THE WOMAN IN BED FIFTEEN by Dina Naveri
University College London Hospital, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Wing
Bed 9 – 9am (Jaynie)
There’s a lady in this ward without a baby. From her bathroom walks you can tell she’s had a section – she hasn’t gone bowlegged like she’s lugging a cantaloupe between her thighs; she’s bent over and she shuffles along bit by bit. Then she just sits there, reading, munching on cold sandwiches and swallowing Oramorph like the rest of us, but she’s recovering all alone. Either her baby’s died or in the ICU, I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out. It’s different with the English – you can’t just walk up to people and ask what happened like you can back in Virginia or even in New York.
But you sure do hear an uncomfortable lot. There are six of us in this bay – beds 9 to 16 – and we’re here having our weepiest, whiniest, bitchiest days, and they’ve separated us by a foot of space and a blue curtain that doesn’t even reach all the way to the floor. Is this normal? Do they cram the beds together like this at Bellevue or Mount Sinai? I never got to find out – I got so few years there, in that glorious city, and Poppy’s my first, and when you’re living in New York with no health insurance and you get knocked up by a British citizen, you get on a plane.
“London’s easier,” said Richard. “And anyway, you hate New York.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I busted my ass to get to New York.”
“Plenty of people bust their asses to get to London. It’s just as good.” I laughed at that. He said, “Okay, how about coming for the free health care then?”
“I keep having to move,” I moaned. He pulled me close and kissed my hair.
When I called Mama in Virginia to tell her that I was pregnant and moving again, she said, “You know what comes next now that you’re having his baby.” I wanted to shake her. What? What comes next, Mama? I should turn my sweet new romance into a big tangle of legal and practical obligations just to please your friends?
Of course, I’ve never shouted at my mother, so I said, “Once was enough.”
“Don’t be ungrateful,” she said. “You were a lucky woman with a nice home.”
Mama comes from one of those old Virginia families, the ones that were something six generations ago but aren’t anymore, so they never stop hinting. They mention “The General” or “The Senator,” as if these distant relations are alive and dropping in every afternoon for iced tea. They talk about “the old family farm” and hope you’ll gather that it was a plantation. If you get pregnant out of wedlock, the women say things that sound kind but are, in fact, real ugly. “Oh honey, you should keep it,” and “It’s a hidden blessing,” and “God can use this,” even though, when you delivered the news, you were beaming and carrying three bags from Babies R Us.
Mama took a long breath. “You should at least get rid of that name,” she said.
“I know. I’ll get to that,” I said and hung up. I should’ve done it years ago when I divorced, but do you know what a hassle it is to legally change your name?
The chatter in the maternity ward is non-stop. There are other noises too: TVs, music, emergency alarms, intercoms, pacing fathers, sniffles, belches, babies smacking, wailing, wheezing. Down the hall, someone’s mangling a nursery rhyme:
. . . and if that mocking bird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a big blue ring.
There’s a sign on my curtain, “Confidential conversation? Remember, you MAY be overheard.” Hah. I can hear every word from the other beds. I hear each moan, the rustle of all the paper gowns, every last gulp of water. At night, this bay is a symphony of farts; the babies and the fathers asleep on chairs don’t even account for twenty percent. The mothers are sagging heaps of biological function, the milk, the blood, the gas, the hunger. Mothers weep, they coo, they sing, they groan. Every one of us is backed up to the eyeballs and too afraid of popping a stitch to push.
. . . and if that big blue ring don’t shine, Mama’s gonna buy you a porcupine. . .
Richard comes back with my Maltesers. He kisses my forehead and cheek and looks at Poppy again. “Do you think she’s warm enough?” he says. He opens the bag of chocolate for me. Then his gaze falls on her ankle tag. He stares. “What’s this?”
I eat three Maltesers and shrug. “What’s what?” I can’t lean over to see for myself because my belly’s been sliced, and I’m hurting all over – are you supposed to be so damn sore on the first day? – but Richard’s looking pale. He takes off Poppy’s ankle tag and tosses it at me. It lands in my lap. It says Baby Hayes.
“Oh,” I mutter. I cover it with my hand as if to hide it. An alarm goes off and a midwife comes running, though she knows it’s just another dropped ankle tag. Who can steal a baby here? You can’t take a breath without waking half the ward. Richard watches me, and I decide that it would be worse to apologize. “I had to sign in with my legal name and we’re not married so that’s the only name in their system. . . I’m sorry.” Damn it, no. “I mean, I’m sorry that it happened, but it’s not my fault.”
“But you had nine months to change it, right?” he says and goes for his jacket.
“You’re leaving?” I say. I’m sounding a little shrill and desperate as I try to lift myself off the bed. The midwife arrives. “Sorry,” I mutter at her. I hold out the ankle tag. She puts it back on Poppy’s foot, glances from me to Richard, and ducks out.
Richard pulls out a pen and starts scribbling out the name on Poppy’s ankle. I shout after him, “It’s just a stupid tag, Richard. Stop it, you’re waking her.”
“What if they did her birth certificate this way?” he snaps.
“That’s not how it works.” I lean out too far and a hot pain shoots up my torso. “Fuck, Richard, I think I popped a stitch.” He just glares and storms out.
Shit. I think some people heard. They warn you about that, don’t they? I guess it was my turn. But what are you supposed to do? Not say what you need to say? Not tell your husband that it’s okay he really should sleep at home, or your mother that no, you are not killing your baby with the painkillers, or your nurse that you still can’t take a shit, and you can’t sit on that toilet for another hour, because you know five other women are secretly waiting, so please please more Senokot, and, also, you’ve come around on the suppository issue. Should you not have your big open-curtain fight with the midwives who promised to release you at 9am and it’s already 5? Or should you not cry when your older child begs to stay overnight, screaming, “I hate the baby, you love her better now”? Maybe you should be constantly on guard to say exactly what’s needed and only that, the bare bones minimum – yes, darling, no darling. Such time. Such place. This bottle. Those knickers there, the big mesh ones that cover the wound, shhhhh. No peanut butter for Matty. I’m tired, honey. Can you put on my special socks? I’m supposed to keep them on, no breaks.
But you can’t filter and edit like that because you’re a wreck; you’re hurting and exhausted and your body’s shattered. So you say extra things like, for god’s sake you know he’s allergic, and does Mummy really have to bring everyone? Does she have to question everything I do? Oramorph doesn’t travel through the milk, not that I have any. I wish you’d listened about the private room. I need my tight socks, do you want me to lose a toe, please just do this one thing for me if nothing else.
. . . and if that porcupine is mean, Mama’s gonna buy you an aubergine. . .
Did Richard just leave me? Am I a single mother now? Are we okay? Of course we’re okay. The best thing is just to lie back and tune in to the other beds. There are women here with bigger dramas than me. All I have is a boyfriend with a bruised ego. That’s nothing. I’m a lucky woman, as Mama would say.
The lady without the baby has no one to pull up her medical socks, which are less socks than tourniquets. They prevent blood clots. (You don’t lose toes, I don’t think.) Still, I wish I could just slice mine off with a pocketknife – I imagine it would snap across the ward and take out an eye. Poor lady with no baby; the nurses pulled hers off when she had a shower, then back on they went. No one visits her.
Last night the Israeli wife whispered to her husband. “Did her baby die?”
“God forbid,” her husband whispered back. “She’s too young for such a thing.”
“NHS offers support, if you need someone to listen,” the nurse tells her now, “A standard postpartum visit.” Though she never offered a shrink to the rest of us.
All I got was a big Moroccan midwife (mid-husband?) who listened to my list of pains and did nothing but change the bloody pad under my seat. Not that it matters that he was Moroccan. I’m a New Yorker now and I’m happy to let a man of any ethnicity change my pad. I’m a feminist now as well, so this guy’s got me on everything. I should’ve said something when he yanked my arm, though, trying to force me to walk to the toilet before I was ready. Excuse me, sir, but have you ever had a fresh gash in your uterus? So the catheter stays, thank you very much.
“You’re free to leave when you can walk,” says the nurse to the lady with no baby. She’s lowered her voice to a sad whisper. “The last day is just baby exams. . . I. . . but. . . I think you should take the full two days. Let us take care of you.” Huh.
It’s boring here since Richard’s left. He’ll cool off. He needs sleep. To pass the time, I’ve pieced together everyone’s situation – it’s easy if you listen to the accents:
Bed 9: Me, Richard, and baby girl Poppy. New York by way of Virginia, but Richard’s a Londoner. Emergency C-section (I tried).
Bed 10: The Israeli couple that never stops shouting at the staff. Planned C-section, of course, because twins.
Bed 11: The rich Pakistanis (I think?) with the bratty toddlers, overbearing but sweet mother, and eleven distant relatives they smuggled in. Planned C-section.
Bed 12: Skinny black woman with reddish hair and a thousand freckles who can’t stop singing and won’t bother to look up the lyrics, plus baby girl. Normal birth (which is the judgey way to describe birth caveman style, no painkiller).
Bed 13 was just cleared.
Bed 14 is empty and has been for a while because of a broken call button.
Bed 15: The lady with no baby. C-section but since she doesn’t talk to anyone, I can’t tell if it was planned. Brunette, maybe a touch of Asian.
Bed 16: Fat girl from Essex or East London with fried blonde hair and a TV addiction. Epidural, forceps, and two stitches – she keeps describing it on the phone. She listens to everything. Once I complained about the food to Richard and she hollered through the curtain, “Fancy half an egg cress?” Gross. Richard laughed into his palm. Last night he offered her headphones for her TV; she didn’t catch the hint.
