No Fuss

Crying filled the apartment. It was never like this for mom. The baby would always settle with a soothing touch and some rhythmic pats on the bottom. When the baby cried there was always a need to be fulfilled, and, once eliminated, no more need to fuss. But not tonight. 

Linda’s mother has never trusted her to take care of the baby independently before, but with her sister in the hospital after a car accident, her mom simply had no other choice. She didn’t want to bring the baby to the hospital with all those sick people. She was a helicopter mom to her teenage daughter, but for the baby it was a different level of hovering, at least until that night. She was ever present, chained. The umbilical cord afforded more distance than her motherly instincts. She used a crib that abutted the bed, with a zip down opening in the center that allowed for safe co-sleeping. She wore the baby in a series of expensive contraptions as she did chores around the house. The baby never slept too far away to detect her heartbeat. 

But how was the baby to sleep when it felt the beating of the wrong heart? There was no reason to settle for Linda, the imposter. She couldn’t figure out the baby harnesses that her mother used, so she tried to hold the baby, but it screamed against her chest and kicked against her stomach. Her mom left her with bottles of pumped breast milk, but the baby would have none of it from a silicone nipple. Where was the one true source of sustenance? Where was the mother? 

The diaper was clean. She changed the baby’s clothing in case a stray fiber was creating an itch. She burped the baby. Gave the baby a pacifier. Sang to the baby. She dimmed the lights. She checked its temperature in case of sickness. There was nothing wrong with this thrashing beast! 

All that Linda could think to do was to give the baby a bath. She had done every other baby activity she knew of and her desperation left her only that one more thing to try. Bathing was a comfort to her and maybe that was something that she shared with the baby. They were related after all. Maybe the calming soak in warm water that so often eased her out of a bad mood would do the same for the baby. 

She carefully added water to the bathtub, conscious of the temperature sensitivity of the baby. Scalding hot may be the thing for her, but she had been trained – aggressively and repeatedly – in all aspects of baby care and knew the exact temperature for which to aim. She retrieved the baby bathtub from its spot in the nursery and placed it in the water, being careful to have the right depth of water to keep the baby wet, but not fully submerged, cradled in the mesh of the baby tub at the exact safe height from the base of the larger tub. She left the faucet on ever so slightly, keeping a hint of warm water entering the tub, which she could drain periodically to keep the bath at the right depth while maintaining the optimal temperature. It was a little trick she had seen her mom use. 

She removed the baby’s clothing and hung it on a broom that was propped in the front corner of the bathroom. She shut the door to within a crack to keep the air warm in the bathroom and not allow a draft from the rest of the apartment. She discarded the diaper, with a new one already laid out on the corner of the sink for when bathtime ended. The baby bathtub had a harness built in that fixed the baby into the mesh, so she loosened and tightened and buckled as needed until the baby was snuggly secured. 

As it turned out, the baby did share of a love of baths. This was finally the thing that produced calm, after all of the other attempts. There were frequent cooing noises. There was splashing and little laughs to punctuate it. The baby even did that hitched breath in and then long exhale that usually accompanied the sloughing of the weight of the world. Linda enjoyed the happy time together with just her and the baby. They never had time together like this, with mom always involved. She found moments to kiss the baby on the crown of its wet head and to put her pointer finger into the baby’s instinctive grip. 

After a few cycles draining the water that built up, she knew that time was running out on the bath. The baby’s little fingers and toes were pruning, and even with her ongoing efforts to maintain the temperature, the baby was starting to show signs of getting cold. Linda looked to the edge of the sink and saw the diaper, but she did not see a towel. She must have forgotten to bring one in. 

Linda quickly ran to the hallway closet, making sure to crack the door nearly closed as she exited the bathroom to keep the warm air in. She began to walk the few paces down the hall, but before she got even two steps, her foot slipped and she fell backwards toward the door jamb of the bathroom. She had dropped a fuzzy baby sock on the floor when she undressed the baby, and it took her foot out from under her as she stepped on it. Her body smashed into the doorframe, but she caught herself against it before she fell all the way to the floor. She heard a clatter behind her from inside the bathroom. She assumed the broom must have fallen. 

Two more steps and the hooded baby towel was retrieved, sending her back in the direction of the bathroom. She went to push the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. The door wasn’t latched, so it didn’t register for her why the door wouldn’t open. She pushed again. Still nothing. 

Then it dawned on her. The broom. It fell when she smacked into the doorframe. It must have fallen sideways across the swing of the opening door. 

She shook the door back and forth, knowing the broom would dislodge itself with no trouble, allowing her back into the bathroom, but it did not. She tried to peak through the crack of the door but couldn’t get a good look. 

Then she remembered the water. She had left it running that slightest little bit to keep the water temperature consistent. That water would rise, a millimeter at a time, covering the fat rolls on the baby’s thigh, covering the baby’s belly, covering the baby’s neck.

And then chin.

And then mouth. 

How long did she have? She tried to think how often she had let water back out of the tub. Was it every two minutes, every three, every five? When she let it out, it was just beginning to cover the thighs, so it would last longer than that. Did that mean she has ten minutes? Fifteen? 

Linda was a teenager. She was not versed in the vagaries of property maintenance that might create a list of next steps for a seasoned adult. For instance, she didn’t think of shutting off the main water valve for the apartment. If she had, would she have known where it was? Was that even something she could have accessed in an apartment? In any event, the point was moot, because it didn’t occur to her. Nor did removing the door from its hinges occur to her. If it had, she would have quickly realized that the hinges were on the inside, negating the option, but the thought never crossed her mind. She was also unaware of the fragility of an interior door in a building of modern construction. This was not a door of rich mahogany for her to burst through. A little effort put into the particle board of the door may have broken it sufficiently to get through, or may have broken the low-quality wooden handle of the broom, but, again, this was not the thought of a teenager. What she did think was that 911 would be too slow, which would usually have been true, but for the officer who just finished a welfare check on the second floor of her apartment building and could have responded within thirty seconds. 

Then there was panic. She went back to the closet for no discernable reason. Distantly there was a thought that if she looked around, some solution would appear, but that solution was not down the hall. It was not in the laundry room. It was not in her mother’s bedroom. She could swear that she heard the drip of the water everywhere she dashed, coming from inside the closet, coming from under the washing machine, coming from behind the dresser. She needed to stop the noise! She needed to think! Everything was swirling inside her and everything was both too fast and too slow. She had no action she could take but felt as if she were in a frenzy of action. Her whole body vibrated but had no outlet. It felt like restless leg, but it had spread across her whole body. She needed someplace to put it!

Linda punched out at random and her fist went straight through the wall. She screamed, but she could still hear the dripping water over her scream. A red halo surrounded the hole she made in the wall. She pulled her fist out, spreading the red and streaking it down her hands and onto her wrist and arm. She couldn’t take her eyes off her bloody hand. It stunned her into a humming silence, like the one created when her ears went under water in a bath…in a bath like the baby…under the water like the baby…

Suddenly all the sounds of the house returned. She knew what to do. 

Linda ran to the room beside the bathroom, which was her bedroom. She smashed her fist into the wall, intentionally this time, but this time it hurt much more and did not go through. Again, were she not a teenager, she would be aware of a device used in construction, or even in the daily task of hanging a picture frame, called a stud finder. She would know that walls in most modern construction consist of drywall attached to wooden – or sometimes metal, particularly in an apartment building – beams. The drywall could be punctured with a good, strong punch, but the studs were not so forgiving. Had she known this, she would not have tried to punch again twice in the same area to no avail, breaking several bones in her hand. But, alas, she was only a teenager. 

One of her punches went stray and hit just to the side of the previous batch, creating the hole that she had intended. She put her hand inside the hole and dug it out, pulling away chunks of drywall until she could get both hands inside it and dig even more quickly. The hole grew and grew, eventually teaching her a belated lesson about studs. She dug all the way down toward the floor and pushed drywall out the other side of the wall while she worked. 

What she discovered was that this particular wall had been used to run a number of items through. The HVAC ducts ran through it. There were thick, insulated electrical wires in a tangle inside the hole. There was also a thick copper pipe, which, she correctly surmised, was used for water. No matter how big she made the hole, there was too much ducting and wire and pipe in the way for her to crawl through and into the bathroom. She was able to get a look inside, though, and see the broom stick wedged in a towel rack beside the wink. The towel rack was installed with industrial anchors, due to the landlord’s bad experience with previous tenants pulling it out of the wall, so that wasn’t going anywhere. The angle she had didn’t show her a view of the baby. She couldn’t see how high the water had risen. She could hear it, though, even more clearly now that it wasn’t just in her mind. There was no splashing to accompany the noise. There was no cooing. Did this mean that she was already too late?

With her bare hands she smashed at the copper pipe, not knowing what else to do. She thought that if she could break the pipe, it would stop the water going into the bathtub. She beat her hands into a pulp on that pipe, doing everything she could to break it, but it would not budge. She could not get it to spring even the slightest leak. Over and over she tried, sapping all of her energy, breaking the few bones in her hands that were as yet unbroken, but nothing changed. She could still hear the dripping. She knew that she had killed the baby. Her mom was right to hover. Her mom had never trusted her, and she was right not to. Look what trusting her caused.

Linda sank onto the floor, spent, exhausted. Her hands were ruined and no longer available to her even as blunt instruments. She wept. The noise of her weeping finally drowned out the sound of the dripping. All she could hear was her own pain and the pain she had caused the baby. It filled her and left her extinct. 

Days later she sat next to her mom on the couch in the living room. Her mom was wearing the baby as ever, and yes, the baby was very much alive. 

“I thought you were dead,” Linda thought, unable to bring her eyes up from her hands and look the baby in its face. 

Her mom explained to her then the miracle that she had created with her two broken hands. Linda looked down at the twin casts as it was explained to her. 

It was true that she had not burst the copper pipe, but what she didn’t know at the time was that she jostled a joint further down the pipe with every smash of her hands. The joint was located across the hall in her neighbor’s apartment. That joint was old and worn and, being in an exterior wall, had been weakened by the freezing and thawing of many seasons gone by. She caused the joint to rupture, allowing free-flowing water to shoot into the wall, soaking through the drywall and flooding her neighbor’s apartment. 

This did not stop the water in the bathroom with the baby. That faucet was actually fed by a different pipe. But, in a miracle from God, the neighbor saw the leak and immediately called the superintendent of the building. The super happened to be on site due to the aforementioned well-check and was able to immediately access the shut-off valve for the whole building and stop the water. 

The superintendent’s insurance company sued Linda’s family for the damage, and they were asked to leave at the end of their lease, but at least they left as a family of three.