Muscle Memory

Today is an anniversary of sorts, albeit a painful one. On this day, twenty-one years ago, Sophie was admitted to New York Hospital on York Avenue after being diagnosed with infantile spasms. Those who've read my e-book might remember that I was given the diagnosis while sitting in a gray folding chair in an emergency room. I was holding Sophie. The two young residents were holding clipboards. Their voices came from the end of a long tunnel, and I stood up, raised my voice and said what are you talking about? I remember them backing out of the room when I told them to leave, and then I remember being admitted to a room at the hospital that was straight out of a Dickens novel: six or eight metal cribs with babies and toddlers inside, some alone. Sophie's crib was by a window that looked out onto a shaft. The panes were coated in dust from the 19th century when the hospital was built. A cheerful nurse brought an orange into the room and some hypodermic needles. We practiced shooting the needle into the orange and then pulling it back out to make sure we hadn't hit a vein. The drug needed to go into the muscle. The drug was a powerful steroid given in a very high dose. The skin of the orange was thick and puckered and the needle slid right in. Sophie had been on the planet for three months, and the skin on her legs was so soft. Do babies have muscles? We stayed in the hospital for one week during which the baby's appetite grew so grotesque, my breasts couldn't keep up. Don't worry, a young doctor said to me as I pressed my face against the dirty window and wept. Breastfeeding isn't everything. We went home to our little apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up on the Upper West Side. We continued to give her the shots, twice a day. Her face blew up like a moon, her eyes slits in puffs of pale, the white pustules of thrush around her lips and bottom. She screamed 22 hours out of 24, so we walked with her. Up and down, up and down, up and down the little balcony off the bedroom, the roof-top water towers marking the sky. She continued to seize. I wasn't going to mark this day, but why not? Muscle has memory even after twenty-one years. I have practiced and never hit a vein.