Don’t you see?…I’m trying to spare us all a terrible grief.
The nurse stood beside him and studied the baby.
“I’m sorry, doctor,” she said.
He held the infant, forgetting what he ought to do next. Her tiny hands were perfect. But the gap between her big toes and the others, that was there, like a missing tooth, and when he looked deeply at her eyes he saw the Brushfield spots, as tiny and distinct as flecks of snow in the irises. He imagined her heart, the size of a plum and very possibly defective, and he thought of the nursery, so carefully painted, with its soft animals and single crib. He thought of his wife standing on the sidewalk before their brightly veiled home, saying, Our world will never be the same.
The baby’s hand brushed his, and he startled. Without volition he began to move through the familiar patterns. He cut the cord and checked her heart, her lungs. All the time he was thinking of the snow, the silver car floating into a ditch, the deep quiet of this empty clinic…
“All right. Clean her up, please,” he said, releasing the slight weight of the infant into the nurse’s arms. “But keep her in the other room. I don’t want my wife to know. Not right away.” The nurse nodded. She disappeared and then came back to lift his son into the baby carrier they’d brought. The doctor was by then intent on delivering the placentas, which came out beautifully, dark and thick, each the size of a small plate. Fraternal twins, male and female, one visibly perfect and the other marked by an extra chromosome in every cell of her body. What were the odds of that? His son lay in the carrier, his hands waving now and then, fluid and random with the quick water motions of the womb. He injected his wife with a sedative, then leaned down to repair the episiotomy. It was nearly dawn, light gathering faintly in the windows. He watched his hands move, thinking how well the stitches were going in, as tiny as her own, as neat and even. She had torn out a whole panel of the quilt because of one mistake, invisible to him.
When the doctor finished, he found the nurse sitting in a rocker in the waiting room, cradling the baby girl in her arms. She met his gaze without speaking, and he remembered the night she had watched him as he slept.
“There’s a place,” he said, writing the name and address on the back of an envelope. “I’d like you to take her there. When it’s light, I mean. I’ll issue the birth certificate, and I’ll call to say you’re coming.”
“But your wife,” the nurse said, and he heard, from his distant place, the surprise and disapproval in her voice.
He thought of his sister, pale and thin, trying to catch her breath, and his mother turning to the window to hide her tears.
“Don’t you see?” he asked, his voice soft. “This poor child will most likely have a serious heart defect. A fatal one. I’m trying to spare us all a terrible grief.”
Extract from the book The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards
All Rights Reserved.
New York : Viking, 2005.
Call number : English EDW
Extract contributed by Teh Guo Pei
Recommended Reads
Available at NLB
Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife
By Audrey Niffenegger
Call Number: NIF
Title: The Year of Fog
By Michelle Richmond
Call Number: RIC
Title: My Sister’s Keeper
by Jodi Picoult
Call Number: PIC
How do you determine when it’s right to shield someone you love from a painful truth?
April 4th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Is it anybody’s right to shield someone from painful truth? If it is then we assume that that someone is not entitled to the truth. But if that is not so then perhaps we should work at how to deliver the truth, however painful, thoughtfully and after much deliberation. Because only after accepting the truth can one move on.
April 4th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Was it a ghost story???
April 6th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
It’s not for us to play God. I remember reading somewhere once that He never gives us something that’s too large for us to handle. BTW, I strongly recommend My Sister’s Keeper. It’s a must read for all parents.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
It just cannot be done. Truth has a way of coming out sooner or later. And when it does finally comes out, who to say that the person whom one is trying to spare the truth from might perhaps be the one who hurts the most after knowing that he/she doesn’t even get a say on what he/she should or should not know.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Received via mail to readandreap (at) nlb.gov.sg:
“most people do so out of fear and some do it out of gut instinct. i think we should do so when we feel that it is necessary to do so to protect that someone. but we shouldn’t hide it forever. we should let them know the truth if the conditions are right ,when its necessary, or when the person wants to know or is ready / old enough to know the truth.”
- Timothy Low
April 20th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
It’s a terrible decision to have to make but at the end, still ultimately selfish. He spares all of themselves grief but how about the baby? She may die, yes, but she deserves her parents’ love no less than a healthy baby who will love a long life.