had said the pregnancy would unfold according to God’s will. His will,
it turned out, was that Emily give birth at home at twenty-six weeks’
gestation.
There was a blizzard that night, one of those mighty mountain
storms that clears the roads and closes the towns. Emily was in the
advanced stages of labor when Mother realized she needed a hospital.
The baby, which they named Peter, appeared a few minutes later,
slipping from Emily so easily that Mother said she “caught” him more
than delivered him. He was still, and the color of ash. Shawn thought
he was dead. Then Mother felt a tiny heartbeat—actually she saw his
heart beating through a thin film of skin. My father rushed to the van
and began scraping at the snow and ice. Shawn carried Emily and laid
her on the back seat, then Mother placed the baby against Emily’s
chest and covered him, creating a makeshift incubator. Kangaroo care,
she called it later.
My father drove; the storm raged. In Idaho we call it a whiteout:
when the wind whips the snowfall so violently it bleaches the road,
covers it as if with a veil, and you can’t see the asphalt, or the fields or
rivers; you can’t see anything except billows of white. Somehow,
skidding through snow and sleet, they made it to town, but the hospital
there was rural, unequipped to care for such a faint whimper of life.
The doctors said they had to get him to McKay-Dee in Ogden as soon
as possible, there was no time. He could not go by chopper because of
the blizzard, so the doctors sent him in an ambulance. In fact they sent
two ambulances, a second in case the first succumbed to the storm.
Many months would pass, and countless surgeries on his heart and
lungs would be performed, before Shawn and Emily would bring home
the little twig of flesh that I was told was my nephew. By then he was
out of danger, but the doctors said his lungs might never develop fully.
He might always be frail.
Dad said God had orchestrated the birth just as He had orchestrated
the explosion. Mother echoed him, adding that God had placed a veil
over her eyes so she wouldn’t stop the contractions. “Peter was
supposed to come into the world this way,” she said. “He is a gift from
God, and God gives His gifts in whatever way He chooses.”