Fertility: A Novel

by Gelberg, Denise

  “But she gets one chance to be a newborn. She’s starting her life with a loser for a mother. I might as well still be under that pile of rubble as far as she’s concerned.”

  “Sarah, I want to encourage you to remember that these are just the first days of many, many years of being with and caring for your child. This is a painful time, but also a joyous time. My advice is to try to concentrate on the joy you feel for your daughter. It will make the time it takes for you to heal much more bearable.”

  She averted her eyes from the doctor, concentrating on Anna, who had dozed off after taking her fill. “Your advice is very logical, Dr. Feinberg, but it’s not so easy to follow.”

  “I know it’s not. And if you feel the need for some help with your feelings of frustration, I want you to know that my service has counselors who help new parents who’ve gone through traumatic births of varying sorts. I hope you’ll avail yourself of their assistance. They’re there to help, just like the rest of us. And their role in getting good outcomes for our babies is every bit as critical as that of the doctors and nurses.”

  Eva was worried. Sarah had always been a perfectionist. She was never any good at dealing with disappointment. She thought back to the ceramic bowl Sarah had made in first grade. She had been so proud of that bowl, but when it slipped from her hands and shattered, she had refused to cry. All she said was, “I never liked it anyway.” Oh, what a tough nut she could be, always working so hard to be in control. Lying helpless in a hospital bed, needing her mother to take care of her most basic needs and the needs of her baby, was probably more than she could take.

  “Dr. Feinberg, if Sarah decided to take advantage of the counseling service, whom would she contact?” Eva asked quietly.

  Her daughter’s response was as instantaneous as it was furious. “Mom, I don’t need a counselor!” Her outburst caused the baby to start.

  “It was just an idea, sweetie.”

  “I’m upset for a perfectly legitimate reason. God, I’m not a head case,” she pleaded as the tears streamed down her face.

  “Sarah, you may be the sanest person in this room,” the doctor said gently. “All I’m saying is, you have a lot on your plate and if you would like to talk to someone to help sort it all out, we have staff members who are good sounding boards. But it is totally your call.” He traded Sarah the baby bottle for the box of tissues on her nightstand.

  “Thank you for at least acknowledging my situation. I know you mean well by your offer…but for now, I think I’ll try to sort things out on my own.”

  “As I said, it’s completely your call.” The doctor held the bottle up to the light. “By the way, I see Anna downed almost three ounces in just a few minutes. You’ve got a good eater there. That makes me very happy.”

  The words had a soothing effect on Sarah. “You really think she’s going to be okay? After all she’s been through — including a helpless mom?” she asked as she dried her eyes and blew her nose.

  “Her exciting entrance to the world aside, she looks to be one terrific newborn. In fact, I was thinking of discharging her from my service later today.”

  “What does that mean — discharging her from your service?” Sarah sniffed.

  “It means she can go home today with her grandparents and come every day to stay with you, but as a visitor rather than as a patient,” the doctor explained. “She needn’t be hospitalized anymore.”

  “Oh, I guess that’s a good thing, right?” Sarah asked hesitantly.

  “A very good thing,” the doctor assured her.

  After the reception her last question had received, Eva steeled herself before she tried another. “Doctor, how much time could Anna spend here during the day? What I’m trying to get at is, would you limit the baby’s hospital visits?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” the doctor said. “I think the nurses would probably like to have Sarah to themselves until they’re done with the morning routines. I would think that after nine, Anna would be a welcome visitor, as long as she was with you or your husband or another caregiver. And she can stay as long as you like, until visiting hours are over at nine at night. That would make for a long day, of course, but it would be entirely up to Sarah. If she decides that’s too long, Anna would be able to go home earlier.”

  “So are you thinking we should start this tonight?” Sarah asked.

  “I’ll check back later today, and if all is well, yes, I’d suggest we start tonight.”

  “I feel torn about it. She has such a beautiful crib to sleep in and I got everything ready for her arrival before — you know, before everything happened. She should be going home like any normal baby would and getting used to her surroundings. But I won’t be there….” Her voice trailed off as tears once more started streaming down her face.

  It was heartbreaking for Eva to see Sarah so miserable. She and Joseph had both been touched by how beautifully she’d prepared her apartment for the baby: a fully equipped nursery, clothes sorted by size from newborn to toddler two, wall decorations and pictures, whimsical nightlights, photo frames in primary colors. She even had nursing pads to absorb the anticipated leakage from her overfilled breasts. Sarah had thought of everything except, of course, the inconceivable. Eva remembered what her father used to say: “People plan and God laughs.” That God could allow Sarah to suffer so made Eva want to scream.

  But she didn’t scream. Instead, she offered comfort. “Sarah, I’ll have Dad take pictures of Anna’s homecoming. I know it’s not what you hoped for when you made everything ready for the baby. It’s all so lovely, so perfect. All I can say is hang on. Everyone — Dad, you, me, the doctors — we’re all doing our best for Anna.

  “I know one thing for sure: You are going to recover and make a wonderful life for yourself and your daughter. And you will be a terrific mother.” She knew that if her mother, Rivka, were there she would add a postscript: “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  * * *

  Anna had a calm and uneventful day, oblivious to the drama surrounding her. She drank, slept and eliminated on a fairly regular schedule, all of which had a good effect on her mother. After changing a number of diapers and feeding Anna her bottles, Sarah felt more useful. As anticipated, Dr. Feinberg discharged Anna to her grandparents’ care at the end of the afternoon.

  Jeff and his residents stopped in at the end of the day as well. He was happy on two accounts: First and foremost, Sarah showed no sign of infection; second, she continued to have good sensation and pulse in her lower leg. The folks from PT had gotten her off the bed and into a chair in the morning, and again in the afternoon. If things continued on this path, he could do the last debridement in a day or two and sew Sarah up. Eva, who held her breath and bit the insides of her cheeks as the surgeon examined her daughter’s mangled leg, relaxed a bit when he announced his pleasure at Sarah’s progress.

  Joseph spent his day hunting down the requisite bottles, nipples and formula for Anna’s homecoming. He celebrated his success by bringing the family dinner from a favorite neighborhood restaurant. Sarah had little appetite and, by seven o’clock, was so exhausted she gave her permission for Anna to be taken home. She dressed her daughter in the outfit Joseph had brought from the apartment. Using the camera Bob had transported to the hospital, he documented the event with nearly a roll of black-and-white film. He quieted Eva’s complaints about running out of exposures by showing her the two new rolls of film in his coat pocket. He would be ready for more picture-taking when they got Anna home.

  When the baby was tucked into her winter baby sack, Sarah braced herself for the departure. Tears were shed as she kissed Anna good night. Eva told Sarah she would call her as soon as they got to the apartment, and as often as necessary to give Sarah updates. “Keep the phone close!” were her parting words.

  Sarah kept the phone next to her box of tissues, which was, once again, put to use after everyone left. Not fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Joseph wanted to let her know that Anna had the makings
of a fine New Yorker: She’d enjoyed her first cab ride, short though it had been.

  When Sarah hung up, everything suddenly loomed large — the quiet, the hospital smells and the ghastly apparatus encircling her limb. For the first time she was afraid. What began as an amorphous fear soon fixed on her injury. What if the leg didn’t heal? How could she manage to care for herself, her baby, her job? “Oh God,” she thought, “If you let me get well, I will never again take the ability to walk for granted.”

  The last time she’d offered a deal to God was when she had requested an A in seventh-grade math in exchange for picking up her clothes from her bedroom floor. By eighth grade, her negotiations with a higher being had come to an end. Not coincidentally, it was in eighth grade that she read The Diary of Anne Frank and became obsessed with reading everything that gave meaning to the numbers tattooed on her Grandma and Grandpa Abadhis’ forearms. Her grandparents, tight-lipped about their wartime travails, were of little help, but her parents filled in the rough outlines: how Bubbe Rivka and Zadda Sam had left everything and everyone behind to escape the Nazis, spending the war hiding out in the woods, and how Grandma Anna had been a slave laborer who dug peat for fuel. The hardest to hear was how both she and Grandpa Erich had lost their parents, their first spouses and their children in the Nazi concentration camps.

  Even at thirteen, Sarah knew that her grandparents had likely done their share of praying during the war, but to what effect? It was then she concluded that God was probably something like Santa, a fairy tale that brought happiness to people who believed, despite all evidence to the contrary.

  She had been steadfast in her skepticism until she became pregnant. It was then that she had reconsidered the possibility of divine intervention in the lives of ordinary people. She had always wanted to become a mother and, so improbably, a baby had come into her life. She had allowed herself the indulgence of thinking that perhaps it was the work of a beneficent god that had allowed her to conceive. But the day of Anna’s birth had made short work of that. What kind of god would give her a child and let her carry it for nine months, only to envelop her in a catastrophe just as she was ready to give birth?

  Thinking about the accident and living in a godless world was doing her no good. She needed to think about something different, but her hospital room offered few diversions: People magazine, the pamphlet on patients’ rights, television. She opted for the TV, settling on The Weather Channel. She soon learned the cold snap had finally moved out to sea. Now that was some good news. Anna would have more moderate temperatures for her trips to and from the hospital.

  After the weather report, Sarah switched to the local news channel. The featured story was the crane accident. A voice in her head told her to turn it off, but she was spellbound by what she saw on the screen. It was only then that she realized the extent of the devastation the accident had wrought. They showed before and after pictures of an apartment house on 71st Street. It had been leveled by the crane’s lattice tower. She thought about how many times she had walked past that building, never giving it a second thought. Now it was reduced to a pile of rubble.

  As the newscast panned pictures of the scene, a reporter somberly read off the casualty count: thirty-one dead, seventy-five injured. He ended his report by stating there was little hope that any more survivors would be found. Then they cut away to an interview with an angry, crying woman named Jennifer O’Brien, the wife of the crane operator. She raged at her husband’s boss for jumping the crane in such terrible weather, accusing him and the developer of murder. “They murdered my husband and his co-workers, and all those poor people in their apartments and down at street level. And for what? Just so they could get their project done ahead of schedule and make a few more bucks,” the widow railed. The news report ended there, in time for a commercial break.

  Sarah suddenly understood what her visitors had been saying. It was a miracle she had survived. For the first time since the EMTs had reached her, she thought about the people who had been standing near her as the crane swayed precariously in the sky. She could only hope that they, too, had been visited by a miracle, if indeed that was what had saved her and the baby.

  It was all too much. One moment she was on her way home to steal a little nap, happier than she’d been in years, and the next, her world had turned to dust. Now she realized it wasn’t just her world. So many other people had seen their lives come undone. And those were the lucky ones.

  Sarah pushed the mute button and found herself in tears again. Maybe Dr. Feinberg was right about talking to one of his counselors. There was only so much a person could handle. Just as she was drying her eyes, the night nurse, Mary, came in pushing her medicine cart. On the cart sat a computer terminal, part of the computerized medication delivery system that had failed so miserably in preventing the overdose of baby Ariel Arkin. More than ever, Sarah hoped the settlement she’d worked on had corrected the problem.

  “Hi there, Sarah. How ya doin’?” Mary asked, seeing her patient upset. “Is the pain worse?”

  “No. No, it’s the same, but I just saw a report on what landed me — and I guess many others — in the hospital.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. That must have been so hard to watch. This accident is the worst one I can remember,” the nurse said as she scanned Sarah’s wristband and then scanned the meds she was preparing to give her. “So many people got hurt. And…a lot didn’t make it. It’s really terrible.”

