Chapter
Eight
“Far
across the distance and spaces between us
You
have come to show you go on
Near,
far, wherever you are I believe that the heart does go on…
And
you’re here in my heart and my heart will go on and on”
-Celine Dion
On Nov. 6, the telephone call finally came at 8 p.m.
An excited Wendy Stamper was on the other end. She was breathless! Good news! We had a court date on Friday, Nov. 19, 1999, to adopt Cyril!
I began shaking! Nearly crying! I was so happy!
Wow. At long
last what we had been working so hard for so long – the journey to bring our
son home.
She told us that we would have to be in Moscow on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 1999 ... my 31st birthday. We would have to get cracking on our visas and travel arrangements immediately, which we did.
We were to return on
Dec. 4. We were told right
then not to expect the 10 days to be waived.
Excitedly, we began to call our parents, friends, co-workers to tell them of
this great news. Everyone was
jubilant over the news that Cyril was coming home.
As if by some plan, we received the second video of Cyril.
We should have paid very, very, very close attention to Cyril’s second video. We should have had that immediately reviewed by Dr. Adesman.
For it begins to foreshadow his demise. It
is only in hindsight that we can see the slight signs that the baby was in
trouble — or heading that way.
Why didn’t we have that second video reviewed? Why didn’t we insist on taking the time out to review it?
The first reason was time – it would take at least three or four days to have it sent looked at, reviewed, and sent back to us. By that time, we would be, God willing, traveling for the court date.
The second reason was expense. We
were under the impression that we would be again charged another $250 fee for
the review of this second video — the one we did not even request. And the cost of FedExing it added at least another $30. Money was beginning to be an issue
— I was beginning to feel like a
financial sieve.
It’s true that, as was later suggested to us by one of the lawyers we
consulted, that we could have traveled down to Adesman’s clinic on
Long Island (about two hours’ drive) and had him look over the video in
person.
But the nature of our first contact with Adesman suggested he was (as he indeed is) a busy man who would be difficult to reach directly and probably could not just drop whatever he was doing to see a video someone had just walked in with.
And
even if he were willing, how good would such a review have been? I got the
feeling he would prefer to sit down, go over the medicals closely and watch the
video several times and think about it before rendering up an opinion. I
wouldn’t want a rush job on such an important decision, and I suspect he
wouldn’t have wanted to give one, either.
We could also have tried to see if Aronson was available this week, but as
Adesman had reviewed the first video, we would have preferred to have him look
at this one as well since he was already familiar with the patient, so to speak.
And to be totally honest, we never thought of that at the time. We were just too
preoccupied with many other things that had to be done before going. Our visas,
to name the most pressing example, had not yet come. And there was still much
documentation to be prepared for Bulgaria and Anguel as well.
Also, the first video of Cyril, and more importantly Denise’s conversations
(or were they manipulations?) with us had persuaded us we had little to worry
about. So why did we really need to get a medical opinion on this video?
But in hindsight, naturally, we can see the warning signs.
It begins (in color this time) with Cyril shown lying on his back, on the same bench in the orphanage, flexing his legs in an odd fashion.
He looks like he is stretching them and then flexing his feet beneath the pajama feet he is wearing. A dark-haired caregiver is speaking nicely to him. The camera comes up and gets him as he is holding out his hands.
There is an expression on his face like “Who? Me?” as the camera pans back. In his movements there is something slow — not normal — and I could never quite put my finger on it.
The caregiver picks him up and takes off his one-piece sleeper. Important fact: HE IS NOT WEARING A DIAPER as the garment falls off him and exposes his bare butt to the world.
The caregiver turns him around and gets him to stand on very wobbly, thin legs, then turns him around to the camera. He attempts a smile with the same bewildered expression on his face.
The caregiver then
dresses him again, and he still smiles, but wanly. The video ends with Cyril still being held by the caregiver.
The things you see in hindsight. If only. If only.
We were both too blinded by the excitement of the impending trip to notice these things,
and were also blinded by the fact that never in our wildest dreams did we think
the baby was actually that sick or infected with some unknown virus. How could we have anticipated that
this baby would be dead by the end of
November?
Could Dr. Adesman or another of his colleagues, such as Dr. Aronson, have
spotted things to be concerned about? Certainly Cyril didn’t look terminal.
We’ll never know for sure.
Daniel has always wondered if Denise was so insistent on our accepting that video because she knew or had an idea that something wasn’t right with Cyril, or maybe that the first video was somehow doctored or not as recent as we had been led to believe (after all, we did get it in black and white, whereas Linda Wright told us the video of Yekaterina she got at the same time was in color).
I don’t like to believe that was the case, but we still, even now, know so
little about the situation to rule anything out completely.
It’s also strange that the other client whose child was “bundled together,” as Denise put it, with Cyril — Linda Wright — had requested a second video of her referral, in that very same orphanage and was told that she could not get one made.
Why had we gotten a video of Cyril almost forced on us and Linda Wright,
who had requested one, never got one of her referral? We still have no good answer to that question.
The very next weekend my mother and one of her friends came down to help me set up Cyril’s room was the weekend that the video arrived. We spent that weekend setting up his crib, laying out his clothes, decorating the walls of his soon to be bedroom.
Do you all recall the joy you had in doing that for your children? I’ll never forget it.
It was the saddest thing of all about the entire thing.
My mother was chatting away about how great it was going to be to have
Cyril home, to hold him, to love him as her first grandchild.
We, too, allowed ourselves to look ahead, going out to Circuit City and splurging on the most important tool of modern parenting, the camcorder, expecting it to do duty at not only the adoption but birthday parties, soccer games, that sort of thing.
Little did we know how useful it would be in the next few weeks.