The Children's War

by C. P. Boyko

  Finally, at four in the morning, the anesthetist reappeared, looking much refreshed. He had Rachel lie on her side, and opened the back of her gown. She felt a first needle, then a second that entered much more deeply, into the very core of her lower-back pain. He told her to stop fidgeting. “There,” he said at last, helping her roll supine again. “That must feel better.” —She did not know. The pain was still there, crescendoing with each contraction, but its texture and position had changed. It seemed to have split in two, most of it sinking a few inches, as if into the bed, while a sharply defined box of it remained behind, a free-floating throbbing ache that she could almost dissociate herself from. She could not have described this sensation, so said only that she felt a little nauseous, and itchy. —The anesthetist scowled. “Should I take it out?” —“No, please. Thank you. I do feel much better.” —He handed Burris the button for the pump, and left. The midwife, called in, explained that he could press it whenever his wife started hurting again. “And don’t worry about pressing it too often. The machine won’t let you overdose.”

  He sat at her bedside, watching her face, and pressed the button every fifteen minutes, whether she seemed to need it or not. At five-thirty they drifted together into a brittle, priceless sleep—from which they were soon propeled by a nurse who came bounding in to check the fetal monitor. “Your electrode has come loose!” she cried. She rectified this ponderously, like one wading through another’s crimes, and chastised Rachel for tossing and turning too much. “Your urine bag is nearly full, too,” she said, and did not offer to empty it. This Burris did, with the midwife’s guidance.

  At seven, Doctor Paschava entered with knitted brow. He studied Rachel’s chart and the fetal monitor with many signs of dissatisfaction. Finally he pronounced his verdict: “This is taking altogether too long, I’m afraid.” He ordered compression stockings for her legs to prevent embolism, restarted her IV drip at a higher concentration, and told Rachel that she must focus. “Our anesthetist has called in sick, so there can be no emergency cesarean sections. You must get this baby out by yourself, and you must do it today. No more dozing on the job!” —But she was too tired to muster either guilt or resolve; all she could manage was angry despair. She wanted to die, wanted the baby to die, wanted Burris to die, wanted the doctors and nurses and midwives all to die, wanted the hospital and the entire city to crumble to ashes in a flaming earthquake. “Fuck this,” she sobbed softly.

  Feeling useless, Burris asked her, with none of his old confidence, if she would like to do a relaxation exercise—something he had not suggested since they were dating. —Rachel laughed through tears. “Oh, honey, what good would that do?”

  At nine, the midwife came to wish Rachel luck; after sixteen hours and four babies delivered, she was going off duty. “You’re almost there, dear. You’re doing great; you’re such a strong woman. It won’t be much longer now.” —Rachel wept, and the midwife embraced her. Overcome with gratitude and love, Rachel refused to let go. She felt something opening and releasing inside her. “It’s coming,” she whispered. “The baby’s finally coming.” —The midwife extricated herself. “Not while I’m here, sweetie!” On her way out she notified the day staff that Number Seventeen was transitioning. —In fact, Rachel had only defecated. A cheerful nurse gave her a sponge bath in full view of Burris and the new midwife, unwittingly stripping her of her last shreds of adulthood. Even the woman on the other side of the screen stopped groaning for a few minutes, as though aghast.

  An hour later, however, the midwife announced—by this time, to everyone’s surprise—that Rachel was at last fully dilated. Rachel’s relief was short-lived. “Now what happens?” —“Now you can push, love.” —But she didn’t know which muscles to push; she’d thought she had been pushing all this time. She wailed, “I’m only starting labor now?”

  She fell into a shaking, shivering delirium; she dreamed that the ice chips in her mouth were Burris’s fingers, that the box of pain in her back was an infant’s coffin, that the analgesia button was the trigger of a dentist’s drill that had been driven into her spine by her tormentors; she dreamed that she was giving birth to a brood of hairy, sluglike spermatozoa. She looked down at herself, and saw blood everywhere. She started to scream.

  “This won’t do,” said Doctor Paschava. “You’ve got to save that energy for pushing.” —“Please shut up,” said the midwife. —She stopped screaming. —Immediately, the woman on the other side of the screen began screaming more loudly. The doctor sighed and the midwife rolled her eyes humorously for Rachel’s benefit, then they stepped around the screen to investigate. A minute later, the midwife rushed out, a strident electronic alarm began to peal, and the screen was pushed aside to make space for all the new staff and equipment entering the room; Burris was jostled to the far side of Rachel’s bed. He asked Doctor Fulhill, the resident who had started Rachel’s IV the previous morning, what was happening. She shushed him, then shrugged and said, “Fetal heart rate just crashed.” The doctors and nurses were exclaiming in code; Paschava was asking for “ventouse”; a nurse was calling for anesthetic; someone kept saying, “We need to get her into an OT,” and someone else kept saying that it was no use, there were none available. The midwife returned to say that operating theater six had just cleared. Unaware of Rachel’s fingers clawing his arm, Burris watched through a shifting forest of white coats as the fat, half-naked stranger was heaved onto a gurney and rolled, trailing carts of equipment, from the room.

  Stricken, he gazed down at his wife without recognition. “Call the doctor,” she gasped. He leaned over to soothe her. “I need the fucking doctor!” she screamed. “It’s happening!” She was thrashing, and her gown had ridden up to her waist. For a horrific moment he thought she was splitting open; then he realized that the pale and bloody, hairy and wrinkled membrane bulging from her groin was in fact the baby’s head. He raced down the hallway after the gurney and its train, and grabbed the midwife’s elbow. “The head,” he said. “The head is coming out.” —She shook him off. “Well, for goodness’ sake, tell her to stop pushing! I’ll be there as soon as I can.” —He ran back, only a little more slowly, and hesitated only slightly on the threshold. The head had emerged no further, and seemed even to have retracted slightly. “You’re to stop pushing,” he said, “till they get back.” And, like a man entering a burning house, with arms extended and face averted, he stepped boldly forward, prepared to prevent her from pushing the baby out onto the floor.

  “Okay, all right,” said Rachel; but she was not about to stop pushing now. The last dose of anesthesia had worn off, and she could feel quite clearly, as if outlined in phosphorescent pain, the position of the baby in the birth canal. Moreover, she knew just which abdominal muscles to flex. She believed that in straining these muscles now, she was probably ruining her physique forever. She didn’t care. The hospital staff had abandoned her; Burris was ready to positively interfere; she was in charge now. She would not let them kill her. She would push, if need be, till she burst.

  “Darling, bring him to the toy, not the toy to him.” —“What difference does it make?” —“Well, you’ll spoil him.” —“I’ll spoil him just as much by carrying him around everywhere.”

  For months, Burris had been attributing his wife’s moodiness, lethargy, and frigidity to birth trauma and to postpartum depression. He did not know to what to attribute the contrariness that she now began to exhibit. It seemed he could not make the most benign suggestion without her resisting it.

  “I don’t think all this baby talk is good for him. He needs to learn the right words for things.” —“What’s the big rush?” —“You don’t want him lagging behind his peers.” —“Who cares? It’s not a competition.”

  This behavior was exasperating enough at home, but in public she was even more outspoken. One day at the park, she went so far as to chide him for hovering over Oxley. “Let him alone; let him explore with the other children.” H
e was ashamed, and ashamed for his wife. When he tried later to explain this to her, Rachel denied that she had done anything wrong. “The other parents thought it was funny. Anyway, you’re always correcting my parenting.” —“It’s different for a husband to a wife.” —“Not anymore, it isn’t,” she muttered.

  One evening, he asked her to turn off a violent television program. —“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s not even watching.” —“But he may be listening.” —“So what? He can’t understand it.” —“He understands more than you give him credit for. He understands harsh noises, and scary music, and angry voices!” —Oxley began to cry, and Rachel went to soothe him. To Burris she serenely said, “So whose voice is angry?”

  He began to worry that she was not merely being perverse, but sincerely believed that children could learn to express and comport and protect themselves, by themselves. If she was this negligent when he was present, what must she be like when he was at work all day?

  In fact, Rachel’s nonchalance did not come naturally; she deliberately adopted it as a counterbalance to Burris’s fretfulness. She too was alarmed and sickened by what she saw on television. Indeed, since Oxley’s birth, she found most programs as distressing as a drive down the highway, for she now watched them (and the highway) with her son’s defenseless eyes, seeing for the first time with psychedelic vividness how crass, manipulative, and vicious they really were. But a parent, she felt, must never betray her disgust, worry, or unhappiness. Indeed, a parent’s duty was to instill fearlessness and self-reliance—not through instruction, but by example. She worried that Burris’s example was teaching Oxley that words were medals, that strangers were invisible, that playgrounds were malevolent, and that even make-believe was dangerous. And the lesson underlying all his anxious protectiveness was that the world was full of bad things from which Oxley, feeble and helpless, needed protecting. She protected him better, surely, by showing that no protection was needed.

  They argued too about the domestic chores. Burris, who had been working one less day a week at his practice since Rachel took a job at the cooperative bookstore, felt that he had already made a sacrifice and was contributing more to the household than any other husband he knew. Rachel was less concerned by how little he did, than by how poorly he did it. She found it faster and easier to pack a day bag, get Oxley dressed for the park, or clean the bathtub herself than to have Burris do it, because she could not rely on him to do it conscientiously or correctly. —“But we each have our own areas of expertise,” he objected. “For example, I cook.” —“Yes, but you like to cook.” —“And you do not! So what’s the problem?” —“How many of the things that I do do you think I enjoy?” —“But if you are better at them . . . ?” —“You mean because I’m a woman?” —“Because you yourself admit it every time you criticize my attempts!” —“So do things better!”

  “The fact is,” he said, “you have more time than I do.” —Rachel did not bother to refute this. “If you don’t have enough time,” she said, “then work less hours.” —“You know I cannot.” —“Why not? We’d save money on daycare.” —“Nowhere near the money I’d lose from patients!” —“So your job is more important than mine because you make more money than I do.” —“No, my job is more important than yours because I have been doing mine for nineteen years; because I perform an essential service in the health industry; and because mine is a career, and yours is a part-time job, taken for pocket money we don’t need and for prestige among your man-hating friends.” —“Well, it’s nice to finally know what you really think of the most important work I’ve ever done in my life. Thank you.” —“The most important work of your life is raising your child. And all this shouting and strife cannot be good for him.” —“What’s a lot less good for him, I think, is having a selfish, outdated, chauvinist pig for a father.”

  “All right, all right! So I will do things better. I will clean the bathtub better, and take out the garbage better, and fix the pram better, and babysit better. Will that make you happy?” —“Babysit?” —Burris threw up his hands. “I will not get into a semantic debate,” he said, and left the room.

  He went into the nursery, where Oxley was wailing. He plucked him from the crib and put him down on the floor, but the boy collapsed in a heap and screamed more loudly. “Oh, shut up,” said Burris. He did not believe that his and Rachel’s argument had caused this outburst; in fact, at the moment, he did not really believe that anything the two of them ever did had the slightest effect on Oxley’s tantrums, which were as violent, implacable, and senseless as thunderstorms. He reminded himself that the boy had suffered an injury at birth, and was not responsible for his behavior. At the moment, however, this did not seem an extenuating circumstance, but an aggravating one. Whatever was innate and unchangeable in the boy was also intrinsic, an essential part of his character. “You wouldn’t be acting like this if your mother were here.” To refrain from throttling him, Burris spanked him and put him back in the crib.

  He grew less tolerant of Oxley’s illnesses too. It seemed the boy was constantly, as if willfully, suffering from a cold, flu, or upset stomach. Rachel decided that he was the victim of allergies, and fed him herbal and holistic remedies recommended by her friends. