At three in the morning, when Megan finally fell asleep with her head against Daniel’s shoulder, he looked at me over her bent head and whispered, “Do you think this is our fault?”
There are questions that have no clean answer, and lying to a grown child in a hospital room is rarely an act of mercy.
“It’s your responsibility,” I said. “That’s not the same thing.”
He closed his eyes.
“I don’t know what the difference is right now.”
“I know,” I said.
Around five, Noah opened his eyes and looked around the room with the vague, solemn confusion of a baby who has no language for pain, only sensation. Megan woke at the movement and leaned over him so fast her chair nearly went over.
“Hi, baby,” she whispered, voice breaking apart on each word. “Hi, my love.”
He blinked at her, then at the light, then at nothing, and for some reason that ordinary, healthy baby blankness made all three of us cry.
When Dr. Patel came in at seven-thirty, the sky outside the narrow window had finally gone gray and honest. He checked the chart, pressed lightly around Noah’s abdomen, listened to his breathing, then straightened.
“The bleeding has stopped,” he said.
Relief moved through the room so quickly it was almost visible.
“He’s going to recover,” the doctor continued. “We caught it early.”
Megan folded forward over the rail of the bassinet and cried into the blanket.
