by Elizabeth Reeves

Created on: June 25, 2008

Cancer isn't something you usually associate with birth. It somehow seems wrong to even associate them with the same time, but here I am, welcoming my little baby daughter into this world, knowing that the cancer inside of her, already, even before her first breath, will take her from us. It may be one breath, it may be a year. We cannot know yet when... and we will never know why... why my baby daughter is host to a ravenous tumor instead of half of her brain.

My wife sits numbly by the window. The doctors are afraid that going through birth would be too much for our little Hope, so my wife sits with dread, awaiting the operation that will bring our critically ill baby into this world. I try to reach out and touch her, but she shrugs my hand away. She says that I cannot understand, that I am just Hope's father, not her mother, and I cannot feel her grief.

I would carry it all for her, if she would let me.

Little Hope, how odd that we have chosen that name when her very birth brings no hope to us. Her birth is attended by the Grim Reaper.

My wife whispers to herself. I lean closer, wishing to take part of her prayer, but what she is whispering makes me recoil, my gut clenching. She mutters the words, almost in a trance, "Please, God, take me too... please, take me too... Please, God... Take me with my little girl... let this kill me..."

A sucker punch to the heart, now I know the truth. She loves our little girl, our doomed child, more than she loves me. She would rather die than be alone with me again. I drop to my knees with an earnest prayer on my lips and searing my heart. I don't know what it is I'm praying for... I just know I cannot do this alone.

The wheel Renee into the operating room. In a daze, I pull on the gown they give me, over my clothes. I lean over her, whispering words she doesn't hear, trying to silence the blasphemy from her lips.

It is over so quickly. Our little girl is here, her tiny rear-end first, then a wee little head with thick hair covering it. She is perfect, more perfect than perfect. She has tiny fingers with perfect little nails, her eyes are already blinking as the nurse enfolds her in a blanket and holds her towards my wife.

"Do you want to see your little girl?" She asks, but my wife just turns away.

"Let me hold her," I beg. The nurse offers her to me and I gaze down at her perfect little face. All else is forgotten but her perfection.

"Honey, look at her," I whisper to Renee, but her eyes are closed, tears running in rivers from her eyes. She turns her head away.

I watch as the nurses wash and dress my little Hope. She waves her arms, and howls. She is so strong, so very strong. She is so beautiful.

The sirens alert us all to soon, but it not little Hope, she is still squirming, and turning red, struggling with this new life, with breathing.

It is Renee who has given up. They try, but they cannot save a woman determined to die.

And the tumor is benign.

There is Hope for us yet.

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