She lifted Daniil’s chin to stretch his trachea. I looked from one of them to the other. I monitored Vanya’s condition as he struggled in my arms.
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” she said. “We’ll try and find a doctor. My colleague is moving passengers so that we can put you in the back.”
I thanked her and discreetly turned my head to wipe my nose on my sleeve. With my cheek glued against Vanya’s, I cried desperately along with him. We laid the babies out on two seats. The attendants found a doctor on the flight list. He briefly examined the boys, but only had a basic kit with him, and was reluctant to give a prognosis.
“I want to be absolutely sure of my diagnosis. I would need to get blood tests…” he said. “But these look to me like withdrawal symptoms.”
“Withdrawal! What do you mean?”
“I would say—and I can’t be completely sure—that they’re manifesting symptoms of alcohol poisoning. Have you given them anything?”
“Of course not!” exclaimed Gregory.
“What I mean is, have you given them any cough syrup? Antihistamines?” he said. “If the child is allergic, there can be a reaction like this.”
“No, no,” replied Gregory, “We didn’t give them anything.”
“Has this ever happened before?” he asked.
We had to admit that we had just adopted the babies, and only met them the day before.
A silence fell over the scene.
Sick and lost amid a crowd of strangers, the babies howled hysterically, at the top of their lungs. It was hard to keep them on the seats. We had to hold them down firmly to keep them from falling off. Seeing our distress, the doctor tried to comfort us.
“You know, this condition isn’t permanent. You have some long days ahead of you, but they’ll recover. Don’t worry.”
Before that, his tone had been cold and professional. He was on vacation and could have done without an emergency consultation. He looked us over as he spoke. I felt horribly guilty. He hastened to add that there was nothing he could do for the children, that only time could heal them, and that the best thing to do would be to consult a pediatrician as soon as we got home. He removed himself quickly and returned to his seat.
The babies grew more and more aggressive as the hours went on. We had to contain their contortions and kicking, endure their biting and scratching.
“You have to secure them for landing,” the flight attendant advised us.
A torture. Immobilized in Gregory’s powerful arms, Daniil vomited his rage in furious hiccups.
They remained under observation at SickKids Hospital for twenty-four hours, rehydrated intravenously. Nothing was going as planned. I found myself alone in an empty house. I sat hopelessly at the kitchen table, an oppressive silence all around me.
What had I imagined would happen? That becoming a parent would be like the glossy photos in the magazines?
I started thinking about my baby. Throughout the whole pregnancy, I’d watched what I ate, hadn’t touched caffeine or alcohol, took a variety of vitamins, went swimming, did yoga, took naps, all for nothing. All my plans failed; even this adoption couldn’t go normally. With my head in my hands, elbows on the table, I felt exhausted, wondering if we’d made the wrong decision.
A thought struck me: I lost the baby in August, more than a year and a half ago, and the twins were born in October, at nearly the very time my baby would have been due. I would have been pregnant at the same time as the Russian woman who had given birth to the twins. Who was she? Was she too young? Too poor? I wondered what she had eaten during her pregnancy, whether she’d taken drugs. I had done everything in my power to have a perfect pregnancy and created an unviable baby, while she, who may have done every single thing wrong, had given birth to healthy children she didn’t want, who’d then been mistreated by an orphanage. This line of thinking led me nowhere.
Outside, the temperature was still glacial. Our electric thermometre showed 2.4 degrees Celsius. I knew because I had been staring at it, motionless, for at least twenty minutes. The heat came on in the house. A gust of warm air blew up from the vent behind me. I could feel my mouth and eyes drying up. With my eyelids closed, I moved my tongue around my mouth, but it made no difference. It felt like my whole body was scorched and rasping. The fabric of my clothes suddenly began to itch in a way my nails couldn’t soothe. I scratched compulsively, as though a parasite was crawling under my skin. The more I scratched, the more the itch spread. My legs, arms, and then my hair prickled. Flakes of skin soon covered my shoulders. I swept them away briskly. My neck and arms were streaked with bright red, but the irritation was constant. I rolled up my pant leg to rub my calf, wanting to soothe every part of my body, but no comfort came. I tried to steady myself, taking deep breaths, my hands flat on the table to stop myself from scratching. The effort was unbearable. Tears clouded my eyes. I rummaged through the drawers and armed myself with a butter knife. Gripping the utensil with both hands, I rubbed the blade against the nape of my neck until a fresh wave of pain appeased me.
A deep calm now fell over the house. Gregory wasn’t home. He had to stop by the office and would come home soon to pick me up and take me to the hospital to see the children. My breathing returned to normal and my mouth settled into a smile. I let my eyelids drift halfway shut and daydreamed. The babies would soon be through their withdrawal and everything would be better. After all, they weren’t sick; we just needed to help them through their addiction and then everything could
