Just as I reached the top of the stairway, Mrs. Newell stepped out of what I knew to have been Adan’s bedroom. She closed the door behind her softly and turned. When she saw me standing there, catching my b
reath, she froze into the demeanor of a security guard, folding her arms under her breasts and sending a steel rod down her own spine. Her face turned to chiseled granite, and she walked purposefully straight at me.
“What are you doing up here?” she demanded. “Your quarters are downstairs. Mr. Bovio does not want you wandering around up here.”
“My baby is here!” I exclaimed, shocked at her complete disregard of that fact. “Why didn’t you tell me he had been brought home?”
“The baby is still in a fragile state. No visitors are permitted.”
“But I’m not a visitor!” I cried. “I’m his mother!”
“And I am his personal nurse. Right now,” she said with an icy smile on her lips, “his well-being, his life, literally his every breath, are dependent on me and my expertise. The only reason he is not still in the NICU is that I am here to care for him. I sleep in the room right beside his, so I am with him whenever it is necessary, day or night. No mother could attend to him any better. Now, turn yourself around and go back down those stairs to where you belong.”
“I want to see my baby.”
Her neck seemed to metamorphose into marble right before my eyes as she lowered her arms slowly and put her hands on her hips.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said there are no visitors permitted yet,” she declared.
“And I said I am not a visitor. I am his mother. You can’t keep me from seeing my own baby,” I told her, disappointed by the weak sound of my own voice. I started around her, and she seized my arm, her fingers like pincers.
“The door is locked. There is no point in your walking over there, and if you make noise and wake him out of his desperately needed sleep, I’ll call Mr. Bovio, and I’m sure he’ll have you forcefully removed from the premises entirely. Furthermore, when visitors are permitted, no one will enter that room without proper preparation. He’s too vulnerable to disease yet.” She paused, releasing her grip on my arm and folding her arms again under her breasts. “Is there something I’m telling you that you don’t understand?”
“Yes. I don’t understand why a mother would not be permitted to see her own child.”
She smiled again. “Believe me, Delia, there are dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of mothers who are not only prohibited from seeing and being with their own children but who don’t care, selfish women who are happy that someone else is doing what they should be doing.”
“I’m not one of them.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
I looked past her at the door. If it were truly locked, there would be no point in my trying to get into the room.
“If you really do care about that baby,” she said, her tone not harsh as much as condescending, “you wouldn’t challenge me and what I’m doing, especially after what you have put him through with your misbehavior.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
I started to cry. My forearm ached where she had grabbed it. She simply stared, unmoving, her eyes turning into two steely gray balls.
“This is very mean, very cruel.”
“Please. Save your breath,” she said. “I’m immune to such dramatics.”
“You mean you are immune to such real feeling,” I threw back at her, turned, and descended the stairway, my heart feeling as if it had fallen into my stomach.
Coming from the kitchen, Teresa glanced my way and then quickly disappeared down the hall. I returned to my room to think. I hated myself for being so weak and retreating. At the moment, I was even having trouble keeping my eyes open. Maybe I’m being poisoned somehow, I thought. Maybe they’re killing me slowly with those pills. After all, it was Mrs. Newell who had filled the prescriptions.
Back in my room, I sobbed for a while until I did fall asleep. When I woke up, it was late in the afternoon. I rose, still groggy, and washed my face in cold water. I gazed at the ceiling, thinking. I was sure that above me, Adan Jr. waited, longing for his mother’s touch. I had to get up there to see him. I just had to.
Señor Bovio’s envelopes and papers lay on the table. I decided I would have to be clever now. I took the paper that would assign him custody of Adan Jr. and started down the hallway.
The house was quiet. The descending afternoon sun cast long shadows in the living room and down the hallways. Maybe I was imagining it, but I thought I could hear the faint cry of a baby. I gazed up the stairway and then headed for Señor Bovio’s office. He was sitting behind his desk, talking on his phone, with his chair turned so that his back was to the door. I waited until he finished his conversation, and then I knocked on the opened door, and he turned to me quickly.
“Ah, Delia. How are you?”
“I’m very upset, Señor Bovio. I was never told that Adan Jr. was brought home.”
“Sí. I pushed Dr. Denardo a bit on that, and he relented only because of Mrs. Newell’s presence. For now, it is better that she be the only one to be with him, to care for him. It is still a little critical, although Dr. Denardo assures me he will be fine. Neither you nor Adan need any additional excitement at the moment.”