Part 4
Alyssa arrived on Friday in a wheelchair pushed by a hospital advocate. She wore loose gray pants, a cardigan buttoned wrong at the bottom, and a knit cap over hair that had not been washed in days. The yellowing bruise on one cheek made her look older; the hospital socks and oversized cardigan made her look very young.
Mara had spent a week trying not to imagine the hours before the culvert, and imagination had supplied a faceless woman walking away. She knew that image was wrong. Even so, her shoulders tightened when the wheelchair entered.
Alyssa’s eyes went straight past every adult in the room.
“Is that her?” she asked.
Nora was in Mara’s arms for a bottle-feeding lesson. The nurse had tucked a rolled cloth along her side to help her maintain the right position. Mara’s first impulse was to finish the measured ounce before moving her.
She recognized the impulse for what it was and hated how reasonable it sounded.
“Yes,” she said. “She took a little over half an ounce.”
The nurse locked the wheelchair beside the recliner. “We can transfer her to you if you feel steady enough.”
Alyssa placed both hands on the armrests. They shook when she tried to rise.
“I can sit,” she said quickly. “Please don’t take her out because of me.”
Mara waited for the nurse’s nod, then lowered Nora into Alyssa’s arms.
Alyssa did not hold the baby like a stranger. One hand supported the base of the skull; the other gathered both legs close to her abdomen. She bent until her lips rested against the fine dark hair above Nora’s ear.
“Hi, Nori,” she whispered. “Mama’s here.”
Nora’s breathing mask had been removed that morning. Her breath still carried a faint whistle, and the sound made every adult in the room listen harder than they meant to.
Alyssa began humming four descending notes, stopped to catch her breath, then started again.
Nora turned her face toward the vibration. It was a small movement, no more than an inch. Mara had watched her turn toward Ben’s low humming too. She knew newborns followed warmth, scent, and sound without understanding any of them.
Still, Alyssa closed her eyes as if the child had crossed the whole room to reach her.
“She knows that song,” Alyssa said.
“You sang it before she was born?” Erin asked.
Alyssa nodded. “When Derek was asleep.”
No one asked her to explain further. She adjusted the bottle angle exactly as the nurse showed her and watched Nora’s jaw work. After six sucks, she paused the feeding without being reminded.
Mara sat across from her with the blue binder on her knees. She had filled three pages with oxygen settings, medication times, and questions for the neonatologist. Alyssa glanced at it but did not reach for it.
“If she goes home with you,” she said, “will you write down the other things too?”
“Everything medical will be in here.”
“I mean what she likes. What makes her stop crying. Which side she turns to.” Alyssa looked down at Nora rather than at Mara. “I’ve already missed days I can’t get back. I don’t want people deciding those things are too small to tell me.”
Mara opened to a blank section and wrote the date at the top.
“She grips cloth when she’s tired,” Ben said from the window. “Usually with her left hand.”
Alyssa looked at him for the first time. “Thank you.”
Later, while the nurse changed Nora’s feeding tube, Claire Delaney came to the family room at Alyssa’s request. The mud was gone from her uniform, but a dark stain remained around the stitching of one cuff.
She did not describe the rescue in the language of miracles. She told Alyssa where Nora had been, how Sadie had covered her, and what the track from the culvert looked like.
“Did Sadie hear her?” Alyssa asked.
“We don’t know. The blanket had tooth marks in one corner, and the drag line went from the concrete to the shed. That’s what we can say for certain.”
Alyssa pressed her thumb into her palm. “She jumps into any open truck. You can’t stop her. She slept beside Nora’s bassinet from the night she was born. Derek used to yell because she left hair on everything.”
“She’s at North Shore Veterinary. The cuts are healing. She’s eating.”
“Can I see her?”
“When your doctors and the shelter can arrange it.” Claire leaned forward, forearms on her knees. “Sadie has done enough hard traveling for a while.”
Alyssa gave a quick, wet laugh that broke before it became sound. She covered her mouth and nodded.
Nora remained at Great Lakes for nineteen days. She needed five days of breathing support and a full course of antibiotics, followed by slow feedings and daily weight checks. By discharge, she still tired easily and had gained only a few ounces, but she could finish every bottle by mouth and hold her temperature in an ordinary crib.
Alyssa was not ready to care for her alone. She had moved from the hospital to a protected residential program and signed a voluntary-placement agreement after meeting twice with her attorney and Erin.
Derek remained missing, and a protective order barred him from contact if he was found. Reunification stayed written at the top of every plan.
On discharge morning, Mara dressed Nora in a cream sleeper supplied by the hospital. Ben adjusted the car-seat straps twice and then asked the nurse to check them a third time.
Before they left, Erin handed Mara the blue binder.
A new note lay inside the front cover in Alyssa’s uneven handwriting:
Please tell Nora I came. Tell her every time.
Mara read it once, closed the binder, and placed it in the diaper bag where she could not pretend to forget…
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