Warm tears landed on my newborn body, like a spring rain.
I wanted to feel them forever.
To my once-orphaned delivery doctor, life was something to be celebrated, to shed happy tears over.
I couldn’t wait to feel his tears again.
What was it about those tears that soaked into my soul? Were they saturated with hope and comfort? Were they bright lights at the end of the traumatic tunnel of living my first nine months of life in the womb of a mother who fantasized abortion? Or, were they seeds, sown in secret, to produce a great harvest later in life?
Whatever it was, I wanted more.
Orphan Doctor held me up, gazed into my big brown eyes, and smiled.
But then Nurse Kratchit bent close to Orphan Doctor’s ear, whispering.
Orphan Doctor’s eyes pooled with tears.
What did she whisper?
Was there something wrong with me?
Was I ugly? Too little?
Is that why she suddenly whisked me off to a dimly-lit room where pleading and plaintiff cries hovered over me, like smog in LA?
Where was Orphan Doctor?
Where were those large, gentle hands that welcomed me to earth with orphan tears?
Why didn’t he come back?
Then, Nurse Kratchit shoved me into a box made of glass.
I kicked and screamed bloody murder, but the sounds of my cries bounced back at me, like ping pong balls.
No one hears.
And, so I give up and “go inside.” It’s safe in there.
Then, I hear Nurse Kratchit waslking near the glass box which was going to be my dwelling for ten days.
Proudly, she announces the name she’s chosen for me.
Baby X.