Bed 11 – 10am (Sara)
Selfish or not, I’ve been promised two nights and I intend to use them. The boys will sleep at home and Nicolas has a few days around the bank holiday, so he can organise teatime and bath-time while I get to know my daughter, my first daughter, which is actually something quite special. Do you know, this is the very ward where I had my boys? And I might have been born here myself if Mummy had left Iran a few months earlier. Still, she never fails to remind me: other daughters are born whatever they’re born, but you’re a Londoner because I decided it would be so.
Perhaps two nights isn’t so selfish then, given the uncommon specialness of it all. And then, after two nights, somehow, I’m supposed to transform into a mother to three cruel little creatures who feel nothing whatever for me. That’s the part they don’t tell you about babies: for two months you’re food to them, just food. They know you by your smell, so that they may be having a peaceful cuddle with daddy or auntie, but the moment they’re passed to you, they start rooting and snorting like truffle pigs. They know who feeds them and they don’t care why. Things don’t change that much as they grow.
Nicolas gets stroppy when I ask him to pull on the socks. He’s in a hurry and my ankles are swollen and covered by a crisscross pattern. It takes a long time. Mummy says I shouldn’t bother my husband; it was all so much worse in her time and all that. She thinks I took the easy way out, having my caesarian. Though, actually, she had one herself. And, anyway, what’s so terrible about the easy way? All things being equal, if the easy way is on offer, wouldn’t one take it? I can’t stand martyrs.
My bed here has a button control with lots of settings, like a pedicure recliner. I wait with the control in my hand, but my daughter doesn’t cry much. I feel sad for her; she’s not a fighter. She only cries when she’s hungry. She’s quiet for dirty nappies and for hot or cold. When she’s tired, she just drifts off to sleep. She’s tiny with a long face and a tight mouth. We don’t have a name for her yet.
Someone is making a list. Bugaboo Bee, Baby Bjorn. I follow the voice and it’s bed 15. What does she want with baby things? Oh, God. Last time I heard her cry, I asked Mummy to find out what happened to her baby but she refused. “Sara joon,” she said, “don’t disrespect. I take nougat. I don’t ask nosey question. Is tragedy. . .”
“But do you really think so?” I asked. “Perhaps she gave it up for adoption.”
“Shhhh, Sara!” she said. But I’m going to find out.
Nicolas wants us to go home straight away. But, sod it, I’m in pain and my breasts are failing. I won’t leave until I’ve accomplished three things: fed my baby for a day, coped a day without Oramorph (which they don’t send home with you), and until. . . the other thing. . . the MCU curse, a friendly midwife called it as she confiscated my coffee.
Mummy and I aren’t actually talking just now – we had a massive row. Baby’s color is changing. She’s turning yellow, getting thinner. They wheeled in some kind of UV light and she sleeps beneath it. Do I love her? Foolishly, I wondered this aloud. I’ve been trying to feed her since she was lifted from my belly in the theatre and placed on my chest, eyes closed and all covered in white muck, her knitted hat, the white one Mummy had made, too big for her head. She hasn’t managed a drop of milk in all that time. “Give the child a bottle! You will kill her,” Mummy shouts in Farsi. Back in Iran, they put you under for your caesarian, and by the time you woke, your baby was bottle trained and you could have an injection to dry up your milk. Very civilized.
I want to feed one baby at least, this little girl who won’t fight for herself. And every lactation expert in this country says that I can try for a few days without harming her. So this time I’m not giving in. But Mummy screams, “I won’t be party to murder!” as if I made up the entire concept of breastfeeding in a drunken fit.
When I ask for her help, she opines and opines. I said earlier, “Can you just be my hands? I don’t need a mouth, just hands.” So she started this game where, if I asked her where I’d put the nappies, she said “I’m just hands,” and waited for me to find them with my foggy brain and limited range of motion. Well, by then I’d just about had enough. I told her that if being right was more important to her than being helpful, she could just go back home. And next came the wobbling chin and the theatrical Iranian taking of offence and so on and on and on.
She’s sitting in a corner now, having a cry (or pretending to, rather). Her face is in her hand, the other hand holding her belly. Her arms and legs are crossed toward the wall so that she looks folded in on herself. She makes a show of sniffling. So I hand her a loose tissue from the bedside table, but, oh bugger, it’s the disposable knickers. She doesn’t look, just blows. I’m dying to laugh, but the stitches pull and I moan. She looks up, thinking it’s that other thing. (Last night, when I did my sheepish shuffle back from the loo, I saw her sitting in her chair praying for me.)
“Still problems?” she says in English. I nod. “You know what always works for me, when I can’t go?” she says, a little sparkle in her eye like when she’s about to crack a joke. I shrug. She says, “Going to mall.” Then we burst out laughing and she flings the knickers at me and says, “This. . . not that funny. I live through Revolution, Sara joon. I have no problems using perfectly clean tissue just because it has leg hole.”
Bed 9 – 10am (Jaynie)
The breakfast cart rolls by right around this time. There’s cereal, rubbery eggs, and soggy bread that was toasted an hour ago or longer. I ask for coffee. Richard isn’t back yet, so I drink my watery coffee, finish my Maltesers, and listen to everyone wake up. It’s a jumble but I’ve almost figured out what’s what:
“I cannot. It isn’t an issue of hunger. Please stop.” That’s the stiff Israeli wife. She’s got the heftiest clog judging by number of complaints and grunting toilet shuffles. They’ve also been here for a day longer than planned. They were sitting around all day yesterday, bags packed, twins loaded, thinking they’d be discharged. She hasn’t eaten in twenty-eight hours. He’s been sleeping on a chair beside her.
Bananas in pajamas are walking down the stairs.
“Can you just be my hands here? Just hands, not mouth. [Some stuff in a foreign language.] Don’t need opinions. [A lot of other stuff in the foreign language.]” This is the Pakistani girl and her mother, fighting over everything from bottle-feeding to Oramorph to how many layers the baby needs.
Bananas in pajamas are walking down in pairs.
“Well, I can’t involve in murder.” The mother’s waist and her voice, and her accent too, are thick but pleasant, like she’s swallowed a lot of those warm and hearty ethnic stews and she’s become warm and hearty and stewed.
Bananas in pajamas are chasing teddy bears.
“Oh my fucking God. Stop the drama, I just gave birth!”
“Do not say these bad words to me, Sara, or I leave.” Love that accent.
Bananas in pajamas are eating prickly pears. . . are wearing underwear. . . are doing each other’s hair. . .
And there goes Coronation Street – two guesses whose TV. Essex is eating chips for breakfast, I can hear the slow crunching like a sneaker coming down on a dry leaf. She hollers across to the Pakistani mother and daughter, “Don’t murder your baby here. Too much paperwork.” Hah.
The Pakistanis go quiet and then there’s a lot of whisper yelling and then all quiet again. Oh, how I want to know what the murder business was about. But then a tame little emergency alarm buzzes at the midwife station and one of them comes trotting over to the Israelis, whom I may have misjudged because they’re now talking about her dose of the toilet curse in French. French Jews maybe? But I heard a lot of talk about going home to Tel Aviv before. One of the twins has kicked off her tag – that’s five ankle tag alarms since midnight.
Bananas in pajamas are cooking their steaks rare.
I wish someone would teach that woman about Google.
”Bananas in pajamas are nursing vaginal tears,” sings Essex over her television. Someone giggles. The singing stops. I finish my coffee, lie back and close my eyes. If it weren’t for that accent (and the hair that screams benefits-fraud and eyes so crazy they’d send any man running), I’d think Essex wasn’t a total dimwit.
Bed 11 – 10:30am (Sara)
We’re in need of more tissues, nicer tea, sweets. There’s a pretty young American just down the ward from me. Normally her boyfriend asks around to see if anyone needs anything from the shops, but earlier they quarreled and he stormed out. If he comes back, I’ll ask him to bring chocolate for Mummy; Nicolas is still at the office.
I hope Nicolas stays away. Otherwise, he’ll bring the boys and they’ll wreak havoc again. I need a holiday. Remember, I’m selfish. Nicolas says I’m consumed by my own needs, that I never sit down and think, how can I help? That may be true, but if someone asks for help, I do help. He’s the type who ties himself in knots for people who don’t need his help, but if someone asks for it flat out, he says no. That’s his job, actually. He’s a financial planner, helping the filthy rich hide their money. On our first date, he took me out for tapas and told me about a scheme in which rich Americans or Italians or Russians can move portions of their savings into bank accounts that never receive income, then they can live in London on those savings tax-free while pouring this year’s income elsewhere. This is known as remittance and it’s legal. You can go right up to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and say, “Actually, sir, all my untaxed income is in this other account,” and he can’t touch it.
Nicolas explained this and I still accepted a second date, so I deserve all of it.
In the operating theatre, Nicolas read me poems. Then a few hours later, he winced when he had to change the sanitary pad under my seat as I got up from the bed, gown flying open. Well, actually, Nicolas, that second thing would have been romance. It would be real romance if you remembered that Matty is allergic to peanuts and Alex has a heat rash on his neck. And if you’d volunteer to peel off my socks. And if you had let me call one of the boys Amir after Daddy. My daughter will be artistic, I think. I can tell in her hungry stare. I wish I could feed her.
“Is for real, this coffee?” Sometimes Mummy peppers her English with slang, and makes me want to hug her for an hour.
“It’s hospital coffee,” I say. “Mummy, do you think that baby’s in a sick ward?”
She ignores me. “Why is banana wears pajama?” she asks nobody.
“Eh??” The skin inside my socks is simultaneously numb and itchy.
“Nothing,” she pauses, chewing her thumbnail, then, “Sara joon, please let’s get bottle from nurse. Just one. My granddaughter starves.”
Her voice is pleading, but then the nurses choose just that moment to roll in the medicine trolley and offer me Oramorph. And Mummy wails again and demands to know the effects of morphine – morphine! – on a breastfeeding infant.
And off we go again. We stop when the girl in bed 15 begins to mutter. This time she’s listing baby wraps: swaddling blanket, receiving blanket, all that. Mummy and I exchange a glance; Mummy shudders and crosses herself, says a little prayer in Farsi. I close my eyes for it. Then I reach for my laptop so I can show her the lactation website, but I move too fast and, bugger, that hurt. I snatch the call button, weeping, cursing, hoping anyone answers except that sadistic man-wife who understands everything we say and stays to chat. There are too many bloody Iranians in London. I want to move. I want to live in Paris.
And, you know what? Sod you, Nicolas, I’m calling my daughter Nushin, not Natalie. She’s going to be a poet, not a stripper-slash-equities-intern.
Bed 9 – 4pm (Jaynie)
After the morning medicine and coffee rounds, when the day shift kicks off, up until evening, they ask us to keep our curtains open unless we absolutely need privacy (which is a fuzzy concept here: The biological waste bin for bloody pads is outside the bay. You have to walk your pad over. But if you raise your voice just once the nurses look away embarrassed.) I think the open-curtain rule is to discourage all the public drama, and also, they want the two or three zombified fathers floating around on a rotating basis to answer small needs for all the women (dropped bed remotes, the water too far away, the pill that went behind that chair over there).
The Pakistani and her mother are whisper fighting again.
The Israeli husband is pacing in front of his wife’s bed, ranting in phlegmy syllables. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair is all matted, but he’s been around longer than the other men (slept on three chairs that he took from the two empty bays, which isn’t fair but I haven’t said anything). He does the most for us. He’s picked up my call remote twice and bought me a Coke. They’re still waiting to be discharged. I’m starting to wonder if the nurses aren’t stalling on purpose – do they have some blotch on their record? Are they afraid to release the babies to them?
I’m sipping my afternoon coffee, trying not to look directly at anyone. Then Essex wanders over and starts asking me about my delivery. She has this crooked little smile like she knows something. God, I wish we had a private room. She’s brought over another half sandwich. The Pakistani mother drops her bag and the daughter jumps up from her bed, and shrieks in horror, then in pain, and Essex lowers the sandwich to her thigh. “Blimey,” she whispers.
“Mummy, my laptop’s in there!” the daughter screams, clutching her belly. Her baby starts to wail, and the mother goes off in Pakistani again.
“So stressful,” says Essex and takes a big bite of the sandwich she brought for me. “This whole baby business,” she adds a weird, noncommittal “innit” to the end.
“Speaking of,” I say, “where’s yours?”
“Just there.” She beams. “Such a good boy, already sleeping through.”
“He’s a day old. You just wait.” Then I feel bad. “Where’s your husband. . . or. . .”
She doesn’t answer, just keeps gawking at me with that little half smile, as if she caught me stealing syringes. “When do you think this’ll get sorted out?” she says, patting her paunch. She looks seven months pregnant. So do I. So do we all.
I shrug. “Who knows? This morning coming out of the bathroom, I passed a family getting discharged. The new mom smiles at me and she says, ‘Good luck! It’s not so bad, I promise!’ I was like, what the hell, lady? I’m in the MCU like you, in a gown like yours, bent double, knees bloody, not to mention the fact that you have a belly just like mine, and you’re still convinced I’m pregnant!” Essex is laughing hard. I rub my stomach in circles. “I guess this situation trumps all other evidence.”
We chat a little. I offer her some of my cookie, which she accepts, but before we get past first names and onto baby names or neighborhood or pram model, the lactation specialist, a tiny blonde with a severe boy cut, comes prancing into the Pakistani woman’s area and pulls her curtains shut.
“She’s having trouble feeding,” I say. “Bless her heart.”
“So I see,” says Madeline (that’s Essex’s real name. Come to think of it, her hair isn’t quite as fried as I originally thought. She’s also not all that fat. I mean, she’s fat, but more like cyclical fat, not disenfranchised fat, if that’s not horrible to say. Plus she’s muscular, like from workouts, not from hauling crates at the docks or whatever. And she’s postpartum. Obviously.)
“Not very English of them, fighting in public,” I say, though bless them for providing some entertainment. “It’s probably different in Pakistan.”
“They’re Iranians, you silly twit,” she says and raises an eyebrow like she didn’t mean it. “I had a chat with the Mum before. She gave me nougat.” She pauses. “How long do you think before they argue with us like that?” Madeline smiles at Poppy asleep in her plastic crib. Poppy and I will never fight like that. Mama and I never have, but I’ve learned not to flaunt this. Women are always getting jealous.
The curtain is pointless. We hear every rustle and squeak and splash.
“Have you expressed colostrum?” says the nurse.
“Colostrum is not enough,” says the mother.
“It is for now,” says the nurse.
“See?” says the daughter.
“Let me see your technique,” says the nurse, as if she’s asking her to do a downward dog or a backstroke.
There’s some shuffling around and a little whimper (Madeline and I take a breath) and then the sound of sucking (and we exhale). “Right,” says the nurse, “Is this the way she’s been latching? Just like this?”
“Yes?” the girl says, moans more like.
“She’s not really latching. Baby’s mouth has to go over the entire nipple, not just the tip. Remember? You have two others, right?”
“I’ve never breastfed before.”
“Right. Well. It’s important not to lose heart. But she hasn’t been latching.”
“Oh my god,” whispers the mother. “My granddaughter starves. I knew it.”
“Now Grandmum,” says the nurse, her voice all sugary. “Let’s not scare our new mum. Your baby’s not starving, hasn’t been starving. It’s early days yet.”
The nurse shows them how to unlatch the baby every time she gets it wrong. A finger in the side of the mouth and pop, like releasing a suction cup from the shower wall – it feels cruel, I had to do it too. They do that four or five times.
Then there’s a groan and a sharp intake of breath, and the baby starts wailing. And great spasms of weeping tumble over to us from the mother’s bed and everyone else goes quiet, and Madeline looks over at me and bites her lower lip. She takes another cookie from the pack on my lap. How is she able to stand there, out of her bed, for so long? Oh, right, goddamn “normal” birth.
“Sara June,” whispers the older woman, “pull yourself together. You’re strong girl,” she lowers her voice even more. “Is worse tragedies here than yours.”
“Wow, that’s harsh,” says Madeline, glancing real quick at infamous bed 15.
Mother and baby continue to cry, almost in sync now. Someone whispers. There are some sniffles, the baby being shuffled around and cooed at as she reaches higher and higher decibels. Finally, a rhythmic whispering, a chant or maybe a lullaby, until the baby calms. The nurse speaks again, not sugary this time but quiet, a little shaken up herself, “Oh no darling, don’t apologize to her. This is the process. Why are you apologizing to her, sweetheart? You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Poor thing – earlier I ran into her (Sara) outside the bathroom. She smiled. We waited and watched the occupied button. After a while, she said out of nowhere, “I think that girl’s a surrogate.” I nodded; it was as good a story as any to believe.
“Shit,” says Mad, “we should stop listening.” Then she leaves and Coronation Street starts up, drowning out the rest of the words from behind the curtain, which I can’t understand anyway, because apparently they’re in Iranian.
Bed 11 – 4pm (Sara)
It seems like I’m always having to struggle for things that others do as a matter of course. Work, uni, marriage, breastfeeding. At uni, I revised for ages for an upper second. I was offered positions at Pricewaterhouse and Deloitte, firms for people who are passed over by McKinsey and Bain. Then, when it came time to marry, I thought I had outdone all of my friends, because Nicolas shines on paper. Like every other sadist and narcissist, he shines and shines. My beautiful daughter is half Nicolas. What’s a person to do when they’ve saddled their child with that?
Sleep, cuddles, colostrum. That’s all they need in the first days. I think Mummy’s right. Colostrum isn’t enough. Sleep and cuddles aren’t enough. A person needs food, sleep, a peaceful space to live and grow. But then, she also needs money, doesn’t she? The boys cost so much, I don’t even know how much, because Nicolas keeps track of it all. If I were to try to earn that much on my own, I’d land on my face, my babies would be brought up by child-minders who would ignore them, leave them in dirty nappies, and forget to wipe the food from their chins. Nushin would have to live in hand-me-downs from boys and everyone would tease her. She would go to state school. Maybe she’d be hungry sometimes. Like she is right now.
I clutch her to my chest. We’re both naked from the waist up. Mummy is standing over me. The tiny blonde lactation specialist is beside her, arms wrapped around her own chest as if in protection. She’s telling me not to apologize to my baby, that babies cry because babies cry, that I’ll thank myself if I persevere.
Except for that bit of snark about bed 15, Mummy has been silent. I can tell she’s dying to ask about Oramorph. Earlier she muttered, almost to herself, “Is no shame to give bottle.” I think she’s starting to understand that it’s different in 2015, in Crouch End, the pressure comes from other directions. She controls herself, which I appreciate. My Nushin sniffles and hiccups on my shoulder, her cries dying down. Mummy reaches over and wipes my tears from Nushin’s bare back – I’m making her cold. I didn’t even see that I was dripping on her. “I’m sorry,” I whisper again and again. I want to ask the nurse for a bottle. I’m ready for the bottle now.
