The Long Journey Home

The last thing I remembered before the sun went down were the fields of sunflowers. Ukraine was known for its sunflowers. I remember the nervous smile of my husband standing in the doorway of the old, weary bus we were traveling on. I remember the sweet babushka sitting near the window in the seat next to me. It was sweltering hot on the bus. I had a small rechargeable fan clipped to the seat in front of me, but even on high, it did little more than force the hot, stale air to move around me sluggishly. Here I was. Sweating, starving, and nervous jumping all over a pothole-riddled road on a bus in part of the former Soviet Union, now a proud independent nation. I would have been miserable save for one overwhelming detail. Tomorrow I was going to meet my daughter.

I woke up to the frantic beeping of the IV pump crying out for attention. The dream of Ukraine faded in my mind. I rolled over to face the hospital bed next to me, my head pounding. I guess I hadn’t had enough water, or food, or sleep. It was all a blur. I fished around for the alert button to beg someone to come in and make the noise stop. In the dim glow from the monitors, I watched my new daughter sleep. She was seventeen. Tiny. Frail. Barely sixty pounds. We had been home in America for just a few months, most of that time was spent in the hospital trying to keep our precious new daughter alive.

She was so brave. I wondered what she thought about all of this. Sometimes I imagined it must be like living on a spaceship to her. She had come home wrecked from years of medical neglect. There were pressure wounds, kidney failure, thyroid storms, and so many other new diagnoses it was hard to keep up. I can only imagine how she felt about all the invasive things that she had been through the last few months. It was hard to explain to her why she needed all these things. Every time we had to go back to the hospital she would weep and beg to stay home. She didn’t understand.

Years of not getting the treatment she needed for her Spina Bifida had left their mark. The first admission was three days after we landed. She had a fever of 107. Panicked, we sped to the closest children’s hospital. Test after test after test. In and out. Home and back again. She took it all with grace, even through her tears. My heart broke every time I had to pull my phone out to use google translate and tell her the doctors were making us stay a little bit longer.

We had spent her first holiday in the ICU. The staff was gracious enough to bend the rules and let us bring all her new brothers and sisters to visit. We did our best to decorate the room and explain the holiday to her, but it fell pretty flat. What was supposed to be a fun, exciting first, turned into an afternoon blip. Instead of dining under our pear tree in our sukkah in our yard with family and friends, we showed nurses and hospital staff our impromptu sukkah inside the ICU room. Thanksgiving was days away now and it didn’t look like we were going to be able to go to grandma’s as promised. The doctors were worried she would be too far away from the hospital. She had been devastated to learn she would miss out on meeting her aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

The noise belting out of the IV pump was unnerving. No one had come yet. I rolled over pulling the covers off me, feet hitting the floor. I wandered over to the pole and silenced the pump, hoping that my new daughter would stay asleep. I was beyond exhausted. I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling. I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to keep going like this. My other kids at home were also feeling the strain and missing their mama. I was half a world away most of the summer, then gone in the hospital almost of autumn, so far. It was all worth it, but I was a level of exhausted I had never been before.

Two years. It had taken two years to bring her home. When we started, she was fifteen and just a picture and post on Facebook. I reached down and pulled the covers around her. She was mine now. I prayed she would be with us for so many more years to come. The doctors were very hopeful the next surgery would turn things around for her. I wondered what her life will look like healthy. I imagined her laughing at home, playing games with us, wrapped in the chaos and love of a family.

The door to the room creaked open and the nurse shuffled in. She eased over to the machine to silence it for good. She saw me, standing, gazing, and praying in the darkness. She smiled at me reassuringly, encouraged me to get some rest, patted my shoulder, and snuck back out again. She was right. Rounds were only a few hours away and I always made sure I was dressed and alert for rounds. Hopefully, we would go home soon. Hopefully, life would begin for my darling daughter soon. Hopefully, this would be a dream one day, the way my journey to Ukraine was now.