Artifact

Kelly says the app that tracks our miles as we walk with our kids often adds extra nonsensical half miles, and labels them "artifact." I remember this word from the NICU. "Is his heart rate really dropping?" I'd ask after jostling the cords. "No, that's just artifact." I loved that word. It meant he was ok. What is an artifact? A vestige of something past, evidence of an event. His SPO2 would drop, and on the monitor, the word "artifact" would be written above the drop, evidence that I had touched him, signifying nothing more. In his first fifteen days, Teddy's body was exhaustively mapped and surveyed--an archaeological record exists of his origin. And the evidence of his trauma is written on his brain, the MRI shows ghostly white where parts of his brain died. I pray that the strokes will one day be artifacts too, just evidence of an event occurring sometime in the past, easily explained away, signifying nothing.