“Baby joon,” Mummy sighs, still chewing her nails, “you have no idea.” I’m prepared for a whole lecture, but she sighs and takes my hand and says in Farsi, “One day when you were five weeks old, you fell right out of your pram. Did I tell you this story? Well, you did. I was sitting in a teahouse in Isfahan and we only had the cheap, unsafe prams back then, and you fell right on your face. It was early after the Revolution, so I was in a chador, but my first instinct was, I have to give you breast milk. The village women were always saying breast milk heals, breast milk heals. So I ran to the back of the shop, where the owner’s mother had a room, and I stripped off my chador and my jacket and my sweater like they were on fire. And you screamed and screamed, and I tried to put you on my breast. I couldn’t, of course. I had no practice. I had no milk. You should have seen the look on that old lady’s face.”
I haven’t heard this story, and I just stare at her. She shrugs. I chuckle and wipe my nose. Nushin has fallen asleep on my shoulder. I chuckle again.
“That’s right,” says the nurse. “Listen to your mother.” She’s teasing because we’ve been speaking Farsi and now we look like we might make it past this.
“We aren’t required to offer this,” says the nurse, scratching the outside rim of her nose. “But if you’d like, I’ll extract the colostrum into a cup.”
I nod, though I was just about to ask for that bottle. Mummy releases a heavy sigh and steps away, wincing as the nurse gets to work on my left breast.
Bed 9 – 6pm: (Jaynie)
I’m going to take a shower before Richard comes. He’ll come. He won’t be angry for much longer. And when he’s over it, he’ll come with pink tulips and Galaxy Caramel and see me neat and clean with Poppy’s red book and ankle tag and hospital papers all changed to the correct last name. An hour ago I pushed my call button and the big Moroccan man arrived. I had been crossing my fingers for the sweet old lady with bluish hair, the one who smells like lavender and is happy to take twenty minutes walking you across the ward. But he’s the one who showed up, and I burst into tears, expecting him to yank me up by my arm and make me pop every stitch. Instead he refilled my water and waited. So I apologized and told him that they had used my legal name, my ex‑husband’s name, on all of my baby’s things just because I’m unmarried, and now Richard was gone, though probably he had only intended to be gone for a few minutes, and had fallen asleep somewhere. We haven’t slept well for weeks. So Karim (that’s his name, my midwife), fixed everything – he went back to the midwives’ station and changed the records and printed them out and gave Poppy a new ankle tag. Just like that, done and done. I guess he gets it, masculine pride being so important in his part of the world.
The Israelis are still here. They’re tearing the ward apart – the husband is pounding his fist on the desk in the midwives’ station, and he’s stomping through the hallway of closed curtains, and he’s complaining to his wife in a way that’s intended more for the staff. “What kind of system are they running? We should have been gone by nine! Can they keep us here by force? There are laws!”
It’s a good time to shower. So I raise my bed slowly till it’s almost vertical, then tilt it just a bit so it folds me at the waist, like it’s tipping me out. When I’m on my feet, I put on a second gown to cover my back, I toss my bloody pad into the bag of garbage from lunch, grab my towel and toiletry kit, and I’m ready to go. I call Karim back and we’re off. Outside the shower room, he kneels and lets me rest both hands on his back while he pulls off my socks. When he’s done I ask him to hold the pose, because my stitches hurt. He gives me five seconds.
“Where are you from, Karim?” I ask as I lean forward, my hands sinking into the flesh of his back. “Morocco?” I’m trying to make the pain stop. I groan and shift.
“Tehran,” he says. “I’m going to stand now. Are you ready?”
“Sara’s from there,” I say. He doesn’t answer. He stands and explains about the shower: there’s a white plastic seat with wheels, spray it down before and after but feel free to sit as you wash. Don’t touch the bandages, don’t pull them off, let the water run over them. Wash your hair first and tilt to rinse over the back of the chair, so you’re not sitting in your suds. Don’t scrub too much around the vagina or the wound. If the hot water gives you the urge to empty your bowels, push the call button and someone will take you to the toilet – don’t lose the opportunity; after the first hot shower, most women feel relaxed enough to have success. If it doesn’t happen, don’t blame yourself. Push a few times. “Should I eat some pineapple too?” I joke, because his advice is the same as when you’re in labor. He doesn’t laugh.
I don’t want to sit in the chair. How many full rectums have sat there waiting for “success”? I spray every corner with disinfectant and use a huge pile of paper towels to scrub it down. Then, I think, maybe I’ll just stand and hold on to the back? There’s also a railing, like a ballet bar, and I move the chair so that I’m standing between it and the bar. I turn on the water and it’s bliss. The patches of dried blood caked on my thighs loosens. The yellow gunk on my arms washes away. Sensation returns to my aching feet. I stand there for a few minutes, softening, shedding a layer of sweat and dirt. I’m somebody’s Mama, I think. This will be my longest shower for the next year. I’m somebody’s actual, legal, biological, only mother.
