Memorial/funeral plans have been made for Zoe at La Casa Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home.
We wish to hold Zoe as she is dying or after she has died. Zoe will be donating her organs for transplant. Based on the circumstances of her birth and death, she may be capable of donating heart valves, corneas (both tissue donation), and possibly kidneys and liver cells. As soon as she passes, Zoe will be taken directly to recovery surgery in preparation for organ donation. A burial garment will be provided.
We would like to keep the following items as keepsakes: lock of hair, ID bracelet, crib card, handprints and footprints (molds if possible), weight card, hat, blanket, clothes, family handprints, and photographs, both color and black and white. We have a memory box to store any items collected.
We do not want an autopsy done.
Thank you for helping us make this bittersweet time as bearable and memorable as possible.
Bristol & Marlon James
39
Grip
"We need to adjust the plan."
Dr. Wagner's words are not the ones I wanted to hear. It feels like the plan is already adjusted enough since we're delivering a month earlier than we're supposed to.
"She doesn't want a C-section." I keep my voice low enough for just the doctor to hear. "You know how important that is to her."
I hazard a glance to where Bristol rests between contractions. She scraped her hair back from her face, but tendrils have insisted on loosening from the restraint and cling to her face. Her hospital gown is drenched, and her head flops to the side in exhaustion. I've lost track of how long she's been in labor, but apparently, Dr. Wagner thinks it's been long enough.
"Her labor isn't progressing." Dr. Wagner's eyes soften with compassion, but her jaw sets with resolve. "The baby's heart rate is dropping. Given that you wanted as easy a passage for Zoe and as much time with her as possible, we need to adjust, and now. I can tell Bristol or-"
"No." I shake my head decisively. "It needs to be me. I'll tell her."
"Good." She signals to a nurse hovering nearby. "We need to start prepping her for surgery. I'll give you a minute to explain the situation."
Dr. Wagner, in a rare lowering of her professional guard, grabs my hand and squeezes.
"You've come this far, Grip," she says, her eyes sympathetic and grave. "You and Bristol set this course that most can't or don't follow. It's time to see it through to the end."
I rein in fear and frustration and rage and helplessness, trying not to panic while a propeller spins out of control in my chest. I never had a father to teach me what it means to be a man, how to lead a household, support a family, love a wife. Most of what I know about love and about leading, a woman taught me. My mother taught me, and every lesson, every bit of advice, everything she tried to impart to me, I'm grappling for, struggling to remember as I approach the hardest thing I've ever done and will probably ever do.
"Bris," I whisper, brushing the wet strands from her forehead. "Hey babe."
Her eyes open and roll a little with fatigue and the medication she's been given for pain before she focuses on my face.
"What's wrong?" she asks, her voice thinned by the long hours. "The baby-"
"She's fine. You're doing great, but we . . ."
I hate to do this knowing how badly Bristol wanted to deliver naturally. It's one more thing from this experience that won't be as we wanted it, one more thing I have to take away from her.
"We need to do a C-section, Bris." I watch her face, and my heart contracts when a solitary tear streaks over her cheekbone.
"No, Grip, I . . ." She swipes at the tear impatiently and compresses her lips. "Why?"
"Your labor isn't progressing. It's been too long. We were hoping it would happen quickly, naturally, but if we want Zoe to have the easiest passage, want time with her, we need to do it now."
"Now?" Her eyes widen and she saws at her lip with her teeth. "I . . . now."
"Yeah." I glance over my shoulder as Dr. Wagner and her team enter the room. "They want to start prepping you."
She grabs my hand, squeezing it hard enough to draw blood.
"Grip, I'm scared." Tears swim over the terror in her silvery eyes. "I . . . I can't do this."
I can count on one hand the number of times Bristol has told me she feared anything. We hadn't really talked about surgery much because we weren't planning on it, but I know enough to ease her mind, and anything I don't know, Dr. Wagner can fill in.
"It's a simple surgery," I reassure her. "They'll just-"
"No, not the surgery." She squeezes her eyes shut. "I mean . . . what comes after the surgery."
