The rain had begun in August, and everyone rejoiced in the sounds of water after a drought had paralyzed the San Francisco Bay Area. Toilets were flushed again, water appeared at restaurant tables, and cars were washed, rationing slipping into memory.  But by mid-October, the earth was saturated. The rain continued. Streams gushed at every incline, and maidenhair patterns of droplets formed on windowpanes, with water finding every crevice to infiltrate. Houses on hills were teetering on soaked wooden stilts. And I was very pregnant.

In November, I wore overalls, always a diaper hanging out of my back pocket, blocking out that my newborn son, Zacky, wasn’t growing. There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead from the effort when he nursed, and the bottle of Digitalis for his broken heart was stored behind the utensil container as if hiding it would take his heart defect away.

My home’s foundation had a horizontal crack and water was streaming into the new room we had begun when I found out I was pregnant. We were adding a family room to create more living space once we had the baby. The contractor, Scott, who was finishing the new room, advised that no one could fix the inside waterfall until the rain stopped. It still hadn’t, and it would cost twenty thousand dollars, minimum bid, to fix the problem.  “At least you can put a price on this repair,” I thought, wondering what the verdict would be at the hospital in March when Zacky had his catheter test to determine the extent of the defects.  But that was still in the future. And I was numb.

There were cracks in our hearts and in our home. 

I watched the rain from the living room window and tried to process what was happening.  Being powerless hurt me and caused the chip that made one bra strap slip off my shoulder, no matter how I adjusted it. It bothered me; I felt like I was driving onto a freeway ramp. But all of the mirrors on my car were broken, and the windshield fogged over, so only dim taillights could be seen up ahead. There is no brake. I am numb.

The week I delivered Zacky, a mist seeped into the living room, ankle-deep, I could only guess, as I hadn’t seen my ankles in a while. The desserts from Eppler’s Bakery, brought daily by my husband Tom, showed in my enormous baby belly.

While eating chocolate scones out of a bakery box, I realized I was having contractions that were increasing. Tom drove to the hospital in early November rain, and Zachary was born after a dash to the delivery room. We were in wonder. He smelled like muffins and had a full head of dark hair and blue eyes. But they took him away and then returned without him. The doctor stated he had a severe heart defect, which would require medication that they would regulate before he went home. An appointment with a pediatric cardiologist was scheduled.

There was silence in the delivery room after that announcement. Then I cried, and Tom punched walls. But neither of these actions fixed anything. The left side of Zacky’s heart was hypoplastic, a death sentence. Very rarely, the left side grows, and doctors were trying to keep him alive to see if that happened.  I attempted to conceptualize a heart with four chambers but still saw a valentine and visits to the pediatric cardiologist left me confused, defensive, and, most of all, terrified.

“Scott,” the building contractor, had begun and finished the mahogany framing of the entrance to the new room, so the swamp was highlighted. Then he took off with our payment; someone said Florida. Houses were sliding down canyon walls, and the news was filled with victims.

Out of nowhere, I planned a nice dinner, hoping to ease some of the stress from a dying baby and a collapsing house.  I believed nurture hormones were at work. I finally brushed my tangled hair and found a long floral skirt with an elastic waist. I set our place settings on the dining room table, with our backs to the indoor waterfall. Zacky fussed, and I began to nurse, but to do so, I had to take my top off, which was an oversight in planning.  He was making his hungry face and sucked on his hand, which entailed several removals of the sweater. During one of them, I heard potato explosions in the oven, followed by black smoke quickly engulfing the kitchen.  Dressed again, I pulled out the roast (only a few pieces of baked potatoes on it), set it on the counter, turned off the oven, and opened the kitchen door. This allowed the gusts of rain to blow water into the kitchen and soak the roast. There was no respite.

I took my top off again to continue feeding Zack. Tom came home from work and was irritated when he entered with a “what the hell happened here?” look, me in my nursing bra flapped open, rain coming in from the open door, saturating the roast, and black oven smoke encircling us.

He also heard a new water sound almost masked by soft rock music from the living room. As I followed him out of the kitchen, I heard him gasp, run for a tool, and frantically tear at the ceiling and sheetrock, exposing the beams you usually knock on a wall to locate. “He’s lost it!” I thought, “irreparably over the edge,” but I was calm, observing another breakdown. “I found it!” he shouted, “Come look!” 

