My Son Zachary

AT THE END of July 1983, four months before the twins were due, Debra had to be admitted to Pennsylvania Hospital and placed on complete bed rest. About a week later, when premature delivery became inminent, she was sent to a labor room on the third floor. Her bed was put on blocks, leaving her in an inclined position with her head tilted downwards. Two IVs—one for water, another for a medication to reduce the contractions—were placed in her arms.

Through the remarkable efforts of obstetrician Victor Zachian, delivery was staved off. Fighting like crazy, he bought us a minute, then an hour, then a day, then a week as he tried to get to that 28-week mark where the twins would have a far better chance of survival. The medical advances that exist now for premature infants had not been perfected then. Today, babies who weigh as little as a pound at birth can be saved. But back then, the territory had no perfect rules.

Lying on that bed of torture, Debra fought with inspiring bravery. A stitch was taken in her cervix, and she was given shots on an almost hourly basis to reduce the contractions. Purple marks covered one of her arms from the IV. Pus and blood swelled her right hand from another IV, so the line was moved to her left. She developed a fever. At every turn, there was a new crisis.

“Sometimes I feel I just want it to be gone, and we would go home and try again,” she told me. She continued to fight, but there was also a kind of serenity, an acceptance of fate for the twins with which the miracle of medicine would not interfere: “I feel they’re taken care of, no matter what happens,” she said. “Either they come and they’re okay, and the doctor makes them grow, or else they’re taken care of by nature.”

The emotions that came out of both of us were roiling and overwhelming and confusing. We thought we could make it. We refused to give up; we fought like valiant soldiers. Then we begged for relief, an answer to the uncertainty. “I hate it here,” said Debra, overcome by pain and endless fear.

I hated it, too, because I was largely helpless, and also because every vision I had a right to have, had been obliterated. At a certain point in our endless vigil, a birthing class showed up on the labor floor for a tour. The mothers were happily pregnant, and the fathers were happily nervous. They wore ill-fitting yellow gowns supplied by the hospital, and they were barely able to suppress their excitement as they oohed and aahed over the incubators and took notes to make sure they didn’t forget anything.

The sight of them infuriated me. I resented their smugness, their superiority, their mockery of my inadequacy as they walked down the hallway in those stupid yellow gowns and held hands and peeked into the little delivery rooms as if it was all some glorious fun house. Didn’t they know how lucky they were? Couldn’t they at least appreciate that?

A month earlier, I too had looked forward to every aspect of the pregnancy—the ultrasounds, the fuzzy blur of those forming shapes inside the womb, the start of my own birthing class. But now I hated all of it.

What had this happened to me?

Why not to one of those stupid couples?

Not me.

Please, not me.