Sunday at the NICU

You would think time would move slowly when you're watching someone die. I am finding the opposite to be true. It seems like hours disappear in a fluttering heartbeat, as if the preciousness of each moment makes it rush by in a blur of memory.

My Harper bean is dying. Not new news, but now she really looks like she's dying. (Or, at least, the way I imagine someone dying, having never been witness to it myself.) Her fever has returned and every breath sounds like a death rattle. She barely cries, and her arms no longer move up to hug her chest or to bring her hands to her mouth, as she was posed in every single ultrasound picture. When you\ put her down, she lies lifeless and floppy. Harper's eyes opened more today, but not in the alert fashion that gave us false hope of vision, but rather rolling back in their sockets, like she's seeking rest from deep within her own body. Mostly, though, she still sleeps, a small furnace in my arms.

I am back to being afraid she will die alone in the hospital, without me. That, strong as she is, she may not make it to her homecoming tomorrow. Leaving the hospital today was impossibly hard - my heart is torn between my family at home and my dying spark of a daughter in Georgetown.

The first terrifying night at the hospital, Lou first broke down into tears as he considered how to phrase what was happening in a Facebook status. Today, as I listened to my Harper's labored, gaspy breathing, I found myself imagining how we would announce her death - on Facebook, via email, etc. And I, too, began to cry. I guess we are truly products of our generation, that it is the thought of telling our story on social media that breaks us both down.