Bodark Creek - 62. Chapter 62

Once Paul was all right again, he and Cara decided to have a baby. “There’s no special reason,” they insisted. But Joann laughed about that.

“They finally figured out that they can die,” she said. “It took a while, but that’s all right. They’re still young enough to have kids.”

And they did. A son named Barrett. “Is that a family name?” I asked Cara.

“No,” she said. “I just like it.”

And she didn’t like him being called Barry.

“I tried that first thing,” Paul told me. “And I tried Bar. She hated that, too. But she will let me call him Bart.”

Whatever his name, he was the cutest baby. And daring. When he started to crawl, he went everywhere. And when he started to walk, no one couldn’t stop him.

“We need a guard dog,” Paul decided. “Maybe two – one for each side. When he grows up, this kid’s gonna climb mountains.”

He was as active as his parents, and he was only three years old. And maybe that’s what caused the trouble. Bart was so healthy that even though Paul and Cara were almost forty, they decided to have another child.

“Of course, Cara wanted a girl,” Paul said. “But the tests show that Bart’s gonna have a brother.”

“What will you call him?” I asked. Cara never seemed to watch soap operas. She was too busy working. But she seemed to get her names from television.

“I’m going for Jim,” Paul told me. “Cara can call him James. But I’ve got a terrible feeling he’s gonna be Ryan.”

“Then you can call him Rye,” Neal joked.

I couldn’t see Cara standing for that but didn’t say anything. In any case, the thought of another great-grandchild was the perfect gift for my ninetieth birthday.

We didn’t celebrate in many other ways. Everyone wanted a big party, and they all kept reminding me that I was the oldest person – ever – in our family. But I said that just meant I’d been having birthday parties for ninety years. And I wanted to keep this one small.

“It is your choice,” Del admitted. So I got my wish.

I also got to see Bart a lot because Joann and I took care of him during the day. Joann had retired from the VA, though she could have stayed on a few years longer, and it would have meant a little extra for her pension. But the dentist she’d worked with almost from the beginning had retired, and the new one expected Joann to know things she’d never learned.

“The younger nurses are trained so differently,” she told me. “I’m not saying they’re better, because so much of the equipment’s changed. For years I kept up – going to training meetings and reading all the manuals they sent. But now it’s gotten past me.”

“Kind of like me and the library,” I teased.

“Maybe.”

I had to give up using the card catalog when they replaced it with a computer. “The new system is better,” the librarians explained. “Not only can we update it faster, but you can get books from all over the state. You just have to look on the web.”

“What’s the web?” I had to ask. I knew it had something to do with computers.

“It’s what they call the Internet,” I was told. Then they had to explain that. Afterwards, I understood how the new system was better, but I still didn’t think it was easier. Besides, I liked to feel the index cards in my fingers.

“I doesn’t matter anyway, Mama,” Joann pointed out. “You don’t go to the library all that much. I get most of your books for you.”

She was right about that. I still tried to get out every day, though maybe not more than once. If something wasn’t really important, I let Joann take care of it.

It was good having her with me all day, and she didn’t miss her work. “I spent almost forty years looking in other people’s mouths,” she reminded me. “That was enough.” And she didn’t lose much of her retirement by leaving the VA early, and we weren’t having any trouble with money.

Cara didn’t even make it six months into her second pregnancy before there was a problem. She started having labor pains one afternoon at the bank, and Paul rushed her to the hospital. The baby wasn’t born, and Cara didn’t miscarry. “But the doctor says I have to spend the next three months in bed.”

“For the first three weeks, she can’t even get up to take a shower,” Paul added. “I have to wash and dry her.”

“Can I help?” Neal joked.

“You’re a dirty old man,” Cara said, laughing. We all laughed. Though we were all very worried about Cara.

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Paul told us privately. “The doctor promised me she’d be fine. But he can’t tell about the baby.”

Paul’s big concern was that Cara couldn’t stay in bed. “She’s always doing something,” he admitted. And Cara went right on working. She had Paul set up her computer on a rolling table, so she could lean back on pillows and do her job. We all tried talking her out of it, but she said she’d be bored only reading or watching TV. “I might as well work.”

That lasted two weeks, then she was back in the emergency room. “It wasn’t her fault,” Paul insisted. “She did everything the doctors asked. This baby just wants to be born.”

It was two-and-a-half months premature. Paul said it was right on the borderline. “That’s why those three weeks were so important. If you can hold a pregnancy till twenty-six weeks, there’s a chance to save the baby. Before that, there’s too much damage.”

“And the weight’s important,” Cara added. “The baby has to be over two pounds.”

Theirs was more than that, and Cara had carried her son for twenty-seven weeks. Both these things made the doctors happy. But when I finally saw my newest great-grandchild in the hospital, he looked so tiny, I could hardly believe he was alive.

“He is,” Paul said. “You gotta have faith.”

“At least, Cara’s all right,” Joann told me. “I don’t think Paul could go on if something happened to her.”

“He’s been through worse,” I wanted to say. But I wasn’t sure that was true, and I certainly didn’t want to compare. In any case, Cara was soon out of the hospital, though the baby stayed for another three months. This time, Cara didn’t go back to work. She was with the baby every day, even if there wasn’t much she could do.

“I sit with him,” she told us. “And talk to him. And when they let me, I let him feel my fingers.”

“The biggest problem is he can’t breathe alone,” Paul explained. “His lungs aren’t ready. They’re formed, but they’re not inflated. Or they can’t inflate properly because they’re still partly filled with liquid. And the doctors have to be careful about his brain. If he hemorrhages, that will be it. And even when he seems all right, they have to make sure he won’t have problems later on.”

“No family should be put through this,” I told Joann. “Especially after what we went through with Paul.”

“And Pat,” she reminded me. Though I hadn’t forgotten.

And if Cara went to the hospital every day, I went to church. It was only up the street, so I could walk if I went slowly. When Joann wasn’t comfortable with that, she drove me.

But I’d rather go by myself because Joann didn’t like to stay as long. I could sit in that church for hours. I’d think about how Daddy built the benches. And I’d remember Mama’s funeral. And I’d picture me getting married to Martin. I was always very happy in church. There were newer ones in town, but this one felt like home.

When the baby was three months old, Cara and Paul brought him back from the hospital. He was still small, but he was healthy. They even let me hold him.

“He’s over six pounds,” Cara said. “That’s near what he would’ve been if he’d waited.”

“Have you picked out a name?” I asked. All the time in the hospital, we called him “the baby.”

“I think it should be ‘the miracle kid,’” Paul suggested.

“‘The million dollar baby’ is more like it,” Cara joked. “It’s a good thing we have good insurance.”

“And God bless Texas,” Paul added. “They paid for most of it.”

“It’s not that I can’t make up my mind,” Cara went on. “And I hate being superstitious. But I’m somehow afraid that as soon as we name him, something bad’s going to happen.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Paul insisted. “Not anymore.”

“You don’t know that,” Cara warned.

“Well, we can’t go on calling him ‘the baby’ forever. Soon, he’s gonna have friends. They’ll want to call him something.”

“Casey,” Cara suddenly blurted.

“I hate that,” Paul allowed.

“Then Kristopher... Kristopher Cory. That way his initials will be KC.”

Paul thought for a moment. Then he said, “I can live with that.”

And that’s what the baby was named. It still sounded like something from a soap opera. But by then, it didn’t matter.