The Light of Luna Park - Softcover

Armstrong, Addison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593328043 ISBN 13: 9780593328040

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

In the spirit of The Orphan Train and Before We Were Yours, a historical debut about a nurse who chooses to save a baby's life, and risks her own in the process, exploring the ties of motherhood and the little-known history of Coney Island and America's first incubators.

A nurse's choice. A daughter's search for answers.

New York City, 1926. Nurse Althea Anderson's heart is near breaking when she witnesses another premature baby die at Bellevue Hospital. So when she reads an article detailing the amazing survival rates of babies treated in incubators in an exhibit at Luna Park, Coney Island, it feels like the miracle she has been searching for. But the doctors at Bellevue dismiss Althea and this unconventional medicine, forcing her to make a choice between a baby's life and the doctors' wishes that will change everything.

Twenty-five years later, Stella Wright is falling apart. Her mother has just passed, she quit a job she loves, and her marriage is struggling. Then she discovers a letter that brings into question everything she knew about her mother, and everything she knows about herself.

The Light of Luna Park is a tale of courage and an ode to the sacrificial love of mothers.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Addison Armstrong graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2020 with degrees in Elementary Education and Language and Literacy Studies. She is currently living in Nashville, TN working with students and obtaining her Master's degree in Reading Education. The Light of Luna Park is her debut novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One
Althea Anderson, June 1926

No baby is happy about being pushed into this world. But never have I seen one so entirely unprepared for its entrance. Three months premature, the infant before me contorts her shiny face to scream. Her tiny lungs convulse with the effort, and the skin on her chest stretches and snaps back to make room. Her matchstick legs kick; her coin-sized hands twitch. The girl's mother wails, and I fear her deep, gurgling gasps may snatch away the oxygen so craved by her infant. I fix my eyes on the newborn as if I can send her what she needs.

Keep breathing, I will the baby girl.

Her torso is the size of two fists, the size of two beating hearts.

Though we both know it, the doctor is the one to say the truth aloud. He puts down the forceps and sets his mouth in a firm line. "She won't live." He does nothing to sugarcoat the truth.

The father's neck tenses, tendons like claws. The poor mother's eyes widen, and she wipes her left as a drop of sweat drips into it from her brow line. Yes, the doctor's words are blunt, but he leaves out the perspectives that would render them downright cruel. He doesn't reveal that the medical term for a baby like this one is weakling. He doesn't suggest, as many doctors would, that such infants are better off dead. But still the reality stands stark. Already, the girl is struggling to breathe; she is unable to suckle. Her body temperature and weight are low.

Three months early, two pounds, two ounces. She has little chance of survival.

"Cybil," the girl's mother breathes. Her voice comes out half whisper, half sob, but it echoes in my mind like a scream. The baby has a name now.

"Nurse Anderson." Dr. Bricknell breaks through the litany of my thoughts. "The hallway."

I trail obediently after him, nervous. I've rarely had direct conversation with the doctor, but our head nurse is out today.

I look one more time at the family clustered together as I go. However much my medically trained hands itch to do something, anything, for baby Cybil, the parents deserve a moment alone with their infant.

In the corridor, Dr. Bricknell checks his wristwatch and grunts. "I can't stay."

I wait. The doctors never bother speaking to me unless orders are coming.

"But you'll need to make sure the parents see her suffer as little as possible."

I nod, mentally running through the list of small mercies I can provide: a heated water bottle, a blanket. I only wish there were something I could do to save the baby rather than merely ease her transition into death, and I ball my hands into fists at my side. They brush against the scratchy fabric of my uniform, and paper crinkles. I stiffen. The article! I'd cut it from the paper when I began my obstetrics cycle weeks ago, hoping to ask the doctors about it once they came to know me. As Dr. Bricknell has proved himself a rather stuffy, unapproachable sort, I'd completely forgotten. But with the head nurse back tomorrow, this may be my only chance.

"Doctor." I pull the crumpled newspaper clipping from my pinafore. "I do wonder if there is a way to save the baby."

