Inconceivable (29 page)

As I looked inside the isolette, I saw the baby’s arms moving and his eyes opening and closing, the signs of a soul awakening to the world, trying to take it all in. A powerful mix of emotions penetrated me: deep sorrow and mourning, but at the same time great satisfaction that we’d gotten to this point and given this child life. I thought of songwriter Leonard Cohen’s words “a broken hallelujah.” Each step of our walk contained a hallelujah of praise and thanksgiving for this child wrapped in the broken feeling of the impending loss. As we approached the elevator, suddenly I felt a
penetrating pain throughout my body, and I began to shake. The security guard punched the button, and the elevator seemed to take forever to come to our floor. I would have been happy to wait forever to extend my time with the baby.

We exited on the NICU floor, the same floor where the Morells waited, and took a circuitous route through the lonely corridors. My tears flowed as they had since we exited the labor and delivery room. I didn’t care that I was crying. It helped that I could feel the profound respect of everyone I was with. It genuinely felt like they were suffering for and with me.

As we approached the NICU, I felt a rush of adrenaline pumping into my bloodstream. I knew that I needed to muster the spirit to celebrate with Paul and Shannon. I knew they would be thrilled, thankful beyond description, and I wanted to be with them in their happiness.

We entered the double doors to the NICU, doors I’d been through a hundred times in the month after Mary Kate’s birth. I recognized many of the staff, who stood in silence. They all knew what I was about to do.

We stood for just a moment outside the room where Paul and Shannon waited for this “second delivery” of their son.

Please, God, let me get through this
, I prayed.

One of the nurses opened the door as we moved into the room.

I saw Shannon first, standing at the back of the room, with Paul behind her. I don’t think the staff had given the Morells any warning that we were coming.

Shannon shrieked with joy and clapped her hands together as I pushed the baby into the room. She pointed at the baby in disbelief, exclaiming, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” as she jumped up and down, clenching her hands to her chest.

“Congratulations, you have a healthy baby boy. Five pounds, three ounces,” I announced.

“I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! He is really here!” she cried
out. She had her hands on her cheeks. I had expected that they would be joyful, yet thankful and respectful. Her response took me off-guard.

Paul came to the isolette smiling, and Shannon followed. They stood beside it looking down at their baby boy. I smiled for them. At that moment, the nurse behind me placed a soft hand on my shoulder. It was like the touch of an angel, a kind spirit who had just made the walk with me, acknowledging my suffering. She whispered in my ear, “This must be so hard for you.” Another big tear rolled down my cheek as I shook my head yes.

“Shannon, do you want to hold the baby?” another nurse asked.

“Can I? Can I!!?”

“Yes,” the nurse said as she gingerly took the baby out of the isolette and handed him to Shannon.

I put aside my sorrow and felt the happiness of seeing a baby held by his mom and then his dad for the first time. Shannon spoke to the baby softly, but I couldn’t hear her words.

Shannon and Paul wanted to get a few photographs, but they said that their camera wasn’t working. I asked Kathleen to take some pictures. The Morells invited me to be in a few. I was pleased to participate. My swollen eyes would just have to be part of the picture, as it would take hours for them to look normal again.

I didn’t want to stay too long.

“I should get going and give you time alone,” I said.

“Sean, one minute,” Shannon said. She motioned me over. “We want to tell you his name, but please don’t tell anyone but Carolyn.”

“No problem.”

“His name is Logan Savage Morell. Logan for ‘lucky,’ because when we first met you, you said we were lucky. Savage because Savage is my maiden name and your last names.”

I didn’t remember telling them they were lucky, but I appreciated the sentiment.

“I think that’s neat, Shannon, and I’m sure Carolyn will be
pleased. Congratulations again,” I said. “I’m going to leave now. I need to see how Carolyn is doing.”

When I walked out of the room, I felt the wind sucked out of me. I stood in the silent hallway for a moment. Everything that had just happened seemed like a blur. Everyone who’d accompanied me appeared frozen. I walked out of the NICU and into the hallway, heading toward the elevator alone. This was the moment I had previously envisioned when I would punch a hole through the wall. That feeling never came. Instead, I felt despair. My hands were empty. The broken hallelujah was all I had.

I went back to the elevator to return to the maternity floor, but I was in no-man’s-land. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I was surprised that Carolyn wasn’t yet in the recovery room. One of the nurses said that she was still in the delivery room. I wanted to be with Carolyn so much. Instead, I walked into the room where JoAnn was waiting with Carolyn’s parents and updated them.

“The baby was five pounds, three ounces. He is doing really well. Carolyn did well,” I announced.

“Are you doing okay?” Carolyn’s father asked.

“No, not at all,” I struggled to get out. Probably for the first time in my life I wanted out of my own skin.

I needed to get out of there and find Carolyn. I wondered how she could still be in surgery. Why was it taking so long for them to let me see her? I walked the hall to try to find a place to myself. What the hell was I supposed to do? In our normal birth situation, I would be with Carolyn, rifling off celebratory calls and text messages to my family and friends, announcing the birth. Instead, I was in the corner of a hallway with my back against the wall. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor and buried my face in my hands. What was going on? I looked up to see a security guard watching over me. What must be going through his head right now?

More time passed. I realized that I didn’t know how to handle my grief without Carolyn. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my
worries about her health or my feelings about the scene with the Morells and the baby.

Then I really started to worry. What if something had gone terribly wrong with the delivery after I left? That seemed so impossible because she was conscious and talking when I last saw her.

Finally, Dr. Read appeared.

“Sean, Carolyn is going to be up shortly. After you left, she started bleeding, and we couldn’t stop it,” Dr. Read said. “We lost track of how much blood she lost. I am very thankful that the other surgeon was there because we both had to work independently to help Carolyn. It was one of the most difficult deliveries I’ve ever done.”

My throat went dry, and I could not speak for a moment. All that time I was walking the halls desperate to see Carolyn, she was in terrible danger. On the one hand, I wish I had been with her. On the other hand, it all seemed too much to bear to think that Carolyn’s health had been compromised. I felt so thankful to the medical team.

“Dr. Read, thank you so much for getting her through,” I said. “We cannot thank you enough.”

“We will monitor her closely in the event that she needs a transfusion,” Dr. Read said. “She is going to be very weak. I am going home this evening, but they can call me at a moment’s notice.”

After she left, those words “one of the most difficult deliveries” stayed in my mind. Suddenly my memory was thrown back to Ryan’s delivery twelve years earlier, which had also been frightening. Then the enormity of the fact that Carolyn nearly lost everything for this baby boy really hit me. I was sick to my stomach. I prayed with all I had for Carolyn to be all right. I needed to be able to call the boys and tell them their mom was okay.
I
needed her to be okay. Was this too much to ask?

Within minutes, thank God, Carolyn arrived in recovery, pale, weak, and just strong enough to say a few words.

“Carolyn, you’re so strong,” I said as I leaned down to kiss her. “Everything is going to be all right. It’s all going to be fine.”

I didn’t believe my own words, but I had to reassure her. Carolyn, heavily medicated, drifted off to sleep, but I couldn’t. I sat by her bed and watched her.

Later that evening, as Carolyn slept, I called my mom to update her and then Marty, who knew we were in the hospital. I decided to call our publicist in New York, who also knew we were in the hospital. I wanted to make sure he did not worry about us overnight. In confidence, I let him know of the delivery and medical status. I instructed him not to release this information to anyone in the media. As I hung up, just to be crystal clear, I sent him an e-mail from my BlackBerry, restating my instruction that he was not to release the birth information to anyone in the media. He responded right away with “I understand.”

I finally drifted off to sleep, but slept only fitfully. I kept waking up to make sure that Carolyn was all right. At one point I jolted awake with repeated visions of walking through the doorway to hand Logan to Paul and Shannon. Then I realized, with a combination of some relief and great pain, that that moment had passed.

