Part 3
“Erin died,” the doctor said. “I’m so sorry, Daniel. We couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
I kept my arms in the position the nurse had shown me. The baby moved, and I tightened my hold until the nurse gently put her hand against my wrist.
“Let me take her for a moment.”
I wanted to ask the doctor to say it differently. He explained what had happened, stopping when I asked him to go back, then answering the same question again. Eventually the nurse carried my daughter toward the room where people knew how to keep her breathing.
I don’t remember the drive home clearly. I remember calling Ray from the nursery floor and hearing him ask me to repeat myself. Behind him, Beth said his name once, very sharply.
They went to the hospital. I stayed beside the crib, with one of Erin’s paint-stained shirts hanging over the rail and her slippers still away from home.
Hank had given me a bottle of whiskey when I turned twenty-one. I hadn’t liked the smell, much less the taste, and had pushed it to the back of a cupboard. That afternoon I found it behind a mixing bowl.
The first swallow made me cough. By evening I no longer cared about that, or about the phone lighting up beside me. When the bottle emptied, I bought another.
The hospital called. Ray called. Beth left messages about the baby, about her weight and the small amounts she was beginning to take from a bottle. I listened to the beginning of one, heard Erin’s mother trying to sound steady, and put the phone facedown.
For most of a week, I stayed in the apartment and let other people do what my daughter needed. I told myself she was safe at the hospital. I didn’t finish the thought about where that left me.
Ray found me on the couch after I left the door unlatched. He cleared enough room on the table to set down water, gathered the empty bottles, and poured out what was left in the others. Then he sat where I could see him.
“I need a drink,” I said when I woke properly.
“I know.” He looked older than he had at the wedding. “We’re getting you some help.”
I told him there was no point. Erin was dead, and I had nothing left worth getting up for.
Ray leaned forward. “Our only child is dead. Yours is at the hospital. Don’t say there’s nothing left while Beth is over there holding her.”
I looked toward the kitchen, ashamed of the bottles he had lined up beside the trash. He didn’t let me change the subject by apologizing for the apartment.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said.
“Neither do we.” He rubbed his face. “But we can’t do your part for you.”
He stayed. He called for medical advice about the drinking and took me to be assessed instead of trying to make me well with coffee. Later, when I was steady enough, he drove me to the hospital and waited while I went inside.
My daughter had gained a little weight. A nurse put her against my chest, and she turned her mouth toward my shirt, searching. I had no answer for that except the bottle the nurse handed me and the instructions she patiently repeated.
I named her Iris because Erin loved the flowers that came up beside her parents’ back step. Beth cried when I told her. Ray went out to the parking lot and came back with the car seat.
Bringing Iris home did not make me well. For a long time, getting through a day meant following the next small instruction: warm the bottle, change the sheet, return a call. Some mornings I stood outside her door until I could make myself go in.
Ray and Beth helped without letting me disappear again. When I went back to freight work, Iris stayed with them, and I called before her bedtime even when there was nothing cheerful to report. At home I took over the night feedings, sometimes sitting fully dressed on the floor because I was afraid I’d sleep through her crying.
During that first year, I learned the sound she made before she laughed. I began doing ridiculous things to earn it. The first time I told Beth about something Iris had done without ending the story in tears, Beth stayed on the phone a little longer.
By six, Iris had her mother’s hazel eyes and a talent for drawing eighteen-wheelers with every axle in roughly the right place. The people in her pictures were harder to identify. She labeled mine DAD, apparently concerned I might not recognize myself beneath the enormous cap.
We made forts from appliance boxes and watched cartoons with her feet tucked under my leg. She wanted the same sandwich cut differently on different days. When I got it wrong, she sighed in a way that sounded so much like Erin I had to turn toward the sink.
The departures became harder as her questions improved. She stopped asking whether I was leaving and began asking how many nights. Ray marked my route on a map for her, and Beth helped arrange our video calls, but some evenings Iris fell asleep before I found a reliable connection.
Then Paul offered me an Alaska assignment: three months of work based around Fairbanks and the northern supply routes, followed by a full month off. The pay would let me put money aside and catch up on expenses I had been shifting from one payday to the next.
I called Ray after Iris went to bed. I told him the numbers, then asked whether three months was too much.
“It’s a long time,” he said. “We’ll have her. You know that.”
“What if she gets used to me being gone?”
“Then make sure she knows when you’re coming back. Call when you say you’ll call. We can help with the rest.”
We talked about the month afterward, the ordinary things I could do with her instead of spending every visit catching up. I accepted the assignment, though I kept the calendar on the kitchen table and counted the weeks more than once.
The night before I left, Iris brought me a drawing while I packed. She had given my truck a chimney and drawn three pillows across the sleeper bunk.
“Who’s the extra pillow for?” I asked.
“That’s Grandpa. Grandma’s making sandwiches.” She pointed to a small figure beside the steering wheel. “I put me here. Can I come with you this time?”
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