Part 9 (1/2)
June nodded, ”Oh yeah, since the first day. They sent me home from the hospital with this machine called a nebulizer, this stuff called prednisone. I had to force a plastic mask over her face. Her bones were so soft they didn't even seem finished, I thought each time they were going to break. I put this medicine into the machine. When I turned it on, it was so loud, and the mask filled with this mist, and she was scared, she flailed around. If she could have, she would have pulled it off. I felt like I was torturing her. And after it was done, her tiny heart would just be racing, I could actually see it pounding underneath her skin. After a week my manager at work called and said everyone wanted me to bring Lily in. But I stayed in the apartment, listening to her breathe. Twice a day, I sat with her in front of the TV, with this loud machine.
”One night I was looking for a kids' show to calm Lily while I put the nebulizer on her, and I stopped on a show with these two men talking on a couch. It said Running Talk. And that was when I saw him.
”He was wearing a purple T-s.h.i.+rt, and these orange Crocs, and he was talking about the miracle of kinetic energy. And I felt this explosion in my belly. Maybe my running caused Lily's problems? But maybe it could also heal them. I read all about you guys online. And I figured, Boulder isn't so far. So last week, I drove out of one bunch of mountains, and up into another.”
For a few hours they ran single file, and he watched her thick hair slip in strands from its clip. At a switchback the trail widened and June pulled next to him.
”I think,” she panted, ”I'm done.”
Caleb nodded and slowed to a walk.
”Did I do okay?”
”It's been four hours.”
”It has?”
”You're in better shape than I was when I came here.”
She touched him then, her damp, hot hands around his arm. For a moment he had believed she was going to kiss him. But he felt her fingers trembling, and her voice came an octave higher.
”Can Mack help my baby?”
”Yes, he can.” He blinked. ”We all can.”
The look she gave him then, the way her eyes, almost too big for her, swelled, made him stumble. She was out of breath, and he wanted to breathe for her.
A week afterward, Mack had announced that June and Lily would be moving into the house.
Leigh and Makailah bought a crib in town, and played roots reggae from the boom box as they all a.s.sembled it. John moved into Hank and Juan's room, and they painted the empty one yellow, with a moon and stars on the east wall. Alice drew up a schedule of care for Lily, so that June could run every day. One day Makailah came back from Pedestrian with a purple Kelty hiking backpack, designed to carry babies on long hikes, for their group runs.
Every evening in his room, Mack performed energy healing on Lily. June laid her down on his mattress, and he would hover his palms over her lungs and heart. June could feel the inexplicable heat pulsing from them, but Caleb saw no change in her baby's breathing.
One morning, preparing to go up to O'Neil's, he watched Rae holding her and cringed at the sharp whine of her wheezing. From somewhere deep inside of him, a feeling arose. He barely recognized it.
All day he lived with it. Ringing up customers, pacing the store, filling his trays and cartridges, it gnawed at him. It was doubt.
When Mack had cured his recurrent sinus infections, he had been a part of that process, willing Mack's energy through his head. Energy healing seemed to him to be a two-way process. This baby could not partic.i.p.ate.
In the morning, he found June by the kitchen and motioned toward the back deck. Outside the air was crisp, as if spring had reconsidered its advance.
”I think we should take Lily to a hospital.”
June looked at him appreciatively. ”Caley, I did that. Nothing they gave her worked.”
”What did they tell you when you told them it wasn't helping?”
”They told me some stuff about testing her genes.”
”Did you ever do that?”
”I came here,” she explained.
”I think it's a good idea to do it.” Caleb hesitated. ”But let's not tell Mack just yet. Let's see what they say, and if they have something that works, we can talk with him about it then. Would you want to do that?”
”I'll do anything,” she whispered.
At O'Neil's that day Caleb called Boulder Community Hospital and obtained the name of a pulmonary specialist. The nurse told him to have Lily's blood drawn at a local clinic and sent to their office, and an appointment would be scheduled. June accomplished this between cleaning apartments.
The following week, Caleb left the house for work, but instead met June and Lily in Rocky Mountain National Park, and they began walking toward the hospital. Above them bramblings flew in formation, a straggler coming in from the west.
”We're not really adding very much around here, are we?” June asked him.
”What do you mean? Everybody loves having you.”
”I doubt it. A crying baby all night?”
”You make it nicer. And you're on the other side of the hall,” he smiled.
June looked at him as if she might cry, and she took his hand. He glanced at Lily in her bright sarong, a smile spreading like an amoeba across her mouth. In a coffee shop window, Caleb saw a man in a banker's suit, drinking from an enormous cup, glowering at his phone. He was reminded of himself a decade ago and felt pleased at his progression.
They arrived at an office building adjacent to the community hospital. After a long wait, they were seen by a young doctor. He had missed a spot, Caleb noticed, when he'd shaved. He listened to Lily's tiny chest, while a nurse called up her blood work on an old PC.
”I can see why the steroids aren't doing anything,” the doctor explained affably. ”Okay. Your daughter was born with a genetic condition called alpha-one ant.i.trypsin deficiency. We don't see this a whole lot. That explains why no one diagnosed it before.”
”I don't understand,” June frowned, glancing at Caleb.
Caleb watched the doctor try to smile gently. His eyes, however, held large quant.i.ties of concern. ”The air is full of things that harm our lungs, okay? Bacteria, viruses. We inhale them with every breath. And we survive. Because our lungs release a substance that attacks these foreign bodies, called neutrophil elastase. It's like a pit bull, it attacks anything in its path.”
Caleb was nodding, following. June gripped his fingers and he squeezed them. ”But like a pit bull, it needs a leash to hold it back, or it will attack the good things too. Like healthy lung tissue. That leash is a protein that your liver produces, called alpha-one ant.i.trypsin. It all works fine. But,” he swallowed, his eyes moving to Caleb's and then to Lily's, ”what the blood work is showing, is that Lily has a nonfunctioning gene.”
”What does that mean?” June shook her head at Caleb. She was lost, frantic.
”The gene that instructs her liver to produce alpha-one ant.i.trypsin is switched off. The reason the inhalers don't work, okay, is that they are anti-inflammatories. And your baby's lungs aren't inflamed. They're being attacked.”
”When will it stop?” she shouted.
”It's not going to stop.”
Tears slid down June's thin face.
”What happens to her?”