by Ann Leary
I remembered reading the account of an American POW in Japan who was lined up with other prisoners to receive punishment for something they had done. The American watched as the men in front of him were, one by one, pulled out of the line to have their legs and arms broken with clubs. The man had to wait his turn, listening to the screams and cracking of bones, knowing that his time was coming.
I must have fallen asleep somehow, because the next thing I knew, Pauline was changing the IV bag.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Nearly time for me to go home, thank God. It’s half three.”
“Did Denis call?” I asked.
“He did. I told him you were sleeping, and he said he was going back to the hotel after the show to get some sleep and would come here straightaway in the morning.”
“I heard someone screaming. Is she okay?” I asked.
“She is now that she’s got a big, fat, gorgeous baby in her arms. Let me look in yer knickers one more time before I leave,” Pauline said, and after satisfying herself with a glance, she said, “Right then, it looks like yer going off to the antenatal ward this morning. You’ll be more comfortable there. I hope yer little one waits a good long time before it arrives.”
* My mothers name might have been Sullivan, but the amount of Irish blood in her veins wouldn’t nourish a deer tick. My heritage is predominantly German, with names like Rauschmeier and Lembeck boldly commandeering our family tree. Denis’s father was a kind and loving man, and he was able to forgive me this by always referring to me as “Ann, whose mother’s name is Sullivan.”
THREE
IDOZED FOR a while, and when I awoke, it was finally morning. I listened to a man speaking on a telephone outside my room.
“She had the baby at half four. A boy. Yeah, she was brilliant. Mind you, she labored for eleven hours, so she’s a bit knackered.”
Although I was in a tiny room with no view, everything, even the air, was foreign and strange, and I wished for the millionth time that I had been in Boston or New York during my PROM.
Before that weekend I’d had relatively little experience with the English as a people. I had no close friends who were English, but when I was in college I had waitressed at a restaurant called the Boston Brewery, which brewed its own English-style beer. At that time the restaurant/brewery was a fading trend, and the owner, a British millionaire named Simon, blamed his employees for his restaurant’s troubles and berated us constantly.
“Where,” he would ask the restaurant manager at a staff meeting, “did you receive your management training?”
The manager would think long and hard and then reply, “I guess, working in restaurants.”
“Working in restaurants,” Simon would sneer, shaking his head in disbelief. “No management training or business education of any kind, eh? Well, I must say I’m not surprised.”
Then he would proceed to the humbling of us lowlier wage earners.
“Only in America,” he’d exclaim, “do waiters believe that they deserve tips regardless of the quality of service! But that’s the American work ethic for you, isn’t it?”
Citing breaches in restaurant protocol and check-adding errors, he called us lazy and stupid. He marveled at the inadequacies of the American educational system, which turned out individuals like us, who lacked even rudimentary math skills and had not the vaguest knowledge of the world outside the United States.
Inevitably one of the dishwashers would mutter under his breath, “Anytime you want to thank us for bailing out your ass in World War Two is fine with me,” and we’d all snort with laughter.
A busboy would whisper, “I think you Limeys were singing a different tune when we kicked your ass in the Revolutionary War,” and we would choke with mirth.
We received the owner’s slurs with an attitude of bemused pity, having been raised to believe that we Americans are mentally, physically, and spiritually superior to all other people and that any foreigner who says otherwise must be consumed with bitter jealousy. Simon’s relatively refined English mannerisms confirmed for most of the staff what his accent had already made us suspect—the man was gay, and his constant references to his wife and daughter in Britain were viewed with skepticism.
“Whatta ya expect from a guy whose country is run by a queen nobody even voted for?” I heard the bartender once say to a waiter, and the waiter nodded gravely in agreement.
I assumed that the English who now surrounded me shared my former boss’s views that Americans are slothful and stupid, and I was determined to prove myself an exception to the rule. When a pair of young doctors entered my room early that morning and nodded at me, I tried to look intelligent, but that’s a difficult task for somebody whose leaking body is confined to a bed. I had nothing to read or even to look at, so I narrowed my eyes and stared at my fingernails, in what I hoped was a thoughtful way. Then I glanced at the doctors, who were examining a chart that hung from a clipboard at the end of my bed. One of them smiled and nodded, I returned my gaze to my fingernails, and they left the room.
Sometime later Scott entered the room accompanied by the two other young doctors, and I was terribly relieved to see a familiar face.
“Good morning,” said Scott.
“Hi,” I bleated. I was suddenly almost mute with shyness and was forced to abandon any pretense of intelligence.
“This is Nigel, and this is Jeff. They’re residents. How did you do last night?”
“Fine,” I croaked.
Scott lifted the clipboard off my bed and frowned at the chart.
“I’m … a little worried about all the medication and the effect it might have on the baby,” I whined.
“Well, that’s a legitimate concern,” said Scott. “But these medications have been used for years. Their benefits far outweigh any risks to you and your baby. Anyway, we’re taking you off the drip, and you’ll only need one more shot of the betamethasone, the steroid, and then you’re finished with that as well.”
The two residents were looking at my chart with Scott.
“She arrived under the impression that the baby was twenty-five weeks’ gestation, but the scan reveals a baby which appears to be closer to twenty-six weeks,” Scott said to them.
“Ah, so this is the American woman,” Nigel said, and Scott nodded, leaving me to speculate on the nature of the morning’s staff meeting. I imagined Scott’s wry and witty account of our hapless arrival, including a warning to the staff about our ignorance and about the fact that I had not had a bikini wax in some time.
“Right then,” said Scott. “You’ll be moving up to the antenatal ward as soon as we can get one of the sisters to help you. We’re doing rounds up there later this morning, so we’ll see you then.”
About an hour later, a short blond girl arrived with a wheelchair. “Good morning, Mrs. Leary. I’m Celia,” she said in an impossibly quiet voice. “Are you ready to move to the antenatal ward?”
“Okay, but I’m worried that my husband won’t be able to find me. Will somebody tell him where I am?”
“Of course,” Celia whispered. “We don’t want him to find the empty bed here and think …” Her faint voice tapered off then, or at least I could no longer hear it. She motioned toward the wheelchair. “Please slide out of the bed and carefully sit in the chair. You’re not to move around very much, I’m afraid.”
As I slid into the wheelchair, I noticed that Celia’s name tag said SISTER CECELIA OSGOOD. She was young and shy and pretty and unlike any of the nuns I had ever known. Last night Pauline had made reference to one of the “sisters” on duty, and I began to wonder if we had happened upon a Catholic hospital here in the middle of London. But, since it lacked the name of a saint, that seemed unlikely. An administrator had asked me my religion when we were admitted, and I’d said Catholic, although Denis and I never went to church. Perhaps they liked to have nuns care for the Catholic people in the hospital, I thought, and my next deluded, anxiety-ridden thought was that perhaps i
n retaliation for the acts of the IRA, Irish Catholics were segregated in the hospital and treated by nuns instead of proper nurses.
We rode the elevator to the third floor, and Sister Celia wheeled me down a hall and into a large room at the end. It was brightly lit, due to the high windows, which were cranked open that warm March morning. Beds lined the walls of the room—eight, crowded close together—and although most were rumpled and cluttered with personal belongings, only one of the beds had a patient in it. The rest of the beds’ occupants sat around a long table in the middle of the floor, eating breakfast. Celia pushed me past the table, and the women, all of them pregnant, stopped talking. I noticed several surreptitious glances and was immediately conscious of my hospital-issue gown, a flimsy smock that was open in the back. A hole lay where the fastener had once been located, and I clutched the garment around me as I climbed from the wheelchair into one of the beds. The women at the table wore real nightgowns and robes with matching slippers. They had obviously packed for their stay, and from their sizes I could see that they were all further along in their pregnancies than I was.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror since the morning before. Running my fingers through my short hair, I discovered that it stood up on one side and could not be persuaded to lie flat. My bed faced the table, and the women were now talking quietly among themselves. I noticed one young woman glance at me, then whisper to the very pretty young woman next to her, who giggled. Did I mention that I moved a lot as a kid? Suddenly I felt like a new student being offered to the most popular clique for their endorsement.
It had never occurred to me that in my late twenties I would find myself again in a position where my clothes and accent might be reason for ostracism, but here I was, pulling my sheet up over my gown and staring at the ceiling. When Sister Celia asked if I would like anything else, I smiled and shook my head, determined that the room’s occupants not learn I was an American.
The women at the table finished their breakfasts, and a few returned to their beds. The rest filed out of the room, chatting amiably. In the bed on my left was a woman who had been asleep when I arrived. Now she was awake and reading a book. On my right was a young, round-faced woman who had been one of the more talkative at the breakfast table and, in my regressing, fifth-grader’s mind, the most popular. From the accumulation of belongings on and around her bed, it looked like she’d been in the ward for some time, and I saw her arrange little gift bunnies and bears around her.
I had to use the bathroom. In the labor ward, I had been forced to use a bedpan. Could it be possible that I was expected to do the same thing here, in the presence of others? I didn’t see any bedpans, but I was afraid to stand up. After what seemed an eternity, a nurse walked into the room and past my bed.
“Excuse me,” I said softly. My face reddened at the sound of my voice, but the nurse walked on, unable to hear my timid call.
“OY!” bellowed the round-faced girl next to me. The nurse stopped in her tracks.
“She wants sumfin, don’t she?” the girl said, nodding in my direction.
“Yes, Mrs. Leary?” the nurse said.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I whispered.
“Well, go ahead then,” the nurse replied.
“Okay,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I was still on bed rest.”
“You are,” said the nurse, impatiently, “but you’re allowed to get up to use the loo, for heaven’s sake. Go on, it’s right outside the ward.”
When I got back to my bed, the other women were returning from wherever they had gone, and they were also settling into their beds. I noticed that each bed had next to it a chair and a table, which contained three drawers. A housekeeper was mopping the floor. Another housekeeper was changing sheets. She went from bed to bed, and each bed’s occupant sat on her chair until she was finished. I looked longingly at the book that my neighbor was reading. I need to read on the toilet, in traffic, in line at the deli. My own thoughts have never been interesting or entertaining, but for the past eighteen hours, I had been forced to endure them. I started to make a mental note of what I wanted Denis to bring me, books, magazines, and newspapers being at the top of the list.
“Are you American?”
The round-faced girl was leaning on the side of her bed facing me. I saw now that her belly was enormous.
“Yes,” I said, trying to flatten my hair.
“I thought so,” she said, then turning around, she said to the girl in the bed behind her, “There, you stewpid cow, I told you she’s not Australian.”
“Shut up, Sophie, I’m trying to read me horoscope,” her neighbor replied with a smirk.
“Read mine. Virgo,” Sophie said.
“Virgo?” said her neighbor.
“Yeah, that’s right. The virgin, that’s me,” laughed Sophie, and her neighbor read her a horoscope that assured success in the workplace and alluded to a romantic encounter in the next few days.
“That must mean the baby comes today, then,” Sophie said, and turning to me she asked, “When’s yours due?”
“July third.”
“Most of us is in here ’cuz we’re overdue now. My baby was due ten days ago. There was a girl here who was trying to keep from having a premature baby, but she had the baby Friday. Baby’s in the Special Care Baby Unit now. I hear he’s doing awright. Joan, you was brought in for premature labor, right?”
“Yes,” replied the woman on my left. I turned to look at her, and she put down her book. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Joan Finch.”
“Hi, I’m Ann Leary.”
Joan was in her thirty-first week of pregnancy; her membranes had ruptured earlier at twenty-seven weeks. She lived in the London suburbs, she told me, but had been transferred to UCH because the neonatal unit was superior to the one in her area. Joan was kind and soft-spoken and appeared to be approximately the same age as I was, while Sophie and some of the others looked like teenagers. When I told Joan how I came to be at UCH, she commiserated kindly, and I was just thinking how lucky I was to have a neighbor like Joan when she informed me that she would be leaving UCH later in the week. Once she reached thirty-two weeks’ gestation, she could return to her local hospital for the remainder of her pregnancy.
Joan went back to her book. Sophie was now seated on the bed across from me, talking with the pretty girl I had noticed at the breakfast table. They chatted quietly and giggled, and although I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter, I was convinced they were talking about me, about my bad hair and my accent and my sadly insufficient girth.
Finally Denis arrived, dressed in yesterday’s clothes and reeking of cigarettes. He seemed slightly taken aback by the presence of so many other women in nighties, and he pulled a chair up close to my bed and kissed me self-consciously.
“Where have you been?” I whispered angrily.
“I just woke up,” he replied. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning. They don’t allow visitors until now.”
“Nine o’clock? I feel like I’ve been in this bed for months.”
“How’s the baby?” Denis asked.
“Shhhh!”
“What?”
“I don’t think everybody has to hear everything we say, if that’s all right with you,” I whispered.
Denis looked around. “There’s a curtain here. We can pull it around the bed if you want some privacy.”
“No!” I hissed.
“Jesus, why not?”
“Nobody else has their curtain closed. They’ll think we have an attitude.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Denis said, rising to close the curtain. I grabbed his pant leg.
“Please,” I begged. “Please don’t close it….”
Denis sat back down. “All right. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.”
A young man walked in, and as he passed us, he said to Denis, “You found her all right?”
“Yeah. Thanks, man,” Denis replied.
“Cheers,” the m
an said, and then he walked over to where Sophie sat with the other girl.
“Who’s that?” I murmured to Denis.
“I met him in the smoking room. His girlfriend’s up here. I guess that’s her.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
“How are you feeling? Is the baby moving and everything?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good,” Denis said. Then he leaned in close. “The show went really well. I mean, really well. The audience went nuts, but the weirdest thing is that I got stopped twice on the way over here—by people on the street who recognized me from the show. Amazing, huh?”
I looked at him then, truly amazed.
“It turns out there are only four channels that most people get here, and that’s kind of the only show to watch on Saturday nights, so a lot of people saw it—”
“Are you out of your mind?” I said under my breath.
“What?”
“Do you think I care about your set? Look at me. I’m sitting in what is essentially my new home for possibly the next three months, with roommates who hate me, carrying a baby who might die, and I’m supposed to be excited about some stupid comedy show?”
“No, I didn’t… your roommates hate you already?” Denis asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. “Anyway, I thought you might come back last night.”
“I was going to,” he replied, “but I called, and that nurse told me you were asleep. So I went to this … thing … and then back to the hotel.”
“What kind of thing?”
“It was a party. Somebody from the show invited me, you know, so I felt like I had to go.”
“Oh,” I said. It did seem silly to expect Denis to go back to his room and fret about me, when there was nothing he could do for me anyway. I imagined him sitting alone at the bar wherever this party was, pouring his troubles out to a sympathetic bartender.
