Our Surrogacy Story II

"We get some entitled parents here," says the nurse. "We call it drive-thru NICU. We're like, Oh, would you want to meet your baby? The baby we've been raising for the past four weeks? And the parent says, Just stuff her in the back seat. I'll take a chocolate shake with that."

My husband is encouraging the nurse; he likes these stories. On the other hand, I feel that, if you're bad-mouthing parent A to parent B, then you're surely also bad-mouthing parent B to parent C, and so on.....

The babies have exotic names: Paislee, Moros, Savanna. There are fanciful pastel seahorses on the walls, and a photo gallery of notable NICU survivors (BORN AT TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS!); there is also ambient rage, beneath the midwestern pleasantness. You might share an elevator with two nurses; one might say, "Becky asked Kristin to give Paislee a sponge bath. I walk over five minutes later, I say, oh, did I hear Paislee needs a sponge bath? And Kristin is playing Candy Crush. Kristin is like, Paislee's family asked me to wait." A meaningful widening of the narrator's eyes. "I say, Oh, I hadn't heard that, I must have had my vacuum on.....But, honestly? I would have heard."

When things get oppressive, I walk to the library, and to the Healing Garden. The library isn't interested in escapism; this librarian wants to educate you. The titles are alarming, or just dull: "Coping with Cancer," "The Book for Parents of Gay Kids," "Taking Charge of ADHD." How about a Bosch adventure? How about Gossip Girl?

In the Healing Garden, I sip my tea. I think of Tyra Collette, in "Friday Night Lights": Early in the show, she says she has "enough hate in my heart to power a steam train."

I toss my cup, and return to the seahorses, the smiling hippos, the intensive forelimb scrub. At home in the NICU.

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