The Roanoker - January/February 2015 - 12

R FROM THE EDITOR
Miracle on Belleview Avenue

WILLIAM MAHONE

How to keep yourself from begging every nurse in the Carilion
NICU to stay all the time with that one tiny tiny baby.

The quiet determination that shows in Ava's eyes at 14 months old (well, more like 11 as related to
her due date), has served her well since the beginning of her life, as has her mother's gentle hold.

ACTUALLY I COULDN'T KEEP MYSELF,
on several occasions, from saying that very
thing: "Could you just stay with Ava for the
rest of the time she's here?"
This was on the 14th floor of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, and while there may
have been tears at my eyes, I hope I smiled
enough to let each nurse know that it was a
compliment rather than a literal request.
Ava, the eighth of my wife's and my nine
grandchildren, was born at 24 weeks, and
weighed a pound and an ounce. These numbers were at the threshold of where the Carilion NICU ("nick-you" sounds so much less
ominious than the neo-natal intensive care
unit that it stands for), recommends the weeks
and weeks of worry to follow. And there buried

12 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

amid the wires and tubes and warmers, Ava
appeared, for the first weeks of her life, more
fragile and not much bigger than a new bird.
And every one of those nurses - some gregarious, some quiet, some doing play-by-play
as they worked, some going industriously and
silently about their serious business - had the
same approach to the tentative, scared-witless
granddad visitor: Well, she's pretty good right
now, but that's just right now; we just don't know
exactly what will come next.
It was the perfect blend - even to he in deep
need of real news - of reassurance and reality,
of yes, it's good you're here to see her, and yes
we hope you can do so again in a few days.
At times when Ava was being tended to, I'd
go out to the waiting room there on the 14th

floor, which looks out over the Rivers Edge
sports complex and on out over Roanoke.
Sometimes there was a grandson playing on
the fields below, coached by a son. Sometimes
the sun was setting off to the west, and sometimes that combination of the person behind
me and the people below me - including those
in Roanoke houses out of my immediate view
- swelled up in me to the point that I felt like
I might explode with emotion.
I tried hard not to. And I tried hard not to
get too hopeful or too pessimistic about the
tiny girl's chances.
And I have tried, over the year-plus since
she was born, to find a way to talk about that
time and that girl; but I have worried, superstitious person that I am in some realms, that I
might somehow compromise her steady and
amazing progress.
It is no small measure of compliment to
those NICU nurses that I've overcome that
fear. That I re-stir that ever-nearby risk of tears
as I thank them - and thank Ava's deeply devoted mother and her doting father - for the
stunningly beautiful little girl she is today.
I had no inkling, 12 years ago, what grandparenthood would hold. The love that has
built in me for the two 12-year-old boys, the
8-year-old girl (who seemed so tiny at just over
three pounds at birth), the 7-year-old boy, the
4-year-old boy, the 3-year-old girl, the yearplus-old boy (born two days before Ava and
seeming so tiny at just over three pounds), and
the 6-month-old girl has deepened with every
passing month since the first boy was born.
The miracle girl has somehow spread a thick
layer of even deeper love back over all of them
- an additional miracle. It lives in me with an
intensity I did not know could exist until I
made those visits to Belleview Avenue summer before last. -KURT RHEINHEIMER
THE

R OANOKER.COM

http://www.THEROANOKER.COM

The Roanoker - January/February 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Roanoker - January/February 2015