Day Five

We drove you home, saw your yellowing skin
Packed a few things and drove you back again
Stayed up all night worrying, wondering
What was going to make it better

(You are Your Mother's Child, Conor Oberst)

I remember day 5 well. Xu Li came over to clean the house and saw you for the first time. I hadn't told her I was going to give birth that week. "Quite yellow," she said. 

Su came over too, I don't remember why. "Quite yellow," she said.

Yellow you were, with your hands up in surrender, eyes two peaceful slits, the tiniest pursed mouth, baking in the sun in the pram we used as a bassinet.

Normal-yellow, we thought. Su dropped us off at the paediatrician for our first check-up.

"Very yellow," Dr Chan said. She sat us down and showed us the test results. "400. She has to be warded immediately."

We always knew jaundice was not a serious thing. But on this day, to have you taken back to hospital suddenly, it was a mountain. I called my mother. I cried.

We cried in the clinic while we paid up. We cried all the way down the elevator, 20 stories. We cried crossing the road to Mt Elizabeth. We cried standing outside the nursery, watching the nurses pump formula into you with a bottle. We cried in the car driving to city square. I cried at Ya kun while k went to Guardian to find me Procanol, because my birth wound still hurt. They didn't stock it.

Back home, things felt calmer. My parents made us dinner and we shared that together. When they left we turned on a movie I can't remember and opened a tub of ice cream. Finally it was 11 pm, and Dr Chan called.

"It's gone higher. 470." She spoke very quickly after that, saying they would move you to the ICU for a drip, and if that didn't work, a blood exchange. 

I put down the phone and k was waiting for me to speak, head turning towards me, tilted and supported by his hand. "It went up," I said. His head didn't move, but his plum eyes and their brows melted. We sat there and hugged and sobbed and turned the stupid television off. I went into researcher mode and comforted myself with Google articles that told me jaundice couldn't kill a baby. K comforted himself by reading psalms out loud. I told him you were too young to miss us, but he was convinced you would.

So we surrendered to the dark, dark night on the fifth day. You were not ours. You were always God's baby first. We just were there to take care of you. Somehow we slept. And then it was the sixth day.

Broken bones heal if you set them right
Get your fine-toothed comb from the barbicide
Our love is a protective poison

You are your mother's child
And she'll keep you for a while
One day you'll be grown and then you'll be on your own