“Mr. Kerr is coming to see you.”
“Do I get to see my baby?”
“Talk to Mr. Kerr.”
He arrived just then. Same white jacket, same shirt, same wellington boots—only this time bloodier than before . . . no doubt, thanks to me.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Tell me about my son?”
“Quite a straightforward caesarean . . . and the cord around his neck wasn’t as tight as I feared. So, all in all . . .”
“Then why is he in intensive care?”
“Standard postoperative care—especially for a newborn after a difficult delivery. We did have to immediately ventilate him after birth . . .”
“Ventilate?”
“Give him oxygen. He did arrive a little floppy, though he responded well to the ventilation . . .”
“So the cord around the neck might have caused brain damage?”
“As I said before, I was pleased to discover that the cord hadn’t wound itself firmly around your son’s neck. But we’ve already run an ultrasound to make certain there was no blood on the brain . . .”
“Was there?”
“No, it was completely negative. More to the point, his Apgar scores were completely normal.”
“His what?” I asked.
“Apgar is a sort of checklist we run on every newborn child, gauging things like their pulse, reflexes, respiration, and overall appearance. As I said, your son easily scored within the normal range. And in a day or so, we will run an EEG and an MRI, just to make certain that everything in the neurological department is working properly. But, at this point, I would try not to worry about such things.”
Oh please . . .
“I need to see him.”
“Of course. But you do realize that his initial appearance may upset you. Pediatric ICUs are not the easiest of places, after all.”
“I’ll handle that.”
“All right then. But do understand, you will have to take things very easy for the next week or so. You’ve just had a major operation.”
He turned and started walking away. But then he wheeled back and said, “Oh, by the way—congratulations. Any sign of the father yet?”
“Didn’t he ring the hospital?” I asked the nurse.
“Not that I’ve heard,” she said. “But I’ll check with my colleagues. And if you write down his number, I’ll call him again.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. Six-fifteen.
“Couldn’t I try to call him?” I asked.
But as I said this, two orderlies showed up, wheelchair in tow. This one was custom-built to accommodate a patient who was wired to assorted drips, as it featured a frame from which plasma and saline bottles could be suspended.
“Let me phone him for you,” the nurse said. “These fellows are going to need the chair back soon. Isn’t that right?”
“Always big demand for our best wheelchairs,” one of the orderlies said, adding, “Come on, luv. Let’s bring you up to see your baby.”
The nurse handed me a pad and a pen. I scribbled down Tony’s work number, his cell, and our home phone. She promised me she’d leave messages on all three numbers if she couldn’t reach him directly. Then the orderlies went to work on moving me from the bed to the chair. I had expected to have been unplugged from my varying tubes—and then forced to endure having the lines reinserted into my veins. But the guys—both of whom looked like members of a wrestling tag team—couldn’t have been more dexterous when it came to lifting me off the bed and into the chair, while simultaneously keeping me attached to my assorted tubes. As soon as I was seated, a combination of exhaustion and postoperative shock seized me. My head swam, the world became vertiginous, my stomach convulsed. But after an attack of the dry heaves, all I was left with was a foul taste in my mouth and runny eyes.
The nurse used a large cotton pad to clean up my face.
“You sure you want to do this right now?” she asked me.
I nodded. The nurse shrugged and motioned for the guys to take me on my way.
They pushed me through the maternity ward, passing half a dozen women, all with babies by their bedsides in little adjacent cribs. Then we entered a long corridor until we reached a service elevator. When the door opened, I saw that we had company—an elderly woman on a gurney, wired for sound to sundry monitors and intravenous bags, her breathing a near-death rattle. Our eyes met for a moment—and I could see her panic, her terror. All I could think was: a life ending, a life beginning. If, that is, my son was going to pull through.
The elevator rose two floors. The doors opened, and we were directly in front of a set of double doors, by which was a sign: Pediatric ICU. The chattier of the two orderlies leaned over and whispered in my ear, “If I was you, luv, I’d keep my eyes down until we get up alongside your baby. Take it from me, it can be a bit distressing in there.”
I followed his advice, and gazed downward as we crept through the ward. Though I wasn’t looking upward, what struck me immediately was the pervasive deep blue light of the ICU (as I later learned, it was to aid those babies suffering from jaundice). Then there was the absence of all human voices . . . the only sound provided by the electronic beeps of medical equipment, the steady metronomic rhythm a reassuring reminder of a small functioning heart.
After around a minute, the chair stopped. By this point, my eyes were tightly shut. But then, the chatty orderly touched me gently on my shoulder and said, “We’re here, luv.”
A part of me wanted to keep my eyes closed, and demand to be turned around and brought back to my own room. Because I wondered if I would be able to bear what I saw. But I knew I had to see him—no matter how upsetting his condition might be. So I raised my head. I took a deep breath. I opened my eyes. And . . .
There he was.
