He Was Not There by P.D. Workman

Author:P.D. Workman [Workman, P.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: pd workman

20

Heather sat down on the bed beside him. She didn’t look at him, but stared down at the pacifier held in her lap.

“I don’t really know why I kept it. Everyone kept telling me that I needed to make a clean break. I had to have the baby, but then I had to give him up. I couldn’t raise him. A fourteen-year-old didn’t have the resources to keep a baby back then. I would have been on the street. They said that I shouldn’t look at him, or hold him, or name him. The doctor would just pass him to the nurses, and they would take him to the nursery, and that would be the end of that. The adoptive parents would get him when he was released from the hospital.”

“Things were different back then. But you had other ideas?”

Heather nodded. “I thought at the beginning that I was just going to do what they said. But in the delivery room, after he was born… I couldn’t. I couldn’t hear him cry and not hold him. I had to see him, to touch him and know that he was real and that he existed. I was so young, Zachary, and I knew I couldn’t raise him, but I wanted to see him.”

Zachary nodded. He put his hand on her back, then rubbed it when she didn’t object to his touch. “None of it was your fault. Not getting attacked and not getting pregnant. And not having to give him up for adoption.”

“I told them to give him to me, even though Mrs. Astor said no, and the doctor listened to me.” She shook her head. “I’m lucky he did. I’ve heard of other cases where they wouldn’t listen to anything the teen mom said. Like she didn’t matter. Like she didn’t even exist. But he overrode Mrs. Astor and told the nurses to let me hold him when he was cleaned up.”

They were both silent for a few minutes. Zachary let her decide where she wanted to go with the conversation.

“Do you remember what it was like, Zachary? When Vinny was born? Or Mindy? You remember what it’s like to look into a brand-new baby’s face and hold him in your arms?”

Zachary nodded. They had all been responsible for the children younger than they were. They had taken as much of the load as they had been able to, feeding and changing the babies, taking them for walks in the afternoon after school, going to the park. Trying to keep all of the children out of the house as much as possible. There had still been too much of a burden on their mother. Six children were just too many, especially with their poverty, and when you threw into the mix a child who couldn’t moderate his behavior, who was always getting into trouble at school and raising havoc at home… no woman could have been expected to handle it.

“Yes,” he whispered to Heather. “New and innocent and… like angels from heaven.

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