had a coffee.

"Good," Virginia said when she saw me. "You're up. Mitchell, give her the pen."

Mitchell didn't move.

He was looking past the desk, through the glass doors, at the rows of incubators.

"Which one is she?" he said.

"You'd know if you were on her list," my mother said.

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