EXTENDED VERSION
[A man in his mid-forties. He wears a suit unbuttoned at the collar, without a tie. He appears stressed, even tormented. There are big bags under his eyes]
“My wife and I were trying to conceive for years.
When all the other options failed we resorted to adoption.
After months of waiting, we were assigned to a young couple not able to care for their unborn baby… a boy.
The adoption agency said we could take him home right after the delivery, that the parents preferred it that way.
And so the baby was born on a Sunday night… and we were driving him home from the hospital by Monday at dawn.
We were so excited… especially my wife.
I was happy too, of course… but I was still getting used to it… you know, to the idea that from one moment to the next I was a father, that I was supposed to have a connection with this baby….
I didn’t have it yet, but I was confident I’d get there…
Then, just a few weeks later, we found the baby unconscious in his crib; he was very weak, pale… we rushed him to the hospital and waited while they ran tests… they were the longest hours of my life, I swear…
Long story short… he had leukemia.
He had a fifty-fifty chance of making it… and, of course, we swore to fight along with him, to do everything we could to keep him alive…
But on the inside, I was grappling with this horrible dilemma…
Should I let my love for that baby grow inside me, even if he could very possibly die at any moment? Or should I keep a safe distance, guarding myself against whatever might happen?
It was not really a dilemma… the truth is I knew I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t love that sick baby… I didn’t know how.
My wife, unlike me, put up no barriers; she just loved the baby with all her heart… And that made it even harder for me to pretend, to conceal the fact that I didn’t feel anything for him.
But no one noticed it… I was by his side at the hospital every single night, I insisted on a second mortgage to pay for his treatment… I cried whenever he was in pain… although it was probably more for myself…
At the end the baby, my son, made it… the illness receded, like a miracle, and he started to grow as a normal child
He’s now four. His name is Eric, after me.
I still can’t get myself to love him.”
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Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016