by Vincent Lam
“Like that.”
Zoltan explained that he had never had this problem before, a performance problem, but that it wasn’t exactly a performance problem either.
“Here’s how it started,” said Zoltan. He had picked up a patient from one of those places, those brothels. They call it a hair salon. He couldn’t remember which hospital he had brought the patient to.
“Maybe here? Did I bring this patient to you, Dr. Sri? No, of course you wouldn’t remember, there are so many patients. The guy died. He died after, or during, well, the act. We wrote on the call record that it was a hair salon. That’s what the sign said. Better for the family to call it a hair salon, so we wrote it that way—as a little courtesy.”
Ever since then, when he and his wife would begin to make love, said Zoltan, he would have a vision. A flashback, seeing this dead guy with his pants half on and all these women with their tits half out of their shirts. Then he would breathe fast, get chest pains, then tingling in his hands, and feel like fainting. They hadn’t made love properly since that time.
“You’ve discussed the issue with your wife?”
“No, I haven’t told my wife why. I’m not bringing this shit home. I see everything. You know—drownings, things chopped off, blown up. Never bothers me. But I keep thinking of this dead guy, and I can’t get it up.”
“Sometimes, a little thing is like a trigger,” said Dr. Sri. “One little thing happening sets the mind in a particular course.”
“What can I do?”
“You need to make love once, without thinking of this. You need to get past it.”
“Are there any pills to help me?”
“Maybe with the sexual part. No medication erases memory. Why don’t you go away for the weekend. Somewhere calm, where you will think differently. Don’t let this pattern settle in, or it will become more of a problem. Think of a beautiful place, and go there with your wife. Have a good meal, a bottle of wine, and just let things happen naturally.”
AN INSISTENT TIDE
JANICE LAY IN THE PILLOWED SAND, AND THE water drifted and frothed as high as her calves. The tide was coming in, and she had been lying there for a number of hours. Is that so? Or did I just arrive? she thought, unsure now of this point. She knew, however, that the level of the water was rising. Sometimes she heard its hush, its whisper of motion without feeling the cool wash at her heel. It was clear, however, that over ten sighs of the water, over a hundred repetitive flexures of the ocean, the curled breakers were coming closer. They opened their mouths to her legs, and pursed their whistling lips as they fell and rushed forward, blowing the stream of rising tide up to her thighs now.
I am so still, thought Janice. Why have I never in my life felt so still before? There was a wonderful relief of not moving her limbs, of allowing her arms to lie like wet rope over her globe-like abdomen. The water pooled and became a warm slurry of salt and sand in the hollows that held her thighs. She counted the waves. One, a stroke that seemed to touch only the leg hairs. Two, a tingling pain on her skin—as if the drying salt would pull and crack open her pores. Three, what is this beach? Four, a rush of briny sea with its sharp sting on her red thighs and then this wave receded. Five, where is Oliver? Six, now a panic as if she had split in two, and one half had forgotten the other. Seven, have I peed myself?
Warmth spread across Janice’s lap, and she felt something shift inside her belly, like a weight about to drop. Above her, in the sky, she saw a bird swirling. Higher, it rose on thermal currents she could not see, but whose rising spirit was evident in the creature’s arc upward. Do birds ever get to heaven? she wondered. Now a pain, a wrenching fist squeezed her belly. She thought of sitting, of stretching, of turning on her side because this might shift some of the weight of her swollen uterus. She could not sit, could not turn, and was unable to move except to follow the bird with her eyes. It had notched wingtips. I’m scared he will fall, she thought. He? Maybe it’s a she bird.
Beep Beep.
Is the bird making that noise?
Beep Beep.
Why am I paralyzed?
Beep Beep.
Janice grabbed the telephone. “Hello!” she shouted. She sat up, and was shocked by her own ability to move.
“Jan, what’s the matter?”
“Oliver,” she said. The slats of early afternoon light stabbed through the bedroom shutters. “I was dreaming. Are you at Pearson?”
“Still in New York.”
“You said you’d take the morning flight.”
“Didn’t you see the news? Hurricane warning. Nothing’s moving on the east coast. They say we’ll be out tomorrow, or maybe the day after. It has to blow over.”
“One-day trip. You promised.”
“It’s the forces of nature, Jan.” Now she heard his muffled voice aiming away from his cellphone: “Pull up here. Yellow awning on the right.”
She ached to remember the dream that had preceded the telephone. That wonderful coastline. What had been frightening about it? It was then that Janice realized that her underpants, and the hem of the nightgown bunched around her hips, were wet. And warm, with a seaweed smell. Amniotic fluid was soaking into the mattress.
“Oliver?”
“I’m going to wait it out at the hotel. They’ll call when they have a plane for me. You want me to get anything? That lox you like?”
“Oliver.”
“Listen, cab’s pulling up, let me pay him.”
She heard a scratch as he put the phone in his jacket pocket, the flap of fabric as he rifled for his wallet. Janice heard the cab door slam. A fumbling noise as he put the phone to his ear.
“My water just broke,” said Janice.
“Say again. The water’s broken? There’s a plumber, the guy we used last time. Sam, or Joe. No, Stan. Number’s in my desk.” She could hear the honking of a Manhattan morning behind his voice.
“Oliver. My water’s broken. I’m in labour.”
“Why do you say that?” he said. She heard an engine hum and then fade away.
“Because that’s what’s happening.”
“Do you know for sure? You’ve never had a baby.” His voice sounded less and less real—more like a clock radio as he talked. She heard him cup the phone in his hand and tell someone that no, he didn’t have any change.
“You better come home,” she said. “Right away.”
“Go to the hospital and find out if it’s labour. I’ll call the airport.”
Janice put the phone down, and heard Oliver talking in the background. He said her name several times. She put her hands on her belly, experimentally. She had become accustomed to its growth, its weight which for the past nine months had sunk into the centre of her pelvis, streaking her abdomen with stretch marks of glistening purple skin.
What now?
A contraction swelled up—this strong grip from within her uterus. Janice realized that she would not be able to alter the ensuing events. She knew from the prenatal classes that now there would be thinning of her cervix, it would dilate into an absurdly large opening, the muscles of her uterus would begin to squeeze in their own rhythm, accelerating like a heart coming to life, and her baby would emerge. It was a relief to realize that this would now happen despite herself.
“You’re two centimetres,” said Dr. Ming that afternoon. She removed her right hand from within Janice’s vagina, where she had been spreading her fingers to see how wide Janice’s cervix was open. She plucked the cuff edge of the glove and pulled it inside out over her fingers in a quick motion that sounded like a rubber band snapping. There was fine white dust in the creases of her fingers.
Janice was on her back, her feet together and knees apart. If I were not a pregnant woman, I would look like Buddha, she thought.
“How long, then?” asked Janice.
“That depends.”
“Of course,” said Janice, but what does it depend on? She felt that she should know, and tried to remember her readings, which she had undertaken
like exam preparation. Janice had read a prenatal book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, a book with line drawings of happy couples called Birthing for Beginners, and two-thirds of Boen’s Comprehensive Board Review—Summary of Obstetrics. She had stopped midway through Boen’s. It had bored her with its anagrams of treatment protocols and dosage calculations, while shocking her with curt descriptions of obstetric disaster. The term fetal demise was used without embellishment. All of this gave Janice a feeling of emptiness, as if she had seen a naked corpse and not known the person’s name. Now she wondered if the last third of that book explained what the length of her labour now depended upon.
She hadn’t brought the books. That was supposed to be Oliver’s job, to pack the red duffle bag before driving her to the hospital: books, Walkman, diapers. He had a long list of essential items. As it was, the only thing Janice brought was her pillow. When she had told the cabbie that she wanted the maternity wing, he drove with a grimness of purpose, but seemed suddenly congratulatory once they arrived at the hospital and Janice still held the pillow over her pregnant belly. He couldn’t refuse to take me, she thought.
Dr. Ming squirted a spiral of jelly, which had a tinge of blue like ice, on Janice’s stretch marks. She pointed the dop-tone wand at the ripe pregnancy and began to search. The fat end of the wand slid through the jelly over Janice’s skin. The amplifier, to which the wand was connected by a slinky wire, crackled and then hissed. It was like a shortwave set seeking out a long-range transmission at dusk. Dr. Ming twisted the wand around in a circle as static popped and hushed. Then a beat—a single drum tap. Dr. Ming honed in with the wand to find several more beats. White noise. The speaker made a sucking sound as she lifted the wand, squirted more cold jelly on that spot, and then returned the wand there.
Thump thump. Static. Dr. Ming adjusted. Thump thump thump, a clear impulse forward. Humanity’s first drum.
For months now, Janice had heard the sound of her baby’s heart during checkups at Dr. Ming’s office. Each time it felt like a growing voice, a surging message in the fetal staccato of cardiac rhythm. Thump thump thump thump. Dr. Ming turned off the machine. The heart rate counter on the dop-tone shined out: 142. Janice remembered from Boen that it should be 120 to 160, and was satisfied at being almost exactly average.
“Looks good,” said Dr. Ming. “Where’s Oliver?”
“On his way. I called him—thought I’d come first,” she said, forcing a casual disregard for her husband’s absence.
Having found the fetal heart, Dr. Ming buckled an elastic monitor belt over Janice’s tight skin.
Oliver’s cellphone had a local Toronto number that Janice dialed early that afternoon from the Labour and Delivery Lounge. His phone rang wherever he was in North America, and gave the illusion that he was nearby.
“How long?” asked Oliver.
“Dr. Ming said that it could be any minute,” said Janice.
“Jeez,” he said. “I knew that already.”
“And you went to New York.”
“But is it ‘any minute’ meaning a few minutes, or ‘any minute’ meaning like sometime today.”
“It’s something like that. Oliver, I’m having a contraction.” Janice grunted, and gave a low moan which rose and then tapered. She heard Oliver fiddling with something. “It’s like a clamp.”
“I’m driving, Jan. I got a rental car.”
“That’ll take hours, forever.”
“Nothing’s flying, and it’s pelting rain.”
“How far are you?” At that moment, Janice heard a prolonged honk, the single raised finger of urban traffic.
“Relax, buddy,” said Oliver, his voice faint because the phone was not at his mouth. She heard him pick up the phone, and then his voice spoke clearly, “Jan? I’m still in the Lincoln Tunnel.”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s bumper to bumper. I’m coming, though.”
Again a low grunting cry. Then Janice said, “I have to go.”
“Wait!” said Oliver. “Did you bring the champagne?”
“You’re in charge of the birth bag.”
“I’ll be there soon, Jan. Take it slow, okay?”
After hanging up, Janice felt a contraction grip her—a firm hand squeezing. It started like a gentle pressure—a flat palm—but grew and strengthened into a clenched hard fist.
Two hours later Dr. Ming said, “Three centimetres.” She withdrew her hand, snapped off the glove, smiled, and left the room.
The pain came hard every four minutes. Three centimetres. It stretches to ten before my baby comes out, thought Janice. She called Oliver and got his voice mail.
“So slow,” said Janice to Ronai, her nurse.
“Sometimes fast, sometimes slow,” said Ronai, who had sad, round eyes. “Do you want laughing gas? Like at the dentist. It doesn’t knock you out, but it makes you dreamy.”
Ronai gave Janice a mask, which she had to hold up to her own face.
“It won’t knock you out, but if you need to rest it will help you relax. If you fall asleep, the mask will drop from your hand.”
Two birds wheeled in the sky above the beach, where Janice lay naked and warm. Wet sand was gritty in her elbows and behind her knees. She was now able to extend her arms in front of her, bend her legs at the knees, and raise her head to consider the rising water and the swirling shards of seaweed. Her body was heavy in the sand. The surf pooled around Janice’s neck, and as the sea washed out with each wave, it dug a deeper pit around her body. Multicoloured fish had become trapped in this pit, and swam around Janice’s ankles and buttocks, nipping furiously at her thighs. The birds suddenly tumbled, having lost their warm upward draft. Or maybe one tumbled, and the other dove after it. Quickly, their wings regained a hold on the air, but now instead of gliding they flapped powerfully upward. Strange birds—they have faces, thought Janice. One she did not recognize although it felt like she should, and the other looked very much like…Dr. Ming? A large fuchsia fish opened its jaws and attached itself to Janice’s belly. She did not try to remove it. I know that it must bite me, she thought. The Dr. Ming bird is watching that fish, and doesn’t like it.
