Iliana's heavy chest rises and falls on her own today. The monitors that I have learned to read with sufficient fluidity show that her heart and lungs are working slightly harder to keep up, but they are.
She looks right at me, as if to ask, "Mommy, hold me and take me home." Maybe these are just the things that I want her to say. But there is not sound.
Outside I hear all sorts of sounds of the ICU. Phones, conversations in the foreign language of doctors (the language of trauma that I have learned with some fluency), heavy steps of other parents who carry even heavier fears and hearts, and nurses asking for help from their fellow nurses.
All these sounds seem muted by the sound that will not come. Iliana cannot make sounds right now. Something in the surgery hurt her vocal chords. She turns to me, open mouth, trying to make something come out. With silent frustration and confusion she sticks out her swollen lip. So, she has to learn to compensate and she speaks with her eyes.
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