I knew he would be in an incubator—which meant that he seemed dwarfed by the Plexiglas sarcophagus in which he had been placed. And I knew that there would be wires and tubes. But what shocked me was the sight of an entire network of wires and tubes running from every corner of his body—including two plastic ducts that had been pressed into his nostrils, and an oxygen meter running from his belly button. He looked alien, almost otherworldly—and so desperately assailable. But another terrible thought hit me: could that really be my son? They say that you should be swamped by unconditional love the moment you first see your child . . . and that the bonding process should begin immediately. But how could I bond with this minuscule stranger, currently looking like a horrific medical experiment?
The moment such awful thoughts crossed my mind, I felt a deep abiding shame—an immediate appalling realization that, perhaps, I was incapable of maternal love. But in that same nanosecond, another voice crept into my brain, telling me to calm down.
“You’re suffering from postoperative trauma,” this rational, mollifying voice informed me. “Your child might be gravely unwell, you’ve been pumped full of chemicals, you’ve lost significant quantities of blood . . . so everything is naturally skewed. It’s called shock—and the worst shock of all is seeing your newborn baby in such a distressing state. So you’re entitled to feel as if the world is upside down. Because, in fact, it is.”
So I tried to calm myself down—and look again at my son, and await that torrent of attachment to wash over me. But staring into the incubator, all I felt was fear. Sheer terror—not just about whether he had suffered brain damage, but whether I would be able to cope with all this. I wanted to cry for him—and for myself. I also wanted to flee the room.
The talkative orderly seemed to sense this, as he gently touched my shoulder and whispered, “Let’s get you back to your bed, luv.”
I managed to nod—and then found myself choking back a sob.
They brought me back down to the room. They gently lifted me back into bed, and reset my assorted bags above me. There was a mirror on the dressing table. I picked it up. My face was the color of ash. I tried to move my facial muscles, but found them immob
ile—as if they had seized up, or remained under the spell of the anesthetics that were still coursing through my bloodstream. I looked like one of those people you see in news footage who have managed to walk away from a bomb blast—their faces paralyzed into countenances of expressionless shock. I put down the mirror. I sank back down against the hard, starchy hospital pillow. I found myself thinking: this is like free-fall . . . I’m tumbling into a void, but I’m too astray to care.
Then, out of nowhere, I started to cry. The crying had an almost animalistic rage to it—loud, vituperative, and unnervingly hollow. The nurse who came running must have thought I was reacting to the state of my baby—and riding the usual post-caesarean roller coaster. But the fact of the matter was: I didn’t know what I was crying about. Because I couldn’t feel anything. My emotional world had gone numb. But I still needed to scream.
“All right, all right,” the nurse said, taking me by both hands. “I’m sure it was a bit of a shock, seeing your baby . . .”
But I drowned her out by howling even louder . . . even though it hadn’t been my intention to lose it like this. I didn’t really know what I was doing—except crying for crying’s sake. And not being able to stop myself.
“Sally . . . Sally . . .”
I ignored the nurse, pushing away her hands, curling up into a fetal position, clutching a pillow next to my face, and biting it in an attempt to stifle the howls. But though the pillow muffled the sound, it didn’t end the crying. The nurse put a steadying hand on my shoulder, using her free hand to speak into the walkie-talkie she usually kept strapped to her belt. When she finished, she said, “Just hold on—help should be here in a moment.”
The help was another nurse, pushing a cart laden down with medical paraphernalia. She was accompanied by the doctor on duty. The nurse who had been keeping the bedside watch spoke quickly to her colleagues. The doctor picked up my chart, scanned it, spoke to the nurses again, then left. After a moment, I felt a hand raising the left sleeve of my nightgown, as the first nurse said, “The doctor thinks this might help you relax a bit, Sally.”
I didn’t say anything—because I was still biting the pillow. But then came the sharp jab of a needle, followed by a warming sensation cascading through my veins.
Then the plug was pulled, and the lights went out.
When I returned to terra firma, I didn’t suffer the same convulsive shock that accompanied my reawakening after the delivery. No, this was a slower fade-in—accompanied by a Sahara-dry mouth and the sort of mental murk that made me wonder if I had woken up in a land of cotton wool. The first thing I noticed was a small decanter of water by the side of the bed. I lifted it and drained it in around ten seconds. Then I felt a huge urgent need to pee. But my scars and my tubes were restricting my movements, so I reached for the button and summoned the nurse.
Only this time it was a different nurse—a thin, beaky woman in her mid-forties with an Ulster accent and a manner that could be kindly described as severe. Her nameplate read: Dowling.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“How badly?”
“Very badly.”
She heaved a small, but telling sigh of distaste, reached under the bed, pulled out a white tin enamel bedpan, and said, “Lift up your bottom.”
I tried to do as instructed, but couldn’t even summon the strength for this simple task.
“I think you’re going to have to help me.”
Another small, disgruntled sigh. She pulled back the bedclothes. She inserted her hand under my bottom and forced it upward, then pulled back my nightgown and shoved the bedpan underneath me.
“All right,” she said, “get on with it.”
But it was impossible to “get on with it” in my current position—as I felt like someone who had been put into a kinky sexual posture. Anyway, who the hell can pee lying down?
“You have to help me up,” I said.