I went into labor early because we got into a fight. Our storage boxes were still in transit and the flat was bare with no baby room. We haven’t figured out how to fight yet. He tried to hurt me – he was just testing it out. He said, “We don’t have to be together. We’ll be good friends. Not even that. We’ll be good parents.”
My chest ached so much that I whispered, “At least I’ll be.”
And he said, “You’ll be a nightmare’s what you’ll be.”
Then I went into labor and he apologized and apologized. He spent last night in a chair beside my bed. He kept waking up to apologize again and to kiss Poppy.
I’ve balanced the shampoo and conditioner on the ballet bar. Stupid move because now I can’t reach them. I drop my soap; picking it up is another ordeal. I can’t bend, so I plié, all the way down down down. My uterus is still huge but collapsed, sort of fallen in on itself. In my gown I look seven months pregnant, but naked I look slack, used up. Luckily, I can’t see the dressings because they’re tucked under the deflated beach ball of my belly. They won’t get very wet. I look away from the foggy mirror. I recapture the soap but I’m so tired I have to get on my hands and knees and scoot to the shampoo. I pull myself up by the bar, using only my biceps. If I engage my core muscles, I might faint from the pain. But I get to the bottles. I drop into the chair. The room is full of steam and fog and yet I feel none of Karim’s hoped for success coming. I’m embarrassed in front of myself, the self that remembers the speedy, efficient body I once had.
Back in my bed, I feed and change Poppy. We’re both slow and afterward we have a little cuddle until she’s asleep. An early evening hush has fallen over the ward, but bed 12 is still trying to figure out hush little baby.
. . . and if that kangaroo don’t bounce, Mama’s gonna buy you a Minnie Mouse.
How did she get to kangaroo? The lady with no baby is asleep with a full cup of tea cooling on her bed stand. The nurse gave her a painkiller that’s not available to the rest of us, real morphine maybe? I peek past my curtain. “Madeline?” I whisper. “Got any spare chocolate?” She must be sleeping too.
I’m someone’s Mama! That just keeps hitting me out of the blue, a feeling much like the morning after your wedding or your divorce, but much bigger. Madeline is someone’s mama too. So is Sara. And Sara’s mother who calls her “Sara June,” she has been a mama for decades – I want to run over there and ask her things. I wish my own mama was here, but she would stumble and hurt me, as Sara’s mother stumbles and hurts her, and as I’m bound to do soon enough. Mama would say “You’re blessed, honey” – not lucky; she stopped calling me lucky years ago. But it’s time to stop thinking of all that stuff now, of my own stupid sores and scrapes. We’re a little neighborhood here, even if we’re in England where you’re always turning away from other people’s business.
Tomorrow, I’ll get Sara, maybe Madeline too, and four cups of terrible coffee and we’ll go visit her. What happened to you, Mama in bed 15? Are you a surrogate as Sara is desperate to believe? Is your baby gone? Is she in a sick ward? Do you want someone to sit with you, to hold your hand? Who do you have to watch over you when you’re home, in the hard months coming up? Maybe we’ll sit together all morning, telling each other our love stories and baby stories, how we all got here. Maybe we’ll exchange numbers. Or, more likely they all just want to be left alone.
The French-Israelis and their twins are gone now and the orderlies are cleaning their bed. The wife has left boxes of cookies and pads and greeting cards. The orderlies toss everything, even the unopened stuff. She’s lucky, the Israeli wife, because for all their rage and racket, didn’t her husband fight all day to get her home? Didn’t he spend all the nights in the ward with her, and pick up every other woman’s dropped bed remote at least once? And now she’s in a taxi headed to her own bed, to her own home and her children’s home, where someone has changed the sheets and made good coffee, a place she’s probably lived in for years, where her chair is molded to her body and photos of her wedding and her mother’s wedding are arranged side-by-side on the wall. I wonder where that taxi is headed.
Richard won’t come. I know he’s left me. But men have left me before – it feels different now, less severe, like there’s a portion of my heart that’s been sectioned off for motherhood. I stare at Poppy’s ankle bracelet, then at her tiny face. First thing, once we get out of this ward, we both need a name change.
The orderlies finish their work on bed 10 and leave. I pull my curtain all the way back, sit at the edge of my bed, and stare at the yellow sunflowers she left behind on the shelf.
Dina Nayeri is the author of two novels, Refuge (Riverhead Books, 2017) and A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Riverhead Books, 2013). Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and The Guardian. Her story “A Ride Out of Pharo,” which originally appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, was selected for the O. Henry Prize Stories in 2015.