  “I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know the magnitude of it. All I knew about was what happened to me.”

  “Well, who can blame you? Besides your leg injury, you just had your baby. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” the nurse declared as she handed Sarah a little white cup with two pills.

  “What are these for?”

  “Oh, the usual for people who are on pain meds. A stool softener and natural laxative. You haven’t gone once since you’ve been here,” the nurse noted.

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Since they put the catheter in, I haven’t had to worry about getting to the bathroom. But how will I get there if these pills work?”

  “Don’t you worry. Just ring your bell and we’ll put you on a bedpan.”

  “A bedpan? Oh, I couldn’t do that lying in bed,” Sarah said, aghast at the thought.

  “Well, you may not be able to use a commode or get to a toilet for a few more days, so you’ll have to try using the bedpan. Believe me, everyone feels the way you do. But it’s just one of those things you gotta do,” the nurse said, almost apologetically. “You’ll get the hang of it, and if all goes well, you won’t be needing it for long.”

  “Well,” Sarah said hopefully, “I haven’t eaten much since the accident, so maybe I’ll be able to wait a few days. By then I’ll be able to get to the toilet.”

  “Hon, don’t quote me on the timeline for ambulating to the bathroom. It’s just a guess. But the stuff I’m giving you would loosen concrete, so by tomorrow at this time, I’ll wager you’ll be happy that someone invented the bedpan.” And with that, Mary chuckled her way out of Sarah’s room, pushing the cart in front of her.

  * * *

  As Sarah silently bet against the nurse’s wager, Rick was wrapping things up for the night in the PICU. His newest patient, a twelve-year-old boy, arrived in the ER that afternoon after being hit in the crosswalk by a cabbie who’d run a red light. He was in serious condition with a long list of injuries. The most immediate problem was dealt with right away: the removal of his spleen and control of the internal bleeding. The vascular surgeon handed the boy off to Rick at a few minutes before seven.

  While the boy was in surgery, Rick got a text message from Jeff: Baby discharged. Ever since he’d settled on his plan of action, Rick had wanted to run up to Sarah’s room and tell her everything. Now that he knew the coast would soon be clear, he could hardly contain himself. He was thankful when the boy came out from recovery so he could focus on something other than waiting for visiting hours to end. />
  He met with the boy’s parents, explaining that their son was stable, the most serious injuries having been addressed. He also told them of the sequence of procedures that would follow. The boy’s arm, which had suffered a simple fracture, would be put in a cast. His numerous and deep facial cuts had been irrigated and would be sutured by a plastic surgeon with a great track record for facial repairs. The parents were scared, as were all parents whose children landed on his service. But they understood what he was telling them and voiced their appreciation for all the staff was doing for their son. That was about as good as it got for a doctor explaining to parents, sick with worry, how he and his colleagues were trying to make their child whole again.

  When he was done talking with the parents it was only half-past eight. Maybe Sarah still had visitors. He decided to get something from the vending machines and head to his office. A pile of paperwork welcomed him as he sat down with his bag of chips and iced tea. Filling out insurance forms seemed a surefire way to kill some time. But once at his desk, Rick had trouble concentrating. He moved papers around and nursed his iced tea. He couldn’t remember when time had moved so slowly.

  Finally, it was 9:15. He tossed out the chips and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. He forced himself to walk to Sarah’s room at a normal pace. The door was open. He had to take a couple of steps into the room in order to see her. The lights were dimmed; the television was on mute. Sarah was propped up in bed, asleep, with a box of Kleenex next to her. Did she have a cold? Had she been crying?

  He went to the side of her bed, took her hand and softly called out her name. “Sarah, Sarah, it’s me, Rick.” When she didn’t awaken, he bent down and kissed her on the cheek. Closer this time, he tried again, “Sarah. It’s Rick. I hope you’re feeling better. I’ve missed you.” He thought he saw her lips turn up into a little smile. Then he saw her eyes open. What came next was not what he expected.