Behind Those Gray Eyes

Pregnancy was one of the greatest moments of my life. None of those odd cravings everyone always talked to me about. A healthy, beautiful, baby girl who came directly from the womb sleeping through the night. The whole experience was so smooth, my husband and I decided to go for round two less than a year later.

As I grew up, my siblings, eight years my junior, and I didn’t have the sibling bond most kids my age did. More of a second parent or cool aunt than a big sister, and I had always wanted something different for my children. Unfortunately, the second pregnancy was pre-destined to be very different.

It was muggy and humid that early August morning. My scheduled c-section was planned well in advance for our second, and otherwise healthy, baby girl. The Old Navy flip-flops I had worn all summer long were hanging on by a cheap thread of plastic as my swollen feet were nearly too big for them.

A click of a camera pulled me from my pre-dawn exhaustion as my husband snapped a picture of me standing in the center of our small kitchen, hands on my lower back, and silently counting down the seconds until the doctor pulled this child from my aching body.

“Is that necessary?” I asked.

He laughed, visibly excited for the new life we were about to bring into the world.

Three hours later, I held onto the ten-pound eight-ounce life I had spent the last nine months incubating. She was perfect. Ten toes. Ten fingers. Dark brown hair, like her mom's, and directly opposite from her dad and sister’s dark blonde.

It wasn’t until the next week things started to shift.

---

Colic was what they said. Incessant screaming, crying, and vomiting for hours upon hours on end. Our only resolve to the chaos was her laying chest to chest with Mom, rocking in the living room chair. That was deemed to be our spot. We slept there together, two peas in a pod, for almost three months.

Thanksgiving came and went. The fall air was brisk and chill on my infant's skin as we sat outside in our light jackets and watched Big Sister slide on her play set. Baby Sister was not in a light jacket, though. She was comfortable in her short-sleeved onesie, no pants, no socks. Just a onesie.

Most normal people would have thought me nuts. If only they knew Baby Sister sweated profusely, excessively to the point her clothes would become saturated, and she would require a full change.

Dad was at work one Sunday morning in November. I sat and rocked Big Sister and talked about her second birthday the upcoming week. She wanted Elsa.

“Elsa everywhere”, she said.

Baby Sister’s shrill cries rang out over the monitor that I kept near me at all times. It was midmorning and we had just gotten a couple hours sleep apart for the first time in weeks. Once changed and wiped down from the night’s sweating, I fixed a bottle, and attempted to feed Baby Sister her breakfast.

This morning was different though.

Baby sister did not respond to her bottle. No grabbing to feed herself. No whimpering because I’m moving too slow. Her eyes weren’t even open. I nudge her, try and see if she just fell back asleep.

No response.

I became panicked. I had been in healthcare for many years and knew enough to know what was normal versus abnormal. I felt her pulse and her heart rate was too fast. Her breaths were coming too quickly, and a quick momma-kiss-on-the-forehead temperature check told me she was burning up.

I frantically called my mother who came and sat with Big Sister while I took Baby Sister to the emergency room. Little did I know this would not be our last experience with needles, unanswered questions, or heartbreak.

Sent home with an assurance it was dehydration and a seasonal virus, we were told to follow up when needed.

Months progress and things remain seemingly unchanged. Sister continues to battle colic, or so we thought. Daily full clothing changes due to excessive sweating and vomiting still occur. I returned to work after being off for six weeks and our in-home sitter was phenomenal. Growing up in a small town, it was a blessing we had known this woman since I was Baby Sister’s age.

Right before Baby Sister hit her seven-month birthday, the sitter and myself had noticed ping-pong-sized nodules that had developed seemingly overnight all over Baby Sister. Back to the doctor’s office we went, yet again, for a new ailment or issue. This time, it was the nodules, the month before, it was a knot on her back, the month before that, it was the vomiting because she was five months old and had only gained five pounds since birth. I knew in my gut something was wrong. I knew it since that emergency room visit.

Baby’s Sister’s pediatrician looked at the nodule skeptically.

“How long have these been here?” she asked.

“Maybe a week or so. I honestly can’t keep track of the days anymore,” I reply.

The months of sleepless nights, taking care of two little girls, and working a full-time job had just about done me in.

“Wait right here, I want to make a phone call,” the doctor said. Ten minutes later she returns, two nurses in tow. “I want to run some bloodwork. I have some suspicions about what could be wrong, but I need to check a few things first.”

“Okay,” was all I could manage.

I sat nervously, wondering why her statement needed the support of two nurses.

“I also called a colleague at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Nothing to be concerned over or frightened about,” the doctor added. “These lab tests I need to run, I want the Children's Hospital to be my second set of eyes.”

The way the pediatrician’s eyes softened told me what color I had left in my face had drained away. The last five years of my professional career had been in Cancer Center management and leadership. I knew what St. Jude was and what they specialized in.

Denial is a funny thing. Regret, guilt, and anger its evil stepsisters.

Women never know the strength they wield until they are forced to see the life they created and brought into this world, die, and be reborn. The pain and experience that would cause most grown adults to burrow away within the depths of their own minds, a child laughs at in vehement humor.

---

It’s August again, the Tennessee heat no different than Arkansas’s, unforgiving and brutal. No different than that August morning twelve months ago when I stood in my tiny kitchen, rubbing my swollen belly.

The peach-fuzz softness of Baby Sister’s head calms my frayed nerves as we wait on the oncologist, her hair slowing coming back from where we had to shave it in that same tiny kitchen only five months before. The wads of fallen hair I would find left on her pillow each morning from the chemotherapy always wound up in her diapers, under her arms, or in her mouth. The patches where dark brown curls once coiled and bounced tore apart the small broken pieces of my spirit.

“Good morning, sweet girl!” Dr. Sarah cooed at Baby Sister. Not paying one iota of attention to Dr. Sarah, Baby Sister continued playing with the toys in her red wagon, banging them against whatever she could reach. “Well, we have some news,” Dr. Sarah said.

Rancid bile slowly climbed its way up my throat. The first seven months of Baby Sister’s life seemed to have spanned years, while the last seven months of week-long hospital stays for chemotherapy appointments, a major surgery, blood transfusions, weekly cat scans, and three-day-a-week clinic visits seemed to have all happened within the span of a weekend.

“And,” I pause.

Not wanting to sound rude, but we finished our last round of chemotherapy three weeks before. This was the moment. The moment when we found out whether the chemotherapy got rid of the cancer. The surgeon had removed the massive tumor from Baby Sister’s chest and abdomen three months before, but the cancer had spread to her skin, bone marrow, and bones before her pediatrician at home called that dear colleague. We needed to know if we were done torturing my beautiful, otherwise healthy, baby girl who never knew what a day without pain and sickness was like.

“It’s gone. The cancerous lesions in her spinal column are still there, but they are tiny and haven’t shown any activity in months. We will continue to see this sweet girl every month for the next few years and keep a close eye, but right now, it looks like we got it. We got all of it.”

---

Baby sister turned seven this past August. Her board-straight, light brown hair, was a tangled mess on the top of her head. It drove my need for control insane. It hung past her shoulder blades and I wanted nothing more than to braid it so I could keep the unruly mess out of her eyes.

“That is how Moon Queens wear it, Mom,” she tells me, sarcastic emphasis on the Mom.

Her bright grey eyes lit up the room as she twirled away in her princess birthday dress and mud-covered tennis shoes.