The Midwife's Confession

dose of the maintenance chemo.

She’d called me that morning and I could tell she was having a blast with her cousins. They’d skated at an indoor rink, cheered at Megan’s soccer game, camped out in the backyard, went to the movies and hung out for hours at the mall. I wasn’t crazy about kids hanging out in malls, but I felt like cramming as much fun into Haley’s life right now as possible. If she wanted to hang out at the mall and she was safely with her herd of Collier cousins, well, then, damn it, let her.

“Can you test us today?” Bryan asked Dr. Davis. “I don’t understand why this isn’t being rushed. Why no one’s running in here right this second to swab our cheeks.”

Dr. Davis smiled. He was so young. I woke up one morning and all the doctors I dealt with were suddenly younger than me. “We’ll see if you’re compatible,” he said, “but parents are usually the last resort. They’re rarely a good match. Best, of course, is a sibling. Does Haley have any brothers or sisters?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Bryan beat me to it. “We had another child.” He cleared his throat. Adjusted his glasses. “A girl,” he said. “She disappeared shortly after she was born. We don’t even know if she’s alive.”

His words rocked me. They were my words. The ones I usually said. The ones that made my throat tighten up every time I said them out loud. He hadn’t mentioned Lily once since his sudden appearance in Haley’s hospital room two months ago. Had I thought he’d forgotten our lost child? There was real sorrow in his voice. There was agony. I’d thought I was alone with that sorrow all these years.

“How tragic.” Dr. Davis took off his own glasses. “Both for that little girl and for Haley,” he said. “There’s a one in four chance that a sibling will match. When we get into the general population, it’s closer to one in twenty-five thousand.”

The sudden anger I felt at Bryan—at the world—surprised me, and I struggled to keep it in. If we hadn’t lost Lily, we’d have a one in four chance of saving Haley. It was that simple.

“She has cousins,” I said, wondering how cousins would fit into the confusing picture of who would be a compatible donor and who wouldn’t. “Four girls. They’re Bryan’s sister’s children.”

“We’ll test all of them,” he said. “But most likely we’ll be turning to the global donor database. If any of them are a possible match, they’ll be asked to give a blood sample. Donors are almost always found—” he nodded encouragingly “—it’s just a question of how quickly.”

I thought of all the stories I’d heard of people who died while waiting for a transplant. I remembered a little boy who’d been receiving treatment here at Children’s when Haley was a toddler and how they’d been unable to find a donor for him in time. I began to shiver as if I were freezing.

“We’ll keep Haley on the maintenance regimen until we find the donor,” Dr. Davis said. “The good news is that she’ll probably get some hair back.” He smiled. “At least for a while.”

“Why just for a while?” Bryan asked, and I realized he hadn’t seen her hair since she was a year old. Back then, it had been downy and nearly blond. As a twelve-year-old, she wore it in a messy ponytail, long tendrils of it coming out of the elastic band and falling around her face. She didn’t care what it looked like. I wanted her to reach the age of caring. I’d never really reached that age myself—I was still a low maintenance sort of woman, not even wearing makeup unless I had a speaking engagement. I didn’t care if she was like me or not. I just wanted her to have the chance to figure out what kind of woman she wanted to be.

“When we find a donor, we’ll begin preparing her for the transplant. She’ll have a couple of weeks of intense chemotherapy and radiation, and she’ll lose her hair again. After the transplant, she’ll have at least another month or longer in the hospital and about four months’ recovery at home.” He told us about the isolation area and the extreme hygiene measures we’d have to take in caring for Haley.

“Whew.” Bryan sounded as overwhelmed as I felt. Nothing the doctor was telling us was a surprise to me. I’d done my research. I’d seen other kids and their families on the unit go through this ordeal. But the reality of the situation was only now hitting home for me. Now it was Haley I pictured enduring the ordeal ahead of us.

Bryan and I were pretty quiet in the car on the drive back to Alexandria. We stopped in Old Town for lattes, carrying our cups to a bench on the waterfront. The day was spectacular. One of the white riverboats was docked to our left. It positively glowed in the sunlight and the Potomac River was a sheet of silver in front of us. Everything I experienced in that moment, I wanted for Haley. I wanted her to be able to see that riverboat. To take a ride in it. To sit on the bench and marvel at the silvery water. To taste a caramel latte. I couldn’t seem to see or smell or touch anything without desperately wanting her to be able to do the same.

Bryan and I sat in silence for a few minutes, taking in the view as we tried to digest everything we’d heard from Dr. Davis.

“I’m scared,” I admitted finally. “Even if they find a match, it seems like there are so many things that could go wrong.”

He didn’t say anything right away. He sipped his coffee and stared out at the water. I was about to prod him when he finally spoke.

“Listen,” he said, “I want you to know I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to take off again.”

I supposed he was trying to reassure me, but instead his words pissed me off. “You’d better not,” I said. “Not after you’ve let Haley care about you again.”

“I won’t.”

I looked out at the water, getting my nerve up for what I was going to say next. “I was surprised when you mentioned Lily,” I said.

“Why? Did you think I could ever forget about her?”

“I frankly wondered.”

“Oh, Anna. Seriously?”

I turned on the bench to face him. “You ran off, Bryan,” I said. “You started a new life. You never talked about her. I mean, you talked to the police and the authorities back when it happened, but all these years, you’ve never talked to me about her.”

“It was such a difficult time.”

“‘Difficult’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”