Another Man's Child

The nurse came back into the nursery with a vial filled with Lisa’s breast milk and hooked it up to the tube that would send the milk into the baby’s stomach. Lisa stared at the vial as the milk slowly disappeared.

“She took it all!” Marcus exclaimed a short while later.

Lisa smiled for the first time that morning. She was thankful for every small victory she had. And she’d just had two. Sara had had her first real feeding. And Marcus had exclaimed over his daughter’s progress just like the proud papa he was supposed to be.. It wasn’t much. But it was enough to keep Lisa going. At least for another day.

SHE WASN’T SURE just when she knew she wouldn’t give up her husband without a fight. The knowledge just seemed to grow in her over the next few days as Marcus continued to share her visits with Sara. They were allowed into the nursery “on the second day after the baby had been put back on the ventilator, and Lisa sang to her daughter through her morning feeding that second day. Sara was taking four ounces of breast milk every four hours. And digesting every bit of it. Lisa could tell that Marcus was pleased at this small bit of progress by the satisfied expression on his face, but that was the only indication he gave. He never involved himself with anything that went on in the nursery, never got close enough to the baby to touch her.

But he was always there.

Marcus was the most heroic man she’d ever met. He was the spice in her life, the warmth of the sun on her face. He was also the father of her child. Somehow she had to get him to believe that. For all of them.

They stood together in the deserted nursery viewing room one evening, having stopped by the hospital for another quick peek at Sara after they’d gone out for dinner.

Lisa saw the way his gaze flew immediately to their baby as they entered the room. Saw the way the lines around his mouth relaxed when he saw that she was resting peacefully.

“You care about her,” she blurted, frustrated beyond endurance with his inability to allow himself the wealth of love Sara would bring to him.

His face froze, a look Lisa hadn’t seen in months, but she ignored it. She wasn’t wrong about him. She couldn’t be wrong about him. “I saw you looking at her just now, Marcus. You were worried that she wouldn’t be all right.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders defensively. “I worry for your sake, Lisa, for hers, not for my own. Don’t read any more into it than that.”

“I see you look at her, Marcus. You watch everything they do to her so intently. I see you tense when they’re hurting her, as if you’re taking on her pain yourself. I know you, Marcus. You care about her.”

“I care for you, Lisa. Period. Don’t do this.” His jaw clenched.

“Look at her, Marcus! How can you look at her and not love her?”

“She’s not mine to love.” His words were clipped, his eyes shuttered.

“She’s not those nurses’ in there, either, but I can guarantee you that every last one of them have fallen in love with her.” Lisa couldn’t let it go. Too much was depending on making him see this her way.

Marcus was silent for so long that Lisa dared hope she’d finally won. Until he pinned her with a stare she didn’t even recognize. It was hard. Unrelenting.

“You promised, Lisa. There was to be no more of this. Yes, I care about the child, just as those nurses do as outsiders. That’s what I am—an outsider.”

Her heart splintered into a million fragments. She hadn’t won at all. She wasn’t ever going to win.

She sensed rather than saw the softening in him. “But we can be happy, Lis. I know we can.”

“Just you and me?” she asked, bitterness the only thing she had to give him in that moment. Was he so blind that he couldn’t see the writing on the wall?

“The three of us.” He rocked back on his heels, his hands still jammed in his pockets. “I’ll never begrudge you the time you spend with her, the days and evenings that will belong to her alone, as long as I have your love. I’ll always be good to her, Lis, treat her with gentleness and respect.”

She felt herself giving in, even though she knew it would never work.

“It might be unconventional, but so was flying when the Wright brothers decided to give it a try. So was talking over wires before Alexander Graham Bell thought it was possible. And now look—everybody’s doing it”

There was wisdom in his logic, but he’d missed one key factor. Emotion. Particularly the emotions of a little girl who’d never know her father’s love. Gentleness and respect just weren’t enough.

“At least give it a try, Lis. Give us a chance. Let me show you it’ll be all right. If you aren’t happy or you think for one second that Sara’s not happy, I’ll leave. But please, give us a chance.”

Too choked up to speak, Lisa nodded, but she knew she’d never be able to follow through on his request. She couldn’t gamble with Sara’s well-being. If she did as Marcus asked, if she brought Sara to live with him and the child suffered from his indifference, his leaving would be too late. The damage would already be done.

But neither could she handle sending him out of her life tonight She stood beside him for another fifteen minutes while their daughter slept, oblivious to the turmoil going on in her parents’ lives. She stood there thinking about the expression she’d caught on his face when they’d first come into the viewing room that evening, and she stubbornly hung on to a thread of hope she knew in her heart had already been severed.

IN SPITE OF the breast milk she was consuming four times a day, Sara lost three ounces that week.

Lisa’s heart sank when Randal Cunningham told her about it Friday morning, Sara’s seven-week birthday. They were in the nursery, the baby sleeping in her bed between them. Lisa had just tied a Happy Birthday helium balloon to the baby’s blood-pressure monitor. Marcus was at work.