Miracle Child by Wilcox James P

Author:Wilcox, James P. [Wilcox, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: James P. Wilcox
Published: 2014-01-06T18:30:00+00:00

Reading to Nathaniel in the NICU

Chapter VI

Thursday, December 12, 2002

My students are giving me a hard time and want to know why I wasn’t at school yesterday. Although I would like to think that they actually missed me, I know what they really care about is consistency, whether they will admit it or not. Having started the school year with a long-term sub, they were just getting into a routine when everything was turned upside down when I showed up out of nowhere. Now that I have been their teacher for almost two months and they are settling into a new routine, I think they fear that I will quit on them and they will have to start over again. It is just as disruptive to their routine when I miss a day of school as it is to mine.

I make a spur of the moment decision, thinking that if I tell them about Nathaniel I might actually get some sympathy. They just might cut me some slack as well. Honestly, I don’t really think about what I am doing, I just start telling them about Nathaniel. I frame my tale as a math lesson, which makes everyone grumble. They don’t want to do math in history class (they don’t want to do history either). I start by having them answer some simple multiplication questions. I ask them what 10 x 4 is, and then 6 x 4. Then I have them subtract 24 from 40, and when they come up with 16, I have them divide by 4. Once everyone has the answer of four, I start my explanation.

“A full-term pregnancy is forty weeks, which is actually ten months, instead of nine. Women are usually pregnant for over a month before they find out they are pregnant and for some reason they don’t count this month,” I randomly explain because suddenly I am nervous.

“Anyway, my wife was twenty-four weeks pregnant with our second child when we had to rush her to the hospital because she was going into labor. Our son was born three days later, and he was sixteen weeks early. As you all know, sixteen divided by four is four, so he was born four months early. He had surgery yesterday, which is why I wasn’t here.”

I don’t want to go into a lot of details, and I am dreading the questions that are sure to come.

“Why the fuck you at school?” one of the girls shouts.

Of all the questions that my students could have asked me, this is the last one I am expecting. I am not sure what she is asking or how to respond (I ignore the f-bomb; it is a surprisingly common part of the urban core vocabulary).

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Why the hell you at school? If my baby was in the hospital, I damned sure wouldn’t be at school. I be at the hospital with my wife and baby!”

“But my wife is already back at work,” I stutter.

“Then who the

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