“A matched sibling cord bl*od unit is Addie’s best option. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I will not use a unit collected under a consent I can’t defend in front of my ethics committee.”
She looked at me steadily.
“Donation has to be voluntary, informed, and given by the mother, with the recipient named. I read the first form last night. Mrs. Sheehan, it would not survive a first-year law student.”
“The unit is already stored,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “It’s safe. Your daughter doesn’t need to undergo anything. Nothing else will be done to her.”
Something in my chest, a clenched, frightened thing I had been carrying since the delivery room, loosened a little.
“Can I meet her?”
Alicia’s face crumpled.
“Yes,” she said. “She asked me this morning if the baby’s mother was nice.”
Room 4B had a window with a view of the parking garage and a bed with a quilt that did not belong to the hospital.
A girl of nine sat cross-legged on it, in a purple bandana and a yellow T-shirt that said READ MORE HORSES, holding a library book almost as big as she was.
She had a small, fierce face and a dimple in her left cheek.
Ian’s dimple.
My knees almost went.
She looked up.
“Are you the lady with the baby?”
“I am.”
“What’s her name?”
“Antonia.”
“That’s a long name for a baby.”
“She’s very serious about it.”
Addie considered that.
Then she tore a page out of the back of her notebook, scribbled on it for half a minute, and held it out.
It was a pencil drawing of a horse with a very long mane, galloping over a very small hill.
“For her,” she said. “Babies like horses. That’s what the book says.”
I held that piece of notebook paper in both hands and could not speak.
Out in the hallway afterward, I leaned against the wall and cried quietly with my forehead against the cool paint.
Alicia stood beside me and did not try to fix it.
“I’ll do it,” I said at last. “I’ll donate the unit.”
Alicia made a sound like something giving way.
“Not for Ian,” I said. “And not for Leona. I’m doing it for a girl who draws horses for babies. And I’m going to do it correctly.”
Dr. Zimmerman nodded as if she had been waiting for those words.
“Two witnesses from the hospital. Addie’s mother as legal guardian. The first form voided in writing. And Mrs. Sheehan, I’d recommend that Mr. and Mrs. Sheehan Senior not be in the room.”
“And the insurance,” Alicia whispered.
“Our social worker handles that,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “Her plan’s coverage can’t be touched for a qualifying condition. And if anyone tries, they’ll have to explain it to me.”
I signed the new form in a quiet conference room at 11:20 that morning, in my own handwriting, with my own pen.
My hand was steady.
That surprised me.
Two nurses I’d never met signed beneath me.
We were collecting our coats when Alicia’s phone buzzed.
She read the text and went pale.
“It’s Leona’s assistant,” she said. “A ‘courtesy notice.’ Saturday night is the Night of Hope, the Sheehan Fund gala. Two hundred sixty guests, at the Grand Meridian Hotel.”
