How’s Your Pain?

Mara treated her patients like children, as if they were all at a slumber party. She was so childlike herself that it was like watching children pretend to play hospital. Andrea had once even heard Mara say, “All better!” to a patient, fully expecting her to follow with, “Now it’s your turn to be the nurse!”

Andrea pulled Erin McNulty’s file from Mara’s stack and found her birth date. She was only 29, about the same age Andrea had been when she’d had her own hysterectomy. Fifteen years later and Andrea still hadn’t gotten over it. She recorded Erin’s vitals and replaced the file. She would keep a close eye on Erin, make sure she was being taken care of.

Andrea picked up her own stack of patient files, steeling herself for a nineteen-year-old who’d spent only eight hours in labor.

The nineteen-year-old’s mother had the newborn tucked tightly in her arms.

The young father was slouched in a chair in the corner, his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.

 “Hello, Maryanne,” Andrea said to the new mother.

She was sitting up in the bed with her arms crossed over her chest.”“It’s Dani,” she said.

No, it was Maryanne, according to Maryanne’s chart. “Okay, Dani.”

 “You give your daughter a gorgeous name and she changes it,” said the girl’s mother. “Sounds like a boy’s name.”  She glanced briefly at her daughter before locking in on the baby again.

 “How do you feel, Dani?” Andrea asked.

“Awful.”

 “Keep drinking that water or you’re going to feel worse.”

Dani pulled the sheet up to her chin and turned her eyes up to the television.

 “You know, Dani, a turn with your son might do the trick,” Andrea said. “Maybe we can pry him away from Granny.”

 “It’s Sherry,” said Granny. “She’s just tired. Let her rest. She’s been through a lot.”

All day long women were going through “a lot,” as if giving birth was something special and not what it really was: completely natural. As natural as taking a shit.

“Well, I’m going to need to get in there at least,” Andrea said. “Come here, little man.” She lifted the baby from Granny’s clutches and laid him down in the rolling basinet.

He was a cute little thing. Andrea didn’t think that very often. She saw so many newborns in every shape and size and color, all the odd-shaped skulls. Few were truly cute. This little guy had full lips and the most perfectly round set of cheeks. It was too bad he was destined to turn into a little punk if Andrea was any judge of his parents and grandmother.

She rolled the basinet next to the bed and refilled Dani’s plastic mug of water. “I’ll be back in an hour when it’s time to feed. Get all that water drank. And don’t forget to massage those nipples.”

 “Yes, thank you,” said Granny.

Yes, thank you. It was just the way Andrea’s mother used to say it. It was a dismissal. Yes, thank you. Now get out.

Granny even looked a little like her mother—tall, slender, an elegantly high forehead below a mane of blond hair. A Grace Kelly wannabe. Granny’s face was made up with powder and heavy lipstick, as if anyone cared what she looked like sitting in a hospital room.

Andrea was a certified nurse. A goddamned trained expert on anything that happened down this hallway. And all Granny could say to her was Yes, thank you.

At the word “nipples” the father had jumped from his chair.

Andrea followed him out of the room. She heard the baby finally wake and let out a wail as she closed the door behind her. They’d be calling her back any minute to stop the noise.

In the next room a mother sat staring at her new baby’s face, mesmerized, just as she’d been when Andrea had last checked on her. That’s the way. Hang on tight to that baby. That was the way a mother should look.

 “I’m just going to take a quick peek. You can hold on to her.”

 “Okay,” the mother said. She looked up at Andrea, her eyes wide with dazed disbelief. This woman would do whatever Andrea told her to do, as if Andrea had power over whether she could keep her baby or whether the baby would disappear and turn the whole day and past nine months into a dream.

 “Let’s loosen that blanket so I can get in there,” Andrea said.

 “Yes, ma’am.”

Andrea snaked the stethoscope under the folds of the baby’s blanket and listened.

The mother watched Andrea’s face closely.

“Heart like a little Chihuahua.”

 “That’s good?”

 “Real good. It’s about that time. You drink all your water?”

 “Yes, ma’am. I filled it up three times.”

 “That’s the way.”

Andrea tucked a pillow under the mother’s arm and loosened the blanket even more to let the cool air wake the baby. “Stroke her cheek so she’ll turn towards you.”

The mother obeyed. 

At ten p.m., Andrea returned to Dani’s room. Dani was asleep. Granny sat on the sofa watching a re-run of CSI Miami, the baby bundled and situated in her arms as before.

 “Let’s get everybody up,” Andrea said. “Wake mama, wake baby, let’s go, it’s supper time.”

Dani started to rouse.

“Up and at ‘em.”

 “No need to alarm everybody,” Granny said.

 “We want to get that schedule down before going home.”

 “Yes, thank you. We know all about schedules.”

Dani looked panicked. She crossed her arms, protecting her full breasts. The mug of water was full to the brim, ice melted.

Granny laid the baby in Dani’s stiff, still-crossed arms and then sat back down on the sofa.

Dani attempted to adjust the baby’s head so that it lined up with her left breast while trying to tug the hospital gown out of the way.

That poor child. Andrea watched the clumsy scene as if in a trance. She wanted so badly to give that baby a proper mother, like the mother in the next room. The baby slid around in his mother’s arms like a Jell-O mold. Andrea leaped forward and lifted the baby into her arms.

“What are you doing?” Granny shrieked.

Andrea tightened the blanket around the child and held him against her.

 “Well?”

Andrea realized Granny’s questions were directed at her.

 “Do you mind?” said Granny. “She was getting ready to feed her child. Why would you snatch him away like that? Are you crazy?”

 “She was about ready to send her son sliding onto the floor.” Andrea felt a little dazed. Her heart was pounding.

 “What are you talking about?” Granny glanced at her daughter, as if suspecting it were true, but then she said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The young mother looked both offended and terrified. “He wasn’t—I didn’t…”

As a nurse, the expert in the room, Andrea knew it was her job to teach and encourage the young mother, but she couldn’t muster it at the moment. She kept imagining that tiny skull hitting the tile.

She had no choice but to give the baby back to his mother. That was the way the world worked. The careless were blessed, and the rest had to stand and watch.

Dani had yet to expose her breasts; her gown still clung to her bone-thin shoulders.

 “No time to be shy now,” Andrea said.

 “You know what? This is a mother-daughter thing,” said Granny. “We can handle it from here, thank you.”      

---

Erin hadn’t been lying when she’d told her grandma she felt pretty good. She did feel good. It was a relief that the surgery was over. The hard part now was having to lie there. Erin wasn’t one to sit still. Six days a week she was walking at least five hours a day. She couldn’t wait to get back to work. She missed her route. Whoever was subbing for her this week had better remember to put Mrs. Jameson’s mail through the slot in the door and not in the mailbox. She hated to think of Mrs. Jameson trying to navigate her driveway just to gather the weekly grocery ads.

Erin swiveled her legs over the side of the bed and gingerly stood up. It felt good to stand. It felt like she hadn’t stood on her own two feet in ages. Mara had come by and released her from the tubes and wires that had tethered her earlier. She’d said she’d come back to cut the fall-risk bracelet off Erin’s wrist so that she could get up any time she wanted. “We support bladder freedom around here!” Mara had announced. That was an hour ago.

Erin took a few tentative steps, but then her bladder did that weird spasming thing. She shuffled as quickly as she could to the bathroom.

That was a close one.

Now that her bladder could relax, she felt good, sturdy. She slipped on her sweatpants, wearing the waistband high, over the incision. The incision was a lot smaller than she’d expected. She figured to take out an entire body system you’d need a bigger hole. The skin was sewn together nice and tidy.

Too nauseous to eat her dinner earlier, her stomach now gurgled hungrily. She considered pushing the call button. But she wanted to walk. She needed to walk. She couldn’t explain it any other way. For her, it was absolutely necessary that she kept moving. She walked through her work day, she walked when she got home from work, she walked after dinner and before bed. The day she became immobile would be her last.

And that day was not today.

She crept down the wide hallway, her mustard-colored no-slip socks sticking to the floor. It was strange how both familiar and foreign the hospital seemed. It was familiar in its clean tile floors, pale walls, floral artwork. The way the air went straight to your head when you breathed in through your nose. The carts rolling around out of sight as loud as bowling balls. The beeping. The piercing chirps. Some had a predictable rhythm. Others were as sporadic and surprising as the chirp of a cricket that’s somewhere in the house, unseen. She wondered how the newborns fared with all that racket, no longer muffled by the walls of the womb.

It was all so familiar. And yet she felt kind of lost. She knew her room was straight back behind her, but come to think of it, she didn’t know what her room number was. But getting lost never bothered her. You walk around long enough you find your way somewhere. Right then she hoped it was the snack room.

Her mother had been in the hospital a lot the last couple of years before she died. Erin got pretty friendly with the nurses and staff. She’d also gotten very familiar with the small room full of food. It was called something besides “snack room,” but she couldn’t remember what. She was sure they had one in this wing of the hospital. All those anxious dads and partners milling around.

An empty rolling chair manned the nurses’ station. She could hear voices somewhere beyond the desk, back in some other room for staff only. Two more hallways diverged on the other side of the nurses’ station. Erin stood at the point where they met.

Down one hallway a door opened a few yards in front of Erin and a young man slipped out carrying a tower of tiny ice cream cups. He held a plastic spoon between his teeth as he closed the door behind him. He paused and looked down the hallway in which he stood. He took a tentative step in the same direction but seemed to change his mind. He went down the adjacent hallway instead and sat down in a wooden chair. He looked like a child sitting there hunched over, his baseball cap sitting low on his forehead shading his eyes. He looked too young to be a new father, more like someone’s younger brother. He peeled the top off one of the ice cream cups and scraped a thin layer onto the spoon.

It looked like she’d found the snack room. A little sign read “Nutrition Room.” Close enough. Erin went straight to the freezer and started stacking the little cups of ice cream in her hand. Pretty soon she’d made the excess material of her hospital gown into a sling and filled it with ice cream cups and tiny cans of Sprite.

The snacks, the comfy clothes, and the slipper-socks made her feel like she was at a sleepover. That was the way the world worked sometimes. A terrible day of anxiety and surgery ended with a pleasant walk and an entire freezer full of ice cream.

---

When Andrea returned to Erin’s room and found it empty, she thought her head would explode. Who did these patients think they were? Where the hell did she go? How could Mara let her patients wander off? Everyone’s best friend instead of a competent nurse.

There were only a couple of places Erin could be unless she’d made an escape out through the waiting room, which didn’t seem likely. She found her in the Nutrition Room pilfering about a hundred cups of ice cream from the freezer. Usually it was the new dads scrounging for snacks, trying to escape their newfound fatherhood for a few minutes. She’d seen several of them eat their snacks right there, backs against the freezer.

Erin was using her hospital gown as a sack, piling in cup after cup of vanilla ice cream. She had a small smile on her face, which made her look all the more pathetic standing there with her gown falling down one shoulder and her slipper socks turned sideways.

“Oops, you caught me,” Erin grinned widely. “I started to get snacky sittin’ in there.”

 “Here, give me those. You see that yellow bracelet you’re wearing? That means there’s a good chance you’ll fall over and crack your head open.”

 “Oh, I know,” said Erin. “Mara was supposed to cut it off. She said I could get up on my own.”

 “Oh, she did, did she?” The pressure building inside Andrea’s head started to deflate. She relaxed. Erin looked comical with her chin length mousy brown hair sticking up every which way, her gown bulging with junk food. “Anything else while we’re in here?”

 “I think I’m all set.”

 “You got someone to look after you when you go home tomorrow?” Andrea asked. “You shouldn’t be doing any lifting for six to eight weeks.”

 “My grandma’s picking me up. She’ll probably stay awhile.”

 “Anyone else?”

 “My friends will stop by at some point.”

So, Erin was on her own. That much was obvious.

They made their way down the hallway. Andrea carried the ice cream cups in one hand and guided Erin by the elbow with the other.

Most of the rooms had quieted down. They passed a room whose occupants resembled a painting. The dim light illuminated the subjects who were positioned just so—the proud father standing over the tired but beaming mother, their bundle of joy invisible among the blankets.

She should distract Erin before she saw. Erin would never have her own children now. No need to have that fact shoved in her face.

“You live in town somewhere? An apartment or something?” said Andrea. She pictured the crappy apartments on 5^th Street—one bedroom, tiny bathroom, brown carpet that camouflaged thirty years of god-knew-what kind of stains. Brown fiddlers splayed out in the corners of the closets. Tiny rectangular windows that never would open. Andrea knew those apartments well. Her ex-husband had fled to them the first time they’d separated.

“No,” Erin said. “I own about thirty acres between here and Oak Grove.”

“You own land?” Not only was Erin on her own, she was on her own out in the middle of nowhere. “What do you do with it?”

“Mostly just walk around on it. I thought about renting out the pasture, but I kind of like it empty.”

“So you’re not a farmer?”

“Not even close.”

“What do you do, then?”

“Mail carrier.”

“How’s a mail carrier end up with thirty acres? No offense, but you can’t make more than, what, thirty grand?”

“My parents bought the land about ten years ago. My dad passed away shortly after and my mom about six months ago. So, I’ve ended up with it.”

“Why don’t you sell it? Make some money.”

“I will eventually. Right now, though, I feel like I have the whole world to myself.”

“Sounds lonely.”        

By this time, they’d made it back to Erin’s room. Andrea could see that Erin’s little escapade had taken it out of her.

 “On a scale of one to ten, how’s your pain?” Andrea asked.

Erin lay back against the pillows. “I don’t know, a six? Maybe seven?”

 “I’ll get you some pain meds.”

When she returned, Erin was already sinking into the pillows and into sleep. Once she took the meds, she’d be out.

“Down the hatch,” Andrea said, dropping the pain pills into Erin’s palm. “I’m sorry you’re having to go through this.”

Erin gulped down her mug of water.

 “I’ve been through it, too,” Andrea said. “About fifteen years ago. It’s not going to be easy.”

“The hard part’s about over, isn’t it?”

“The surgery’s nothing. Not being a mother, it’s—” Andrea shook her head. “I’d like to tell you it’ll get easier, but…”

 “You know, I never really wanted to be a mother,” Erin said. She closed her eyes. “Never wanted kids.”

Keep telling yourself that, thought Andrea. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” She left one ice cream cup within Erin’s reach and took the rest back to the freezer.

After years of watching children leave the hospital with parents who were unprepared and undeserving, Andrea had never gotten over the unfairness of it all. It ate at her. She’d been raised Catholic but had lapsed. She didn’t want to believe that God’s plan for her was void of children. But she hadn’t even been able to adopt, not after her divorce. Who were they to decide whether she was fit to raise a child? She was more than fit. She knew all there was to know about babies. Her child would have all of her attention. And she wouldn’t make her child feel bad about it either.

Her mother had wanted to be adored, instead of the other way around. She’d wanted to be waited on and worshipped like a queen. And Andrea had worshipped her. All hail, Queen Mother. Fairest in the land.

But the queen was dead now. The crown still fastened tightly to her mother’s skull. You had to be a mother to inherit the crown.

Erin would make a good mother. Andrea could tell right away. And, yet, here they were. Both of them childless.

Erin’s limbs felt heavy, her head cloudy, but a sharp pain in her bladder made her alert. “I have to pee,” Erin mumbled. She was startled by Andrea who was already in the room.

The room was dark except for one light above the sink that was near the door. Andrea was standing under it. The light made a halo above her. Tiny curling flyaways had sprouted all over her head in spite of the tight bun her hair was tied back in.

All Andrea’s features, from her broad shoulders to her button nose, were rounded but firm. Strong and comfortable like the coziest overstuffed armchair. But her presence was like a burst of freezing air that blasted into a room and left it clean but cold.

Andrea stepped away from the light toward Erin and rolled the bedside table out of the way and took hold of Erin’s arm. “You’re standin’ steady,” Andrea said. “You’re not a fall risk anymore.” She pointed at the yellow bracelet. “That oughta come off.” She guided Erin to the bathroom and waited outside the door.

When Erin was finished, Andrea was ready with a pair of scissors.

