Rebekah Denison Hewitt “Pneumonia at 15 months”

Pneumonia at Fifteen Months

In the hospital the nurses wear masks, don’t breathe 
too loudly. Their shoes squeak and my breath, hot waves
on the metal crib bars. Fragile, unyielding. 

We measure breath by the way it sounds, if it succeeds. 
	Too fast, too slow, to take 
	                                                   as if you could keep breath in your hand as if 
		                                       you could give it away. 

The nurses say pulse ox, oxygen sat. It’s a waste of breath
	 to say saturation. The lungs thick with air soaking. Soaking 
takes time, he is breathing
			too fast. How many respirations per minute?
											
I walk across the hall to see the x-ray. 
See the cloudiness around his heart? 
         The edges of the heart 
                                should be sharp. 
                              The infection is the blur. 

In the whir of space before language 
the nurses shake toys, say things like, 
Point to Santa, baby. 
        Watch the balloon,
                 little stick, little ouch. 

Try to sleep with the         beep       beep.
The crying baby next door, thoughts about the cost 
of my son’s breath, of mine. 
Dreams of fraying shoe strings, 
                            the eerie light before a tornado. 
My light. My dark 
pieces and threads. 
Dreams of a baby not breathing. Blue blinking
                           machines. Blue grids. Leaky ink. Blue ink, blue blood. 

Watch for blue around the mouth, mama. 
		Here, I have no other name. 

Here, the facts are my feelings: oxygen saturation at 91, at 92 (the goal for the night). 
Can’t stop looking at the numbers on the screen.
Can’t pull him close to me. I know you might want to but you can’t
 	 sleep with him. The cords he’s connected to –
are not mine. 
I try to read but can’t escape the blinking numbers. 
The facts. 

Facts that do not make 
themselves or 
decisions. Facts
I gather, 
interpret decide
how to 
feel them. 
Register 
them in  
my body,
what is making me 
feel or not feel. 
Cortisol, adrenaline 
replace fatigue. 
Can’t sleep - 

              My son and I are statistics and facts, histories, 
              records in binary code. We are the hospital. The facts 
              of us spilled out 

on a pull out sofa, 

on a chart in a numbered room.

A thin white blanket I can pull over my head 
until I disappear, but there is no 
disappearing. Here, 
I am collected 
		like a vial of blood.