“This blood loss will not slow down until we operate,” he says to a nurse before getting closer to me. “Devony, we must operate immediately. We have to put you under.”
I can nod while I sob, so I do while picturing my birth plan lying in a color-coded folder on my desk at home. There is no “completely alone, put under with anesthesia as I’m bleeding out” tab.
The sturdy nurse who’s swabbing the blood off my thighs grips my knee. “We’ll contact your husband,” she says.
“He’s in Boston.” Even though it’s after rush hour, there will be traffic. It will be an hour at best. My breathing speeds up, and I pull at the oxygen mask. “He’ll never make it.”
“You can do this,” she says. “You’ve got to fight.”
If it’s just me, I can handle it. But my baby is an unknown variable. Does she have my tenacity that borders on myopia or Jack’s quick compliance with circumstances? “I’m going to throw up,” I say before heaving into a metal bowl she quickly provides.
After wiping my mouth, the nurse takes my hand. “You will be fine. We have the best doctors and nurses ready to help your baby. When you wake up, it will all be over.”
I flinch at the implication. She leans back, inhaling sharply as if trying to take back the words.
She doubles down, pressing my hand tighter. “I’ll pray for you both.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“I do,” she says. “That’s why I’m doing the asking.”
I let her have the last word because I’m one of those lazy atheists who wishes there was a God, precisely for times like these.
The operating room is cold and sterile, the lights even brighter than those I left in the emergency room. They tie my hands down, Jesus style, and I’m crying, quietly but hysterically.
Most of my tears are angry ones at this point. Anger at Jack for not being here. Anger at myself for insisting he stay overnight an hour away with the rest of his team for his stupid retreat. Anger at delivering this way, so I don’t have a moment of labor that isn’t sheer terror or a complete blank.
This is my fault. The gray-and-pink nursery and soft knitted coming-home outfit were taunts to the God my nurse prays to. I should have remembered the voice I thought was God who spoke to me as a girl: Turn your back on your family. Turn your back on me.
The surgeon enters and begins moving nurses around before addressing me. “We don’t have time for candles, but you can listen to music as we intubate you.”
He’s referencing a “gentle C-section,” how natural birth plans that go off the rails can still have some nonsurgical significance. Sure, you don’t get your home birth in a pool with your loved ones around you, but here are a few two-for-one Glade candles and Sade.
One of the surgical nurses, who has mostly been observing, heads over to a CD player. She smacks the top, and it’s not relaxing music but talk radio. I read horror stories online about surgeons cranking up Metallica as a terrified mother is put under, so maybe I shouldn’t care. Instead, I listen to the murmuring voice and will time to move faster, unconsciousness welcome at this point. Any reality but this one.
As the anesthesiologist does her magic, I feel as if I’m levitating. I tell myself the bright lights I’m heading toward are surgical, not spiritual.
“The bleeding has started again. I need to make an incision now.” The surgeon yelling in his green mask blurs. I close my eyes, the tube starting down my throat.
The talk newsy voice on the radio grows louder. The medicine gives me something I haven’t had in hours: calm. I can focus on the voice, the shock of the message numbed by the drugs.
“Murder rocks the East Side of Providence tonight. A woman, identified by exclusive sources as twenty-seven-year-old Belina Cabrala, has been found at Swan Point Cemetery off Blackstone Boulevard.”
The announcer said my friend’s name. I saw her today. She isn’t dead.
With my eyes closed, the memory arrives. Six months ago, I was wandering through the gravestones at Swan Point when the dogwood trees were in bloom. I came upon a stroller and diaper bag I recognized, my friend’s son dozing inside under a gauzy blanket. Not far away, there was a stunning woman I’d never seen before, thick black hair down her back and olive skin that glowed in the sun. I lifted a hand to introduce myself, but her focus remained on a nearby dogwood tree, as wide as it was tall. She lifted onto her toes to smell a branch heavy with blooms. She guided the branch with her hand until the face of the lowest flower caressed her forehead, then the length of her nose. Once it reached her lips, she opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the white petals.
She saw me staring, still standing near the stroller, and made her way over. I was unable to move. Embarrassed, intrigued, I wasn’t sure. Just a few feet away, she paused to lick one corner of her red lips.
“Medicine from the old country,” she said, staring me dead in the eyes. “Purifies the blood.”
That was the first time I met Belina Cabrala. And now, is it possible we’ll never meet again?
I hear a faint beep, a flatline. Please be me, not my baby.
Or maybe you’ll be seeing Belina real soon, girlie.
Loud voices, a double beep, flatline again.
You’ll finally get what you deserve.
Chapter 2
Monday, December 5
The new baby cry is gravelly and desperate, like the sound you make when breaking through water after believing you’d drown. The explosive wail is paralyzing at first. I read about it extensively, listened to hours of audio recordings of what different newborn cries could mean (hungry, wet diaper, overtired). Now that we’re home, I realize preparation didn’t help. Ester’s scream is so piercing I can barely put her down for fear of that sound.
I focus on my movements to keep Ester calm. Up and down on the exercise ball, my thighs burn, but still I softly bounce her in my arms. I try not to get frustrated; it’s her instinct to stay awake and survive.
At first I blamed all her crying on my inability to nurse. I pumped in the hospital, insisting Ester get my milk and not preemie formula. The difficult recovery meant I couldn’t nurse, both of us hooked to machines in different rooms. Pumping was the only action that signified my new-mother status. I was told she was born two pounds, two ounces, by a nurse, or maybe Jack, but Ester steadily put on weight. I took her home eight weeks after we both almost died.
Despite the milk I pump every three to five hours and the new Deepfreeze in the garage that’s filling with the small plastic bags, Ester still cries.
And she ain’t stopping anytime soon with a mother like you.
I hate the voice in my head that began again when Ester was born, whispering, Maybe you’ll be seeing Belina real soon.
I almost did. Death circled us both that day.
Them chickens can still come home to roost, girlie.
I flinch at the sound and shut my eyes as I bounce. To hear a voice that’s not there is shocking and unsettling but not unfamiliar. It’s older, wiser than I remember. There are new, vicious judgments about my motherhood failings. The worst part is, sometimes, the voice is right.
I haven’t told anyone, but I can silently defend myself when I’ve got the mental fight. The less I sleep, the less it’s possible to do anything but cry with my baby.