jacey lee.
Today was my last day with the person whom I have grown most fond of in Cape Town.
“Jacey Lee is going home on Friday,” one of the older girls says to me as I change a very dirty diaper. What a bully that girl is, she had to be lying, telling me the love of my life is leaving me.
Jacey Lee is the 9-month-old girl with whom I have been working with, playing with, changing her diapers, teaching how to crawl and stand up since the beginning of my time in volunteering at Brooklyn Chest Tuberculosis hospital. She is finally healthy, so going home should be the best thing that ever happened to her. But when I asked the nurse to confirm the bully’s comment to me, she said her mom should have come and picked her up today, but she hasn’t come yet, but she will eventually go home with her mother. She would not go to a foster home, which is good news, because many of the kids there are abandoned at the TB hospital. It did scare me though, that her mom was not there the second Jacey was discharged after being at the hospital for six months. I hope that her mom was at work, and that is why she wasn’t there yet. I wish the nurses knew and could assure me that she was going home to a loving home.
Today was one of my favourite days I have had with Jacey, and the first day that I noticed how sick she was when I came here, and how much better she is now. When I first came, she coughed, cried, peed, was inactive, barely crawled, and barely chatted. Today, she could walk with holding my hands, she figured out how to stand up by herself, and she would not stop blabbing in baby chatter. We had so much fun practicing how to walk and repeat “lalalalalala.” I have never seen her smile so much in one afternoon. The hardest part was walking away from her crying face when the van was waiting to take me home. I could not even handle it.
I am looking forward to going back to Brooklyn Chest on Monday, as I always am, but I anticipate a void, seeing another sick baby in her crib. Who would have ever thought that someone could be so close with someone who isn’t their own, who cannot even talk?
