37 Seconds by Stephanie Arnold

Author:Stephanie Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

AND SO I WAS BACK in the hospital for what turned out to be unsuccessful attempts to figure out what was causing my temperature to rise. One doctor said it was probably a hospital-borne illness. Regardless, the heavy-duty antibiotics worked, and I was released one week after being admitted.

The transition to life back at home was rocky. The nights were when I felt most alone. Everyone in the household would be asleep, but I was too petrified to close my eyes. I was worried that I wouldn’t wake up.

One night I found the good-bye letters I had started. As I reread them, with tears in my eyes, I realized that I hadn’t finished them because I wasn’t supposed to. My signature would have meant “the end,” both figuratively and literally. Something had stopped me from finishing them, but I didn’t have a clue what that was.

As time went on, the purple-striped incision down the center of my belly started to close, but the C-section was left open. It looked like a second mouth just above my pubic bone. It was extremely painful and looked and felt disgusting. A five-inch window into my innards. The doctors said to keep it moist with saline-filled gauze and to change out the dressing two times a day, removing any clots with a pair of surgical tweezers. Jonathan had learned how to do the procedure at the hospital. With anal-retentive precision, he would line up all the tools and bandages, wash his hands and arms up to his elbows, and put on the special sterile surgical gloves the way the nurses taught him so he wouldn’t contaminate any part of them. Then he would flush out the clots, clean the wound, and redress it. He said he liked playing doctor, but I knew that it was more than that. It was his way of showing me unconditional love.

I had never experienced this intense kind of deep-rooted love before I met Jonathan. The love you seemingly only find in movies. My friends and family could see it in the way we looked at each other or held hands every chance we got. We vowed to be there “in sickness and in health,” and I guess we got to test that out. Jonathan was passing with flying colors. The catastrophe wasn’t changing our bond. It was strengthening it.

The healing had begun. I started physical therapy and began walking again, little by little. I couldn’t breast-feed Jacob, and that hurt me more than I can explain. I am not one of those moms who needs to breast-feed until her child is five years old, but with Adina I had enjoyed the bonding, the skin-to-skin contact, and the quiet time. I loved being that lifeline. Jacob was up every couple of hours, and someone other than me would have to feed and change him. I couldn’t lift him. I couldn’t even feed or change myself. How was I going to take care of a newborn? It was heartbreaking.

If

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