The Fourth Trimester

C
HAPTER
20

Wrapped in Love

CAROLYN

I
WOKE UP
the next day feeling weak and thickheaded from the painkillers. Despite the morphine, I could feel the ache in the place where Logan used to be. Logan. Little Man’s name was Logan. I remembered seeing him as he kicked and screamed moments after he was born. Logan was a great name for my feisty Little Man. It had an old-fashioned, romantic sound to it. Would all the girls swoon for Logan? I hoped I’d be around to find out.

In the hours after each of my children were born, my mind was full of fantasies of the great lives they would live, and the morning after Logan’s birth was no different. I hoped he’d be a boy with many friends. I pictured him shooting hoops with Drew and Ryan.
Stop that, Carolyn. You don’t know that he’ll take up that sport or any sport at all.
Another image quickly replaced that one: of Logan on his hands and knees crawling rapid-fire into the family room and pulling himself up, hand over hand, on the big leather chair.
Oh, Carolyn, you’re just torturing yourself.
Yet it was so easy for me to picture him in our home. I honestly couldn’t picture him anywhere else. When they placed Logan on my chest in the delivery room, I had stared at his face and thought how much he looked like Drew.
If we hadn’t known about the mistake, we would never have figured it out on our own.

The door swung open, and Sue, one my favorite nurses, entered. She didn’t look happy.

“Mrs. Savage, I came to tell you that the baby is being released today,” she said. “He’s well enough, and they want to go home,” she said.

“What?” I tried to sit up, but my stitches wouldn’t let me. I had bled so much that a drain had to be placed in my wound, and that was causing me even more pain than my previous C-sections. I was panicking.

“They’re going to let me see him, right?” I asked. “They’re not leaving right now? I so want the kids to meet him.”

“No. They said you could have some time with him this afternoon,” she said.

I knew he’d be leaving more quickly than Ryan and MK had, but in less than twenty-four hours?

“Are you sure? I mean, I’m so out of it,” I said. “I want to be able to spend time with him. I want to memorize his face. I can hardly focus my eyes!”

“If you want to be lucid, you need to turn off your morphine pump,” Sue advised. “Then we can get you into the shower and pretty you up for some pictures. We’ll move you to a larger room where you can get some photographs of your time with him and all your family.”

I knew she was right about what I should do to prepare, but I was only sixteen hours postsurgery. Still, I couldn’t miss this.

“Turn off the morphine pump and I’ll deal.”

About thirty minutes later, JoAnn arrived. She and Sue hoisted me out of my bed, and I tottered to the shower. I was extremely light-headed, and I could feel that I was still bleeding. As I stood in the shower, JoAnn held my clothes and a towel, while Sue hosed me off like an elephant at the circus. To think I used to be such a modest and private person before this pregnancy.

After the shower, I began to feel a little more human. Sue moved me down the hallway to a room big enough to have two entrances. One wall had windows overlooking the trees of west Toledo, brilliant in their fall colors. I’d just settled in when Sean’s mom Kate arrived. I think of Kate as my second mother, and as a great friend. Seeing her got my mind off what was about to happen.

A few minutes later, Sean arrived, along with my mom, Drew, Ryan, and Mary Kate. As soon as Mary Kate saw me, her smile spread from ear to ear. She practically dove into my bed. I wrapped my arms around her and snuggled her close, feeling maternal hunger throughout my body. I needed a baby to snuggle, and my eighteen-month-old daughter would have to be the one.

Sean snapped a few pictures of MK and me, and Kate started to gather her things.

“Are you leaving, Kate?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Kate said. “I know they are bringing the baby up, and I want to give you all your private time.”

“But, Kate, you don’t have to leave.”

“You know, I appreciate that. I really do. The truth is, I don’t think I can watch this.” She was tearing up. “I’m afraid it is just too hard for me. I don’t want to see the baby.”

I understood. Kate had borne nine children. She had prayed relentlessly for Sean and me during our years of infertility. This was a good-bye too difficult for her to witness.

“Please come back later,” I said. “I’d like to have you here.”

Before she could answer, the security guard opened the main door.