I saw the corner of the ceiling wet and dangling, but I focused on the sheetrock installed by “Scott, the departed contractor.” It was now in clumps on the damp floor, adding to the ambiance. We ate cheese sandwiches silently and went to bed with the sounds of water falling inside and outside, a familiar background to our sleep.

#

Zacky and I arrived at the University of California Medical Center, driving through the March rain into the City, passing Golden Gate Park, everything was lush and green. The grass had puddles because there was no room under the soil for more water.  I saw the little white stars circling Zack’s black pupils and set against deep blue eyes, his handsome face grinning as I parked the car. Holding him extra close and praying fervently, I admitted him to the hospital. Each of the nurses and the attending physician commented on how beautifully formed he was, at least on the outside.  This was Zack’s third trip to a hospital, but the first to UC Med and the first without Tom, who, with Zacky’s life on a stopwatch, had flown to Boston. The heart surgeons at the Boston Children’s Hospital had begun performing experimental heart transplants on infants.

I was unprepared for what I found in the patient’s room.  Instead of the Sesame Street wallpaper and rocking chairs by every crib, the room had five metal cribs, stark walls, and no chairs. Freaked-out parents, cooing over their babies, tubes the only sign that a child was inside these cages.  Zacky and I continued smiling at each other, safe in that bond that holds a mother and child, sure that we didn’t belong here and would soon be leaving together and intact.

Diapered and wrapped, warm and sleepy, he nursed while I leaned against his crib. I set him down gently to sleep and watched him for a while, incredulous at his beauty.

The King of pediatric heart surgeons arrived, followed by eight residents, and he woke Zack up with his cold stethoscope—none of them responding to his gooey smile as he stretched out his legs and beamed at the multitude of faces peering down at him.  Tired and business-like, the residents took notes as the King shouted about various defects, challenging each to find the same. They dutifully took turns with the stethoscope, the ultimate contest being to “match the defect with the upcoming catheter results.”  They moved on without even looking at me—terror now in every cell of my body—to the next victim in the room.  My legs were wobbly, but even so, I picked up Zacky and wandered out into the hallway, holding him as tightly as if I were walking on a mountain precipice.  Spying a lone chair at the end of the hall, facing a window, I sat, trying to block out the horror around me: parents sobbing and leaning against walls, hospital bells announcing the next crisis.  A nurse found me there and took Zacky for his catheter test, pointing to the parents’ lounge where I must wait.

I did. There was a hospital TV and hospital couches, distraught parents in clusters, and silence when a doctor entered. I discovered that at four o’clock, there was a drawing to determine what parent would be allowed to spend the night.  There were nine mats.  

At four, I showed up in the playroom and discovered I was a lucky mat winner. Finally, at five, Zacky was brought back to his crib, wrapped tightly, and asleep so that I couldn’t see the purple punctures in his upper thighs from the catheter needles.

During every call to Tom with updates, I sobbed inconsolably.

I took my place on my assigned mat in the playroom, next to a Laotian fisherman in his seventies, who had traveled to this country with his grandson, scheduled for open-heart surgery in the morning. Something to do with a valve, or so the nurses said. The fisherman snored, so I spent the night hovering over Zacky’s crib, at the breast pump at the nurses’ station, and finally, almost dawn, rocking my sleeping son in the one hallway chair, watching the city lights through the window-praying.

Morning came, and Zacky finally woke. With each labored breath, he moaned, a frantic look about him. Then Zacky died and the stars and smiles were gone forever. Life would never be the same.

#

The 200 tulips I had planted in the fall before Zacky was born never came up that spring, because I planted them upside down, but the rain stopped. Tom, on his own, finished the room. It eased his sorrow that he could fix something. I spent the summer planting seeds and flowers; the Johnny Jump Up violas were for Zack—a testimony to my ability to sustain life. His clothes and blankets which I kept tightly wrapped, have lost his scent. Tom put the crib, infant seat, and baby toys in the storage shed while I waited in the bathroom; I could not watch him removing our baby’s things from the house.

I still want to send him a valentine so he will have a heart.