a rose

The babies never smiled so it was hard to know if were pleased to see me when I arrived every weekday afternoon but I liked to imagine that they were. I don’t know exactly why I volunteered at the hospital…and I certainly don’t know why I took the task that nobody really wanted to do…but there I was spending time with the terminally-ill babies.

I had no medical training but there were doctors and nurses and dutiful monitors for that. Me, I just talked to the babies…held them…fed them…rocked them…held conversations with them that they sometimes seemed to actually be participating in. I prayed that they got as much out of the fleeting hours as I did.

I never asked what afflictions the babies had. And I never asked what happened when one of the babies present one day was absent the next. I just talked to them…laughed with them (or at least, laughed and smiled for them.) It was a bittersweet and wonderful way to spend my afternoons.

It was a rainy Thursday afternoon when I first noticed Carmen. She was a frail yet oddly vibrant little thing…not destined to spend long in this world I was told. Her mother, unable to deal with her too imminent mortality, had not been able to bring herself to bond with the child…she had not even given the girl a name.

The child barely fit in my ungainly paw of a hand when I lifted her up from her crib to feed her. “What’s her name?” I asked the nurse who brought over a bottle of formula as I settled into the rocking chair set in the room for the feeding of the babies.

Mrs. Wilson, the attending nurse, shrugged sadly. “Doesn’t have one,” she said. “Her mother feels so…guilty, I guess…that she can’t even bring herself to look at the little one.”

I took the bottle after settling the baby. “Well, that won’t do,” I said softly smiling at the tiny girl nestled in the crook of my arm. The baby, startlingly calm with large, dark, wizened eyes, looked up impassively. “Carmen Rose,” I said, the name blooming brightly in my head as our eyes met and focused on each other. “Just between you and me and Nurse Wilson, we’ll call you Carmen Rose.”

“Why that name?” Mrs. Wilson asked.

“I dunno,” I admitted, “it just feels right for her.”

Mrs. Wilson smiled opaquely and nodded. She walked off and I put the nipple of the bottle to Carmen’s thin lips. “There’s a good girl,” I said softly as the baby began to drink.

Carmen was not going to get better. I knew that. But I rocked her everyday anyway…I took her into my heart anyway.

It was clear but cool Tuesday afternoon when I last held Carmen. As I walked the hall towards the intensive care nursery the cold ache in my heart told me what I was going to find. A doctor was there, Mrs. Wilson was there, Carmen’s mother…whom I had only seen fleetingly in the weeks I’d been rocking Carmen…was there.

“Do you want to hold her before I disengage the machines?” the doctor asked as I walked into the room.

I thought, for a confusing second, that he was talking to me but he was talking to Carmen’s mother.

Carmen’s mother was pale and frail looking with liquid, haunted, tear-reddened eyes. She shook her head and took a half step back. “I can’t,” she said in a pained whisper of a voice.

The doctor nodded. “I understand,” he said as he reached to switch off the machines that were keeping Carmen alive.

“Wait,” I said before I could stop myself. “She shouldn’t die alone.”

Mrs. Wilson looked around at me and then she quickly moved over and pushed the rocking chair next to Carmen’s crib. I sat down and Mrs. Wilson gingerly lifted the still child and put her in my arms.

“You did good, little Rose,” I said, touching her still face. I glanced up at the doctor and nodded ever so slightly. He pressed a switch and the machines went silent. The room went silent. The world went silent.

I’m not sure how long I sat there…rocking ever so slightly…before Mrs. Wilson took Carmen Rose out of my hands. I rose and took a deep breath. I walked towards the door without looking back. I paused by Carmen’s mother who was crying thick, bitter tears.

“How did you know?” she asked, not looking up at me.

“Know what?”

She looked up into my eyes. “My grandmother’s name was Carmen Rose, too.”

We held the moment of shared grief between strangers for a minute and then we parted. I left the room as she moved towards her daughter.

A couple of days later Mrs. Wilson called me to give me the address of the church where the service was going to be held. I thanked her all the while thinking to myself that there was no way that I was going.

But, of course, I did. I sat at the back of the church even though there were precious few people there. I stared at the tiny, open casket not hearing a word the pastor said. As the service ended I rose and walked up the aisle to the casket. I placed a single white rose on Carmen Rose’s little body and turned away. I caught the eye of Carmen’s mother and nodded. She, nestled in the arms of an older woman who looked much like her, nodded back smiling ever so slightly. I walked out of the church.

The next afternoon, I went back to the hospital…back to the babies.

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