When Fiona was one month pregnant, her father had a massive stroke. He couldn’t move or speak. At three months, she showed him the ultrasound’s gray and white swirls, her baby’s floating body. Her father moved his right finger slowly, pointing. At five months, she placed his hand on her rippling belly. “Do you think she’s spinning or kicking?” He smiled, made some sounds. When she was leaving, he raised his hand a few inches and almost waved good-bye. At
seven months, they discussed possible names. He blinked once for yes, twice for no. Maeve and Grace were his favorites. At eight months, insurance demanded her father move to a nursing home in another state. Sitting on his hospital bed, Fiona explained this to him, as simply as possible. She held up the new communication board. The sad image was much better than the simple frowny face on the hospital’s board. On this image, the head was tilted, the eyes dark, lamenting planets. This new communication board had an alphabet, and Fiona spent hours with her father—with lots of breaks—trying to help him cobble together words, to show her what he wanted. But the words jumbled. Meaning never came. So Fiona brought him home. He lay in the rented hospital bed, food and water withheld. Fiona swabbed his mouth with ice, adjusted his pillows. She stroked his arm with one hand, her huge belly with the other, and sang them all an Irish lullaby.
