Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 17 of 65

Violetta slept in pieces through the night. Nurses came in to check her blood pressure and press on her belly. Jordie stayed in the chair by the bed in his black jacket, phone face down on his knee. Every time Violetta woke, she asked if there was news from the NICU. A nurse said Elowen was stable on a small amount of oxygen. Stable was a word Violetta held onto. It was not the same as holding her daughter. At noon the next day, twenty-four hours after the birth, a nurse said Violetta could go down. Jordie helped her sit up. Her stitches pulled. She could not stand long enough to walk the hallway, so he lowered her into the wheelchair and tucked a blanket over her lap. Her mother met them at the elevator with a paper cup of water and a hand on Violetta's shoulder. Paul was there too, in his flannel, holding the door. The NICU was quiet in a way that made every beep loud. A nurse walked them to an incubator near the window. Elowen was smaller than Violetta remembered from the three seconds after birth. A tube ran under her nose. A wire taped to her foot fed numbers to a screen. Her chest moved fast and even. Violetta reached through the round opening in the side of the box and touched one finger to Elowen's palm. Elowen's hand closed around it. Violetta cried without covering her face. Jordie put his hand on the back of her neck and left it there. While Violetta sat with her finger in the incubator, her mother stepped into the hall and took out her phone. She wrote a short post and attached a picture she had taken through the plastic — Elowen in the box, tube and all, with Violetta's finger visible at the edge. She wrote that her granddaughter had been born early and was fighting hard, and asked people to keep Elowen in their prayers. She posted it before she could talk herself out of it. Her name had not appeared online in years. Within an hour the post had two hundred shares. Women from town sent messages. A few sent money to a link Paul set up that afternoon. By evening Violetta was back in her room with a printout of the post in her lap. Her mother sat on the edge of the bed and said the clinic had a list of things the NICU parents needed — a small cooler for pumped milk, soft preemie clothes, a folding chair for the long hours by the incubator. Violetta looked at the printout and then at the window. The showcase was a year away. Her sewing machine was in the rental house. She could not sew a dress this week. She could sew a set of preemie gowns. She told her mother to bring the machine to the clinic in the morning. It was the first plan she had made since the delivery, and it was small enough to keep.