Before you ask, little Truman is doing well. I should not call him that anymore—it was only a nickname, and now he has a real name of his own: Shepherd Randall Newman. Grace and Con are already calling him Shep for short, and the first gift he ever received was a stuffed sheep from his grandfather.
Shep is the most delicate human I have ever seen—his sheep dwarfs him, and it has to be wrapped in plastic while it lies beside him. He has a feeding tube and an IV, the latter to give him medication throughout the day. Periodically a nurse will come by to check his monitor or run some tests, and twice a day a doctor does a brief examination. In every moment between, either Grace or Con is with him.
Grace has been staying in the hospital—the birth was hard on her, and the doctors have wanted to monitor her for a while. But despite the pain, she found her way to the NICU and stayed there every moment the nurses would allow her. Con has not been away from the hospital for more than an hour. They both linger over Shep’s bed for hours, whispering to him, reaching down to touch him with gentle fingers. They cannot hold him, not yet—the doctor does not recommend a great deal of physical contact until he is further along. But every brush against that thin, soft skin is precious to both of them.
I don’t have to worry about their relationship for now. Both Grace and Con are in complete accord, enamored as they are with their tiny son. They have all but forgotten themselves, absorbed in every breath he takes.
When they are not with him, I am—I certainly won’t get in the doctors’ way! I cover him with my wings and wash him with his parents’ love, and to watch his aura begin to take shape is something truly glorious.
He is doing very well, the doctors say with pleased surprise in their voices. Miraculous is a word that has occurred to more than one of them. It is true, but not entirely owing to the intervention of angels. Shep is strong, as Zaman said, and life is persistent.
But I surely do not take it for granted, because I remember how close we came, how frightened Grace still feels sometimes when she looks at Shep with tubes and needles poking out of him. And I was reminded of the fragility of it all when Brid returned this afternoon.
I had stepped away from the NICU for a moment to be certain that Grace got a bit of sleep on one of the cots down the hall—Con had claimed a chair next to her and had been out for an hour. When I returned, Brid was standing over Shep’s bed, her wings shading him.
“Brid,” I gasped and was by her side. “I have been worried. Where—” I stopped speaking then, for I saw the tears on her face and felt the grief rolling away from her.
“I am sorry I did not come when you called, my friend,” she whispered. “I am sorry to have let you down.”
“No,” I protested, putting two of my wings around her. “You did not let me down. You sent Zaman, and he performed a miracle. That would not have happened but for you.”
She only shook her head, gazing down at Shep, her tears fading into the air all around him.
“What is it?” I asked her.
She swallowed hard. “Zaman saved a life,” she said, “and I failed to save another. Is that balance, I wonder?”
I have never heard her voice so bitter. “Oh, Brid,” I sighed and held her closer. I did not know what else to say. She has never lost a charge before.
For a while we watched Shep breathe in silence. He is already breathing easier, though he still needs medicine to help him.
“Her name was Amy,” Brid said at last. “She had a congenital defect in her heart that was getting worse and worse. They needed a donor…” She shook her head, scattering tears. “I’ve spent the last four days searching, pleading with Comforters and Gathers and Healers alike, hoping to find someone. But there was nothing. I just barely made it back in time to be with her when she died. She was only eight.”
I held her closer. With Shep right there, I felt her pain all the more poignantly. “I am so sorry.”
She turned her head into my chest. “I just can’t stop wondering,” she whispered, “if I made the wrong choice. If I had been with her, if I had used my energies differently—could I have saved her? Or at least given her the time she needed…”
“No,” I said immediately. I took her by the shoulders and made her look me in the eye. “Brid, I have never had reason to doubt your judgment. You know your own capabilities as well as your limits. If you had been able to save her, you would have stayed.”
She stared at me, as if she wished she could believe what I was saying.
I bent and touched my forehead to hers. “My oldest, dearest friend,” I breathed, “do not bear the weight of guilt. I know you, know in my soul that you did everything you could. Without you, she would have suffered more and had less joy in her last days. At least she died knowing that she was loved.”
It wasn’t enough, of course, but it was something. Brid clung to me, and we wept together.
When we had both calmed, we spent a bit of time watching over Shep and lending him wellness and love. It helped her, I think, to help him, even though she did not have much to give.
“Will you write about her?” Brid asked after a moment. “My Amy. Will you write about how she loved pink ribbons and history and squashing bugs, and how her father gave her kisses on her ears, and how she would brush her mother’s hair every night?” She took a breath and went on, “Will you write about her, so that she is remembered?”
“She will always be remembered because she is a part of you now,” I answered, and it is true—every one of my own charges is still imprinted on my soul, from Lamarr to Shannon to Gabrielle. “But of course I will write about her. Tell me what you loved about her.”
Brid loved that Amy was born in the summer and was a summer child, with sunshine in her eyes and her spirit. She loved that Amy loved to press her nose to hospital windows and make faces at the nurses. She loved that Amy danced and sang even when her disease made her thin and fragile. She loved that Amy worried about her mother and father, and she loved that she went to the bathroom to cry to avoid scaring her little brother. She loved that Amy’s dream was to go to the prom, and she loved that her family and her favorite nurses had arranged a little prom for her, complete with a hairdresser and corsage and an eleven-year-old boy from down the hall who heroically agreed to dance with her, despite his broken leg. She loved that as Amy was dying, she looked straight at Brid and smiled.
“She is safe now,” was all I could say when Brid was finished.
She didn’t answer for a long moment. “Someday,” she said at last, looking down at Shep in his warmed bed, “all children will be safe. Someday there will be a day when not one of them dies.”
May that day be swift in coming.