Growing Up

Stephanie Alberti
EVWP Summer 2009



He stared at the stethoscope hanging around the doctor’s neck, then reached out with one finger, hesitantly touching it while making a soft grunting noise. The white foam coffee cup taped to his head tilted jauntily to the side as it protected the I.V. line from his deft, ever- inquisitive fingers.

“You want that?” The doctor said, and continued talking to me as he handed the stethoscope to the baby. Enthralled, the boy gripped the metal earpieces, one in each spidery hand, spreading them out then pressing them in, oblivious to the universe- shattering conversation going on above his head.

“What do you mean?” I whispered, unable to comprehend or absorb what Dr. Hitch had just told me in a kind, but matter of fact tone only moments before.

When I had first met him, it was hard to take him seriously because he looked like he was about sixteen. Now, however, I knew from experience that he was a skilled doctor; therefore, I trusted his judgment implicitly.

“Just that,” he went on, “the procedure may or may not work, but if we don’t do it there is no chance that he will survive past the age of two.”

I had never been face to face with death so palpably in my young life before; my knees were weak and I sat down abruptly. I was alone and being asked to make a decision that I wasn’t sure I could handle. He was just a baby and had already been through so much. We weren’t even sure his debilitated body could withstand another onslaught so soon after the operation he’d endured just two months earlier; the operation I had been sure would put to rights the problem with his tiny body.

My husband was still at our home in Turkey and would not be coming for several more weeks. The rest of my family was scattered across several continents. Even my sister-in-law was at least thirty minutes away, although at that moment it felt like a million miles. Alone, I had carried my son here to Oklahoma when he was a little over three months’ old, delicate-limbed and yellow-skinned, the yellow spilling over into what should have been the whites of his eyes. He cried almost the entire twenty-four hour journey, several times eliciting the sympathy of other women travelers who would gently take him from me and walk the aisles of the plane or the airport murmuring softly in his ears as he sobbed relentlessly. A first-time mother, I was naïve enough to convince myself that the doctors would quickly fix whatever was wrong with Robbie, and we would subsequently return to life as it should be- filled with parties, friends, and travel to exotic locations. I inwardly denied information to the contrary that was hinted at by several of the many doctors we had seen in the past few months. Now I was forced to face the possibility that we could lose him.

“We need to operate soon,” he went on, interrupting my reverie and pressing, albeit gently, for a decision. “ If we wait, it will be too late: it may already be too late.”

I glanced briefly at him, then let my eyes rest on my boy, who still concentrated single- mindedly on the stethoscope. I knew that I could not bear to lose him; I wasn’t strong enough. That meant I would have to take control. Up until now I had been a reactive participant in Robbie’s care. From now on I needed to take a proactive part in vanquishing death and making him well. In my mind I began to see myself as a comic-book hero, using my wits in combination with Dr. Hitch’s expert care to outwit Death. I became angry at Death for plotting to take Robbie away from me before he’d lived his life, before we’d had a life together; letting my anger blossom into determination. I decided that from now on I would be the master of both our destinies. I remember that moment with absolute clarity; the moment when I grew up and resolved that he would, too.

“Let’s do it.”