The fuchsia fish gripped her and the beach seemed to funnel into its body. Where is it going? Janice opened her eyes on the labour room. Outside, the sky was dark. Evening, so soon. Ronai had turned off the laughing gas and the mask lay beside Janice. Dr. Ming was running the tracings through her hands. They were spooled out of the fetal heart monitor in a crumpled heap. She folded them back and forth on the perforations and spun the paper through her fingers. Janice saw that Dr. Ming was attentive, was interested in this spool of paper.
“What do you see?”
“I need to examine you again. I need to attach a scalp clip to the baby’s head, for more direct monitoring.” Next to the bed was a console that had a thin tail of wires in a straw-like tube.
Dr. Ming pulled on a glove. Janice spread her legs and felt Dr. Ming reach up into her muscular centre. She spread her fingers, adjusted the angle of her wrist, and suddenly became still within Janice.
“What’s the matter?” asked Janice.
“Don’t move,” said Dr. Ming.
“What do you feel?”
“The umbilical cord.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Janice, satisfied at this reality that was going to emerge from her. She had noticed a chapter on umbilical cords in the last third of Boen. She hadn’t read it.
“Actually, it’s unusual,” said Dr. Ming. She spoke quietly to Ronai, “Put ten litres of oxygen on Janice. Call anaesthesia, stat call, cord prolapse, get the section room ready.” Dr. Ming adjusted herself, crossing her left leg over her right as Ronai snugged the straps of a clear plastic mask over Janice’s nose and mouth. Dr. Ming looked very comfortable, as if she intended to maintain that pose for the evening. Ronai rushed out.
“Janice, we need to change plans,” said Dr. Ming. She still had her hand inside Janice, and pressed her fingers hard a
nd upward. They began to feel uncomfortable. “And you need to lie on your left side.”
Janice eased herself over, and thought, This is what beached whales must feel like. “Are you finished examining me now?”
“Well, yes,” said Dr. Ming, “but I can’t take my hand out. I feel the cord outside the cervix.” Dr. Ming looked at her with a tight smile, a pause, and then a delayed wrinkling of her brow that gave the impression that she wanted to make the situation clear but, like a teacher, would prefer her student to figure it out on her own. She drew her breath in quickly, like a grip of apprehension. “It shouldn’t come out before the head. I’m pushing up on the head right now, to try to keep it from coming any further.”
Janice imagined her cervix, this narrow opening that needed to be stretched almost to snapping by the head of her baby, which should squeeze through it like a seed spit through teeth. She imagined the cord: its thick, pulsing blood flowing from her to the warm life inside her. It lay floppy in her vagina.
“The head will crush the cord,” said Dr. Ming.
“And my baby will suffocate,” said Janice.
Dr. Ming nodded, and the corners of her mouth creased with the satisfaction of having laid out certain facts and seeing her patient come to the correct conclusion.
“I have to keep my hand here. If the cord comes any further or the head pushes any more, it will be worse. I’m still going to attach the monitor.” Dr. Ming snaked the plastic sheath with the wires along her worried fingers, twisted the device into place, and pulled off the tube.
“Why don’t you push the cord back in?” asked Janice.
“Can’t. It would tangle. Same problem. Stay calm, still beating 120,” said Dr. Ming, looking at the fetal monitor. Janice was unsure whether the doctor was talking to her or herself. “We need to take you for a Caesarean section.”
There was a tinny overhead page: “Anaesthesia—stat to Labour and Delivery.”
So it was decided. A sudden change of direction. Janice had imagined the increasing pains, the spreading ripples of her own uterus’s strength, the impossible stretching open of her body and the emergence of a son or daughter. She knew that things might go wrong, that in some women things did not go forward, that complications arose. She knew that things could come to a point where the danger to the baby outweighed the rhythmic forces of a childbirth’s natural progress, and it became necessary to perform a Caesarean section. But she had expected that this point would be reached with a struggle of screaming and pushing and blood leaking out. It should be an epic of successive brinks and hazards. She was surprised that it was just like this. A decision.