She looks back at me, fear obscuring the confidence, the fearlessness I'm used to seeing.
"I can't do this." Her lips tremble as her nails slice into my skin. "I don't think I can let her go."
Fuck.
I don't think I can do this either, but we have to. The team is hovering, and Dr. Wagner's urgency is quickly becoming impatience, breathing down the back of my neck.
"Bris, it's gonna be . . ." The word "okay" congeals in my mouth. Bristol and I don't lie, not to each other. Our relationship is built on uncomfortable conversations, shitty odds and, in Bristol's words, love without walls. I'm not erecting walls between us now with anything less than the truth.
"I don't know if it's gonna be okay," I admit quietly.
Her weary eyes spark and latch onto my confession, to my unexpected honesty.
"I've never made you promises I can't keep, Bris, and I'm not gonna start bullshitting you now."
I gulp back the trepidation that would keep me from saying what has to be said before they make the cut that will bring Zoe to us, for minutes, hours, or days.
"Shit's about to get real," I say. "And the only thing I can promise you is that I will love you for the rest of my life, and I truly believe we can survive anything together. Do you believe that?"
I'll never forget this moment when, through the abject fear and despair and exhaustion saturating her eyes, I glimpse her trust in me. It's the greatest gift I've ever received.
"Yes." Her voice comes out frail, but that steel that reinforces her character. It's there. It defies the shit-storm we're flying into. I like to think it defies it because we are flying into it together. I'm not God-I can't promise her miracles, and as badly as I wish I could, I can't save Zoe. When it's time to let her go, I'll be as shredded as Bristol. I am her husband, though, and she's the only woman I've ever loved. All I can promise is that through everything, we'll have each other.
40
Bristol
I wake up disoriented and numb in some places, vaguely aching in others. My last lucid memory is the concern etching lines into Grip's face as he promised me everything would be okay.
No, that's not right.
He didn't promise everything would be okay during the C-section or afterward. He promised to love me, and I know he still does.
But is everything okay?
"Grip?" Briars clot my throat and make my voice rough.
"Hey." He comes into view, and my heart pounds at the sight of him and then stops when I see him holding a tiny swaddled bundle. "You're back."
I remember now. My mind fights through the haze of drugs and exhaustion. I remember struggling to stay awake. Between the drugs and fatigue, I just needed to hear her cry. There was an incredible pressure below the curtain that blocked the lower half of my body, and then a sharp cry. Then, as if my body had held out as long as it possibly could, as soon as I heard that cry, everything went dark.
"Is she . . ."
Alive? Still here? Did I miss her? Is she already gone?
The questions clamor for first place in my head, muddling my thoughts. Tears aren't far behind, burning my eyes and making my lips tremor.
"She's right here." I can't figure out if Grip's eyes are more tender when he looks down at our baby girl or back to me. "You wanna hold her?"
Syllables and sounds jumble in my throat, and something close to a whimper then an uncertain nod is all I can manage.
"Zoe," Grip says, leaning down to the bed with his little bundle. "Meet your beautiful mama."
He transfers the sweet weight to my arms, leaving a kiss in my hair, which I'm sure is mangled and matted all over my head, but he doesn't seem to care. If anything, his lips linger.
The tip of a tiny hat peeks from beneath the striped blanket. I hesitate, knowing when I pull the blanket back, when I see her, there's no going back. I slowly peel the cover away. My heart was braced for something gruesome. The pictures I found online promised nothing like what I'm holding. Her eyes may bulge a little more than typical, but they're the same gray that stares back at me each morning in the mirror, and her little mouth, even at this stage, bears the wide fullness and sculpted lines of her father's. I know what Dr. Wagner told me, what all the research says-that she has no cognitive function. How could she, missing most of her brain? I know any movement is just instinctual twitches, reflexes, not responses to stimuli. Maybe my heart just wants to fool itself into thinking there's an awareness simmering in her eyes, that somehow she knows I'm her mother. I faced the fires of hell to meet her, to have her, even for just minutes or hours, and Grip and I have risked our hearts to hold her.