Dr. Bricknell's brow creases. More in annoyance than interest, I'm afraid, but I press on. "It's about the incubator wards at Coney Island. There's a doctor there who takes premature babies free of charge-"

The doctor interrupts. "Free for the parents, but it costs ten cents a person to get in and see the babies."

"See them?"

"They're part of a freak show, Nurse Anderson. That 'doctor' is nothing but a quack."

A freak show. I picture Cybil lost in a woman's bristly beard or held in the grip of a man with three arms. I see her trampled under the feet of a giant or squeezed between the two heads of conjoined twins.

No. I'm a nurse, not a dime novelist. I deal in information, not imagination. "The article reports that Dr. Couney has saved thousands of premature infants," I say, "some of them as tiny as Cybil at birth."

"Cybil?"

"The baby." I gesture behind us, struggling to hide my disgust that he's already forgotten her name.

Dr. Bricknell sighs. "I'm sorry, Nurse Anderson, but that baby simply isn't fit to live. No freak show or circus man can change that."

"Should I ask the parents whether-"

"No, Nurse Anderson. It is not our place to question God's plan. Now"-he checks his wristwatch again-"I really must go. I trust you will do as I have asked of you-and not do anything to jeopardize your job?"

He leaves me standing in the hallway, crumpled article clenched in my fist.

I purse my lips and fight tears as I fold the paper to put back in my pocket. A nurse does not cry on the job. However much she may wish to.

My expression softens as I reenter the hospital room. Cybil is cradled in her mother's palm, her tiny arms the length of her mother's bloated pinky but half as wide.

It is not our place to question God's plan, Dr. Bricknell said. But surely God cannot want this baby to die. I swallow the urge to burst out into the hallway, chase the doctor down, and shake him. God brought Dr. Couney to Coney Island, I want to scream. This is his modern miracle.

But it is not my place. If I defy Dr. Bricknell, I will lose my job, lose everything I've worked for my whole life. Without nursing, I would have nothing; it's my lifeblood, my purpose. With each infant I safely help to deliver, the debt I owe my mother eases.

But I'm not the only one who might suffer. If Dr. Couney is the con artist the doctor believes, Cybil would die despite it all. Her parents would lose their hope and their daughter a second time. Could they survive that?

I cannot give them hope and then destroy it, not when I know nothing about Couney beyond what's in the papers.

So I gather the blankets as Cybil's cries turn into desperate gulps for air. I tuck her bony legs under the fabric and swaddle the girl's shivering body. I think of Dr. Bricknell's words, circuses and freak shows, and I bite my tongue.

I nearly swallow it as I watch the girl die.

I have seen babies die before. I've helped deliver the stillborn and seen infants' hearts stop before the expulsion of the afterbirth. Is it wrenching every time? Of course it is. But when those babies have passed, they have done so because we were unable to save them.

Not because we decided not to try.

Chapter Two
Stella Wright, December 1950

December 15: Mom's been gone three months to the day. It's not the date's reminder that stings, for it's not as if I have the luxury of forgetting her on the 11th or the 13th or the 27th. Every day, I grieve her.

What burns is the fact that it's been three months: that three months after Mom died, I still haven't "gotten over it." Foolish me; I thought a month would be enough to start waking up with a clear head. Instead, I'm lying here after ninety-one days with a skull that feels as if I've stuffed it with weights. I wonder sometimes if I cry in my sleep, the way my skin feels so tight and stretched in the morning, but I'm too afraid of the answer to ask my husband.

On cue, Jack enters the room with a tray. His silhouette in the light of the hallway glows, and his curly blond hair is ablaze. I never thought I'd marry straight out of college, if ever, but this right here is exactly why I did. Jack's barely cooked a day in his life, but here he is with his first pancakes: lumpy, misshapen, and made with care. Somehow they make me chuckle despite my pain. That's Jack's gift-he can always make me smile, make me laugh. Our second wedding anniversary will be in June of next year, just as I finish my second year of teaching, but his easy laugh and sense of humor never get old.

Jack sets the tray down beside...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593328043
• ISBN 13: 9780593328040
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland