i will not run

I was sitting in the hospital office this morning, taking care of some ICU stuff, when I heard the voice of the lab tech, Naomi, from the room next door. I'll just go to the ward and grab one of the nurses. I'm not comfortable drawing blood from a baby. I jumped up and poked my head around the corner to see a beautiful woman holding a small boy, all bundled up in a pink coat and a knitted hat. Naomi grinned and handed me the needle. I turned to the mama to say hello before starting with the baby.

Bonjour, I greeted her, and she stared blankly back at me.

Just then, I remembered a conversation I'd had with our crew physician, one in which he had mentioned that a group of Liberian children was coming to the ship this week to have their hearts checked out. My own heart began to pound, and I tried my greeting again.

How de day?

The mama's face broke into a smile as wide as the morning, and she grabbed my hand, her fingers trailing off into the familiar snap as she told me that We alright. That boy catch cold; it can give him hard time.

I chatted to her while I juked the baby, and when it was all over, I comforted him with the usual pats and murmurs of no ma now, no ma and sorry yeah? I walked them back to the crew clinic to wait for the lab results, and I just couldn't bear to let them go, so I squatted down next to the mama to wait with them.

She complimented me on my English (You can speak our language clear!) and she mentioned my Loma shape, and her words flowed over me like a prayer. It was all so familiar that my chest tightened and my reality shifted just a little; I half expected to walk up to Deck Five and see the Hotel Ducor out the port side windows, the bay stretching around to embrace the ocean out at the breakwater. But I knew I was just a little homesick, so I pulled my thoughts back to the present, to Benin, and tried to focus on what the mama was asking me.

This boy getting big head. Why it can be open on the top side now?

I knew, of course. I had known from the moment I saw him in his mamas arms, a face too small under a swollen skull, his cries shrill and weak. It wasn't a conversation she should be having with a stranger, with the woman who just happened to hear that her baby needed his blood taken, but I was the only one there she could call a friend. The only white person who could understand the cadence of her speech, and so I settled into my spot on the floor and started to explain.

I told her about hydrocephalus, and I told her that her baby was probably only awake and looking around and holding onto my finger with his own tiny hand because his wide-open fontanelles were easing the pressure off his brain.

He laid in her arms, his head bulging over his tiny features, and he cried and gasped and held onto my finger for dear life while his mama told me stories about the hospital back in Monrovia. There were five or six other babies there, all with big heads. But two of the mamas had already run away. I looked her straight in the eye, challenging her love, and I asked her if she could do the same. Her response came swiftly.

I will not run from this boy. I will love him.

And she lifted her poor, damaged little baby to her face, covering him with kisses and crooning sweet words into his tiny ears while I slipped away to my work.

I want to love like that.