And she felt she was hungry for all of it: for food and conversation and movies and snuggling on the sofa and watching the ocean through the back window. She was hungry to paint again, to figure out what kind of an artist she was now that she’d had such an enormous surgery. She knew it would bea slow and arduous battle. But with Matteo by her side, she felt that she’d manage it. Somehow.
On Christmas Eve,while Helena and Matteo sat in front of the Christmas tree, watching old Christmas movies, drinking tea as the snow fell gently outside, Rebecca Sutton called to say that Bethany had gone into labor. Helena’s heart pounded. Although Bethany had taken it easy for the past few months, although she’d put her health and the baby’s first, all births were terrifying to her. Things could go wrong at the drop of a hat.
“She’s going to be okay,” Matteo said, stroking her hair.
But Helena couldn’t sleep that night. This was a rare thing for her, as she’d spent so much of the past few years asleep. But now, her heart and mind were on overdrive, thinking about Bethany and the pain she was probably in. She prayed almost constantly.
When the photo of Bethany and her baby boy arrived at three in the morning, Helena burst into tears, waking Matteo.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are you in pain?”
Helena answered by flashing the photograph of Bethany and the baby his way. “Look,” she said.
Matteo gripped her phone for a long time, gazing at the picture. His expression was difficult to read. When he set the phone down, he burrowed his face in the pillow. Helena realized, then, that he was thinking of Jenny as a baby. He was thinking of Jenny’s birth.
“What if we…” Helena began, then trailed off, suddenly frightened of what she wanted.
It had only been a month since the surgery. They were eleven months from knowing if the liver had really accepted Helena’sbody. But she was allowed to dream, now, wasn’t she? She’d taken steps in order to dream?
Matteo pulled his eyes from his pillow to look at her. “What were you saying?”
“I love you,” Helena said. “And I, um. I want to have a family with you.”
Matteo gazed at her longingly, lovingly. And then, he closed his eyes and kissed her. “You’re all the family I need, Helena.”
But she knew he was saying that because she couldn’t have children.
“Really,” she pushed it. “What if we looked into other options? What if we, I don’t know. Adopted?”
Matteo’s lips parted, as though he hadn’t thought of that before. “Adoption,” he repeated.
“I would love to help someone like that. To raise someone who doesn’t have anyone in the world to care for them,” Helena said, growing misty-eyed. “I mean, if we get through this year.”
Matteo laced his fingers through hers. He didn’t seem able to answer.
Slowly, they drifted off again, both dreaming of a future they could hardly name.
When they woke up the following morning, Helena called Bethany to see how she was. “He’s beautiful,” Bethany said, her voice soft and weak. “I can’t believe I was scared to go through this again. Now that he’s here, it’s like our family is perfect. We were waiting for him.”
Helena grinned. “What’s his name?”
They’d decided to name him after a relative in Rod’s family: Nicolas. Nick, for short.
“It suits him,” Helena said. “And it’s Christmas, remember? St. Nicholas. Nick for short.”
Bethany erupted with laughter. “You’re kidding. We didn’t even think about that. Rod, you’ll never guess what Helena just pointed out. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it.”
Helena listened as Bethany translated, and Rod cackled.
“We have baby brains already,” Rod said.
Soon after, Helena hung up, leaving the new parents alone. She wondered how Nick’s teenage siblings were doing on Christmas without their parents around. She guessed there was a whole lot of Christmas candy for breakfast. She guessed there were video games and laughter and a bit of fighting, too. She prayed that the transition for all of them would be easy, that they would find a way to be a family together, and that their love would be enough.
26
It was a miracle to take baby Nick home. By December 27th—two days after Christmas—Bethany was on the sofa with her baby, exhausted but thrilled, a tiny Nick sleeping on her chest. Meanwhile, Maddie, Tommy, and Phoebe sat on either side of her, ogling for a sight of their sibling. To her surprise, they’d cleaned the entire house prior to her return. She suspected it had been a real slob show before that. She imagined that they’d made a mess of their Christmas alone and then rebounded, realizing that Bethany and Rod wouldn’t stand for it. But Bethany would never know for sure.
As she caught up with her children and told them the PG-version of the birth of baby Nick, Rod was in the kitchen, finishing a roasted lamb. Another Christmas film played on the television, one they’d watched a thousand times that they could mostly ignore but still get the meaning of.