“You’re a lot of work, aren’t you?” she said.
I wanted to shout something back at her, but the fog was too pervasive to permit me to engage in an argument. Also, I couldn’t hold my bladder for much longer.
“All right then,” she said wearily, gripping my shoulder and pushing me upward. She braced me in that position as I finally let go. The urine felt warm beneath me, and possessed a chemical stench that was so strong the nurse immediately wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“What’ve you been drinking?” she said, without the slightest hint of irony.
But then a voice behind her asked, “Do you always talk to patients like that?”
Tony.
I could see him looking me over—taking in not just my awkward astride-a-bedpan position, but also my anemic complexion, shell-shocked eyes, and general distraught condition. He gave me a small half-smile and a quick nod of the head, but then turned his attention back to the nurse. Like any petty tyrant, she was suddenly defensive and cowed when caught in the act.
“Really, I meant no offense.”
“Yes you did,” he said, making a point of staring long and hard at her nameplate. “I saw how rough you were with her.”
The woman’s face fell. She turned to me and said, “I’m really sorry. I’m having a bad day, and I didn’t mean to take it out on . . .”
Tony cut her off.
“Just remove the bedpan and leave us.”
She did as ordered, then gently lowered me back against the pillows, and tucked the blankets in.
“Can I get you anything now?” she asked nervously.
“No—but I would like the name of your supervisor,” Tony said.
She hurried off, looking genuinely scared.
“So how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” he asked me. He kissed me on the head. “And how’s our boy doing?”
“Poorly,” I said.
“That’s not what they told me last night.”
“You were here last night?”
“Yes—while you were sleeping. The nurse said you’d been . . .”
“A little unstable, perhaps? Or maybe she said something really English and understated. Like, ‘your wife’s gone totally ga-ga.’”
“Is that what you think, Sally?”
“Oh, don’t give me that fucking rational tone-of-voice, Anthony.”
I could see him tense—not just because of my illogical temper, but also because I was now suddenly crying.
“Would you like me to come back later?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head. I took a deep breath. I managed to curb the tears. I said, “So you were here last night?”
“That’s right. I arrived just before eleven—direct from the airport. And I went straight up to see you. But they told me—”
“—that I’d been sedated for excessive crying?”
“—that you’d been having a hard time of it, so they’d given you something to help you sleep.”
“So you were here at eleven?”
“That’s what I said before. Twice in fact.”
“But why weren’t you here before then?”
“Because I was in the bloody Hague, as you bloody well know. Now can we talk about more important things . . . like Jack.”
“Who’s Jack?”
He looked at me, wide-eyed.
“Our son.”
“I didn’t realize he’d been given a name yet.”
“We talked about this four months ago.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“That weekend in Brighton, when we were walking along the promenade . . .”
I suddenly remembered the conversation. We’d gone down to Brighton for a “get-away-from-it-all weekend” (Tony’s words), during which it rained nonstop and Tony got hit with mild food poisoning after eating some suspect oysters in some overpriced seafood joint, and I kept thinking that this seaside town was an intriguing mixture of the chic and the tatty—which was probably why the English liked it so much. But before Tony started regurgitating his g
uts out in our freebie suite at the Grand, we did take a brief, soggy walk along the seafront, during which he mentioned that Jack would be a fine name if the baby turned out to be a boy. To which I said (and I remember this precisely): “Yeah, Jack’s not bad at all.”
But that wasn’t meant to be interpreted as tacit approval for the name Jack.
“All I said was—”
“—that you liked the name Jack. Which I took as your approval. Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter. I mean, it’s not like it’s legal and binding as yet.”
Tony shifted uneasily on the edge of the bed.
“Well, as a matter of fact . . .”
“What?”
“I went down to Chelsea town hall this morning and got the forms to register him. Jack Edward Hobbs . . . Edward for my father, of course.”
I looked at him, appalled.
“You had no right. No fucking right . . .”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Don’t tell me to keep my voice down when you . . .”
“Can’t we get back to the subject of Jack?”
“He’s not Jack. Understand? I refuse to let him be called Jack . . .”
“Sally, his name’s not legal until you cosign the registration form. So will you please . . . ?”
“What? Be reasonable? Act like a stiff-upper-lip anal Brit when my son is upstairs, dying . . .”
“He is not dying.”
“He is dying—and I don’t care. You get that? I don’t care.”
At which point I fell back against the pillows, pulled the covers over my head, and fell into another of my extended crying jags. Like yesterday’s crying jag, it was punctuated by a dreadful hollowness. A nurse was on the scene within moments. I could hear a lot of rapid-fire whispering . . . and phrases like, “we’ve seen this sort of thing before,” “often happens after a difficult delivery,” “poor thing must be under such terrible strain,” and (worst of all) “she’ll be right as rain in a few days.”
Though the covers were over my head, I retreated back to my fetal position, once again biting deeply into the pillow in an attempt to stifle my screams. Like last night, I also didn’t struggle when I felt a firm hand hold my shoulder while someone else turned back the bedclothes, rolled up my sleeve, and pricked my arm with a hypodermic.
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