Violetta Craft's Arc

Chapter 18 of 65

The sewing machine arrived at the clinic room by nine the next morning. Lymber carried it in a canvas tote and set it on the rolling tray table. Violetta had already tried the hospital pump twice before breakfast. Both times she had watched the bottle stay nearly empty while a nurse spoke softly about supply and time. A lactation nurse came in at ten with a chart. She said Elowen's feeds were going up. Violetta's output was going down. The NICU freezer had enough of her milk for one more day. Violetta pushed the machine tote aside. The gowns could wait. She asked the nurse what changed things. The nurse said skin contact, smell, sound, and time near the baby. Pumping in the room, two floors up from the incubator, was the worst place to do it. Violetta looked at Jordie in the chair by the window. He was already standing. He went down to the NICU and asked if there was a corner where she could pump beside Elowen. A nurse there found a curtained bay next to the incubator and rolled in a hospital pump. Jordie came back and wheeled Violetta into the elevator with the tote and a cooler on her lap. Her stitches pulled. She kept her hand pressed flat against them and did not speak. In the bay, a nurse lowered the incubator side so Violetta could see Elowen's face while she set up the flanges. Jordie drew the curtain and sat on the floor outside it with his back against the wall. Violetta watched Elowen's chest move. She listened to the small hiss of the oxygen and the beep of the monitor. The pump started. For a long minute nothing came. Then her milk let down and both bottles began to fill in steady lines. She cried quietly and did not stop the machine. When the nurse came back to check, she weighed the bottles and wrote the number on the chart without comment, then wrote it again and underlined it. It was more than the last four sessions combined. The nurse said Violetta could keep a chair in the bay and pump there every three hours as long as she could manage the walk. Jordie said he would push the chair. Lymber went home to the family's house to pack a small bag — a pillow, a water bottle, the folding chair from the porch — and to tell Paul and the younger kids that Violetta would not be back at the rental for a while. Violetta stayed in the curtained bay with her finger through the incubator opening and the cooler filling beside her. The sewing machine sat upstairs on the tray table, untouched. The showcase was still a year away. Today she had fed her daughter. That was the plan she could keep.