The Diaper Box at the River Picnic

The doctor told us to plan on two months at the least, maybe right up to his due date. I did the math standing in the hallway. Two months of driving two hours each way was not possible, not with gas what it was and Tyler working the houses, and I was not leaving my baby in Little Rock while I slept in Franklin County.

The social worker put us on the list for the Ronald McDonald House the first morning. She was kind about it and honest.

She said the list was long that week and families with babies in longer were ahead of us, and that it could be days or it could be weeks.

We slept in the truck in the parking deck the first night. Tyler laid the seat back and I lay across the back seat with my knees bent, still bleeding, still in the hospital socks.

At four in the morning a security guard knocked on the window, not mean, and told us about the parent sleep rooms.

The parent sleep rooms were full. That is when I called Nikki. She lives in a duplex off Cantrell Road, about ten minutes from the hospital if the lights go your way, and I had not called her for anything in maybe three years.

She answered on the second ring and said, “Oh my gosh, Sierra, is he okay?” and I started crying for the first time since the ambulance.

She said come on over, come right now, the couch pulls out, I’ll put sheets on it.

We drove over that morning. She met us out on her front steps in her work scrubs, because she does billing at a dental office and they wear scrubs there too.

She hugged me hard and hugged Tyler and showed us where the key would be under the flower pot.

Then she stood there on the steps with her arms crossed, looking down at her shoes, and she said it. “So, I hate to even bring this up. But my electric’s been crazy and I’m on a budget right now. Could y’all do like twenty-five a night? For lights and water and stuff?”

I want to be fair to her, because I did not think it was strange right then. I was too tired to think anything.

Twenty-five dollars was less than a motel by a mile. I said of course. Tyler said of course. We agreed to it, standing on those front steps, and nobody made us.

That is the part people skip when they tell this kind of story. We said yes. She was my only sister.

A bill you agree to is a real bill, whatever you think of it later, and I was raised that you pay what you owe.

So that was the deal. Nikki kept a running tab. She said she would just write it down and we could settle up whenever, no pressure, she knew things were hard.

And for 61 nights I slept on her couch and she wrote it down.

The days in the NICU all ran together. I learned how to put my hands through the round doors of the isolette and hold Bo’s head and feet without stroking him, because the nurse said preemie skin feels a stroke like sandpaper and a steady hand like a hug.

I pumped every three hours, day and night, in a little room with a recliner and a sign about hand washing. I brought the bottles to the nurses’ freezer with Bo’s name on a sticker.