Pardon, please repeat again once more for the second time?

(Continued from last week)

By Emmanuelle

SO, LET ME tell you a true story that happened in a hospital that had been a second home to me for the past years.

Lolita was married at twenty-one to her childhood sweetheart. It took them four years to wait for their first-born. For some gynecological reason, she couldn’t bring her first two pregnancies to full term. But this time she did. And she had to go through the whole frightening, nerve-wracking, exciting, heavenly experience without the husband by her side. The husband was a merchant marine aboard an oil vessel prowling the seas between the Middle East and continents beyond. She was not all alone though. Her parents and some relatives were witnesses to the fact.

Hours after the birth, she begins to wonder why her child, a boy, remains undelivered to her arms. Hours became half a day. And another half. Wonder becomes suspicion, suspicion turns to fear, fear to panic. She fidgets, she squirms. At last she gets angry. She demands out loud, she screams. Where is my baby? Why are you keeping him from me? What is wrong with him?

The residents are suddenly busy rushing elsewhere but not anywhere near. Only a female intern had the strength in herself to step forward. She tells Lolita the truth.

Anencephaly. The boy has the congenital anomaly of being born without a cranium to cover the brain. He is oozing cerebral fluid and bits of other not so fluid matters from his unprotected head, but he was breathing, wheezing hard but breathing. As of now. He will not survive the week, but for this day, and maybe tomorrow, he will fight to the teeth. Only he will never ever have the month to grow a single tooth.

After the gasps, the silent wails and the more silent flood of tears, Lolita bites her lips. She inhales the most huge gulp of air. She touches her milk-swollen breasts. She looks into the eyes of the intern who had been most kind. Can you bring my child to me?

Yes, the intern can. And she did. She could not lift the infant’s head without its brain literally falling out in streams of gray folds. So she designs a diaper into a baby’s cap. She eases it gently on the infant’s poor head. She lifts him, careful not to spill out any more of him. She cradles him in her arms. She walks slowly from the nursery to Lolita’s room.

The consultants, the residents, the nurses dare not stop her from walking out with the child. They step aside, opening doors, clearing the way.

Lolita reaches out her arms in a plea. She and the intern touch as the baby slid from one woman’s arms to the other. There is no wetness there. Only a warmth. The child is flesh and living spirit. The missing skull is just bone.

The infant instinctively cuddles to his mother. The mother engulfs the infant with her whole being. The world is reduced to . . . mother and child.

The intern, leaking from the eyes, quietly pulls the curtain around the scene.

No, we are rarely pulvoron gust, if ever. Some are lucky, luckier. Others never did have the luck.

(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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