Erin got back in bed and closed her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. She didn’t care what bracelets she was wearing. But once Andrea cut the fall-risk bracelet from her wrist, the absence of it made a difference. Erin did somehow feel less restrained. Less patient, more person. She looked down at her naked wrist, staring at it for a moment before realizing her hospital identification bracelet was gone too.

 “You cut off my ID bracelet,” Erin observed.

 “I did, didn’t I?” Andrea said, her brow bunched together. She busied herself smoothing the blankets and tucking them between the flimsy mattress and the hand rail. She turned to roll the bedside table back to its place within Erin’s reach. “You’ll need a new one.” Then she was gone to correct her mistake, leaving Erin in an ordered and quiet room.

As Erin lay there, she pictured Andrea on a swing in a yellow sundress, her lovely auburn hair bouncing down her shoulders, hair and skirt falling through the air. Then she thought of how Andrea had looked moments ago, her hair wound tight, and suspected she hadn’t fallen through the air on a swing in a very long time.

Erin had dozed off and in what felt like only a moment later, she was roused by Andrea placing something in her lap.

“This ought to make you feel better,” Andrea said, her voice low.

 “What is it?” Erin said, sleepily. She looked down into a miniature face, peeking through a blue and white striped blanket.

Andrea left the room.

Whatever pain medication Andrea had given her seemed to be powering through her bloodstream at an alarming rate. Erin’s eyelids were no match. She adjusted the bundle so that one end of it rested between her kneecaps. She lay back and let her eyes close. She was still half awake, half dreaming when she felt it roll from her lap and onto the floor—

She gasped.

Andrea was standing next to the bed, staring at the baby cradled in her arms. “They’re so sweet when they sleep.”

Erin lay back on her pillows, her heart still in her throat. “The baby didn’t roll off the bed, did she?”

 “He.”

 “Did he?”

Andrea looked up. “His mother doesn’t even want him,” she said. “The pregnancy was an accident.”

 “Well,” Erin said, slowly, still breathing hard. “I’m sure she wants him now he’s here.”

 “She thinks she had a tough labor. Been napping all day since he was born.”

The bitterness in Andrea’s voice made Erin uncomfortable. “Where is she now?”

 “I’ve seen women die in labor.”

 “Where’s his mother?”

 “She elected to let the nursery have him for the night so she could get some sleep. Can you imagine? Not wanting to spend the first night of your son’s life with him?”

Erin couldn’t imagine any of it really. “You can’t blame her,” she said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done with an unwanted pregnancy. Must be scary.” She was so tired. She couldn’t tell if she was just thinking these things or saying them aloud. “I might’ve gotten an abortion.”

Through a cloudy consciousness, Erin thought she saw Andrea’s body stiffen, an overstuffed armchair about to burst.

Then Andrea said, “No you wouldn’t have. Don’t say that.”

As Erin lay there just on the edge of falling into a deep, drug-induced sleep, she heard a series of sounds that both comforted her and filled her with dread. A jolt of the bed and the loud click that she would later recognize as the sound and jolt of the bed rails going up and clicking into place. She listened to the soft grunting of a creature who didn’t know that he was making noise. A heat-producing weight warmed her lap. She fell asleep thinking how kind it was for Nurse Mara to bring her a heating pad to sleep with.

---

When her shift ended at six a.m., Andrea got in her car like always. The sun wasn’t up yet, so she drove down the highway in the dark. She was still alert right after her shift. She never relaxed until she got home, took a shower, and had something to eat. Until then, her eyes swept across the highway.

Just a few months ago a collision had happened at a stoplight, a few miles from the hospital. A car pulled out in front of another car, that old story. Even if she hadn’t been obligated as a registered nurse to stop and take control of the situation, she would have anyway. She didn’t need an oath to be who she was.

Before the paramedics arrived, it was just her and her patients. In a blink of an eye she had surveyed the situation and gotten to work. She’d folded her sweatshirt and put it under the man’s head. She’d made a tourniquet from the man’s belt, tying it around his leg above the oozing gash.

Then she’d collected the woman who was wandering around the wreckage with blood dripping down her face shouting unintelligible things and sat her down on the curb and attended to the cut and the blood.

