A girl and her Ba

Kyra has recently found a doll that Antonia abandoned AT LEAST five years ago. She is a rosy-cheeked caucasian girl with dark corn rows in her hair and dressed like Heidi… Heidi, the girl who lived up in the Alps with the yodelers and mountain goats? Anyway, Kyra has appropriately named her, “Ba.” Ba accompanies her at the dining room table where she patiently waits underneath Kyra’s chair for her to finish swallowing her dinner in two large bites. Ba offers up her gorgeous braids as a handle when Kyra is lumbering up the stairs. Later, Ba hogs up the right side of her crib, her unblinking eyes keeping guard through the night.

Yesterday, Kyra had to see a pediatric cardiologist because the family doctor thought she had a heart murmur that needed further investigation. Her face lit up when I picked her up from the day care earlier than normal, and her elation carried over into the medical center’s lobby area when I allowed her the freedom to run up to strangers and shout, “Hi!” She finally settled on just one person, Madison, a three-year-old girl who liberally offered kisses in appreciation of Kyra’s loyal attention. But it wasn’t long before a nurse called us back to a small room where a big, scary-looking machine sat next to that patient bed/table thing.

“We find that quick is better with children this age,” the nurse said, and then asked that I take Kyra’s shirt off and hold her still as she and another nurse did their thing. Easy enough, I thought. Kyra wiggled a little bit under the soft light above us as the nurses’ cold hands placed black tape and wires all around the left side of her chest. I was pleasantly surprised that she didn’t cry. But I knew she was a little bit on the apprehensive side and not sure what to do about it. It was evident in the rate at which her little chest rose and fell as she kept a watchful eye on the hands that put one, two, three, all the way up to about ten wires on her chest. And two on her legs. But the party was definitely over when they were all done and it was time to sit back and wait for the results. She arched her back and shrieked in fear, trying to break free from my hold over her as the machine started to hum, the two nurses and I just hovering over her body like alien abductors running a human baby stress test.

It was over before we knew it, and I was carefully trying to take the black tape off of her body as Kyra clung to me, her head resting on my shoulder as if to say, “I forgive you, Mommy. Now just hold me.”

“Ba,” she said.

“I know, baby. Where the heck is Ba when we need her?”