Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 12 of a new online serial novel, Beneath the Surface, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every Thursday or Friday. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © 2011 by Israel Bookshop Publication
Chani finished the conversation with her sister and walked out of the room, passing the nurses’ station. True, she had seen the baby just an hour ago, but even that was too long for her. For her own peace of mind, she had to see how he was doing, up close. She entered the nursery, passing rows and rows of screaming babies.
One of the nurses greeted her at the entrance to the neonatal unit. “How are you Chani?” she asked. “Don’t come every minute! You’ve got to rest!”
“Not every minute…” Chani said with a wan smile as she peeked into the incubator on the left side. “It’s been fifty minutes since I was last here!”
“My, what a long time ago that was!” the nurse said with a laugh and moved out of the way. “Come as much as you want. For the baby, it’s excellent. The question is, what’s with you?”
“For me it’s also excellent,” Chani said and slipped inside. Most of the nurses here knew her well. After all, she’d parted from them tearfully just a year and a half ago.
She bent over the miniscule face, and a wave of love overwhelmed her. The tiny closed eyes twitched for a second, but didn’t open. “Sleep, darling, sleep well,” Chani whispered, stroking the thin wrist with her pinky. “You need to grow, and b’ezras Hashem you’ll have a lot of koach!”
“Oh!” Chani suddenly heard an exclamation to her right. An unfamiliar-looking nurse opened the drawer of cloth diapers. “Is that your son? He’s our ‘giant’ in the ward now! One kilo, eight-hundred-eighty grams—bli ayin hara!” Keep Reading…