Once she’d done all the work, the paramedics arrived and took her patients away. She gave a brief statement to the police and then left the scene as much a stranger as when she arrived. She hadn’t been surprised when she didn’t hear from either of her patients, though she thought about them some. She often thought about what might have happened if she hadn’t been there.

And now here was another opportunity. Along the shoulder was a car with its emergency lights on. The flashing lights seemed to multiply as she pulled up behind them. With her first aid kit under her arm, she ran to the guardrail and looked down below. All she could see were the flashing lights that had imprinted on her eyes.

Between the guardrail and the car, a man crouched down. Andrea was still blinking away the flashing lights.

 “Sir, are you hurt? It’s best if you lie down. I’m a nurse. I’m here to help.” She put her hand behind his head and tried to lay him down.

He pushed her away, roughly. “I told you. I’m fine. It’s just a flat.”

She heard his words but didn’t know what to make of them. “What about the other car?” She leaned over the guardrail. She saw movement in the trees below. There was somebody down there.

 “There’s no other car.” The man had raised his voice over the wind. The trees waved and twisted below. “Look, I’m good. Tire’s fixed. We should get out of here before the rain.”

His face was mostly in shadow, but it lit up every few seconds as a car passed. His face was strange. He was looking at her too hard. She didn’t know what to make of a face like that. She risked her life to stop along a highway to help him. And now he was looking at her like that.

She knew what to do. She knew how to help. How to heal. How to solve problems. Why wouldn’t anyone let her?

Without a word, she got back into her car, started the engine, and drove away. People were so stubborn.

Her husband had been stubborn. She had known what was best for him, what it was he really wanted even if he wouldn’t admit it. That was the worst part, that he wouldn’t admit it. He’d never say he wanted to be with someone else, someone who could bear him children. But she knew that’s what he wanted. He’d always been a pushover. A sweet, lovable pushover who couldn’t do anything without someone’s permission. So, she’d given it to him. Permission to leave. He’d hemmed and hawed over it, even fought her a little. But eventually he went to live near his brother in Leavenworth.

Then it was just her mother whom she had to disappoint. Right up to the day she died, her mother was thinking up reasons why Andrea had ended up barren. She was convinced that Andrea had done something to deserve the punishment.

Andrea wished she had done something. Then, at least, she would understand. She was destined to die, like her mother, still trying to figure it out.

She’d gotten to the hospital at eleven a.m. after waking up, eating a quick bite, and then driving back. It was hot in the car, stuffy. The rain from the previous night had only made the day steamier. But she didn’t roll down her window. An open window was an invitation to chat, and she was there to watch. She would watch Erin carry her baby outside, and when her grandma came to pick her up, they would drive away to their own little world out in the middle of nowhere. Erin would be the one. The one to let Andrea help.

The front doors of the hospital slid open and finally Erin emerged, rolling onto the sidewalk in a wheelchair. Deborah, another nurse, pushed the wheelchair to the curb and stood beside it. A police officer followed them out and stood swiveling his head from side to side.

Erin didn’t have any balloons or gifts like a brand new mother ought to have. Andrea was disappointed in herself for the oversight. 

Andrea couldn’t see the baby from that distance. All she could see was a bundle in Erin’s lap.

An older model Buick sidled up to the curb. Deborah took the bundle from Erin’s lap and tossed into the backseat.

That couldn’t have been the baby.

Something had happened. Erin didn’t have her baby. Someone had messed up. Andrea should never have left. She would have to go inside and clean up whatever mess waited for her.

What waited for her were a lot of questions. Ridiculous questions.

“Did you remove Maryanne Winn’s son Damien Winn from the nursery and take him to the room of Erin McNulty?”

“How did he get there?”

“Did you replace Erin McNulty’s identification bracelet with one that said Maryanne Winn?”

“Was it your intention to give Ms. Winn’s infant son to Ms. McNulty?”

They had it all wrong. After everything, all the lives she’d saved, the care she’d given. All her knowledge and skill. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t a mother, so what did she know?

Mara was there, too, among the police. But as usual she wasn’t doing her due diligence as a nurse. Andrea would have said her pain was at a ten if Mara had bothered to ask.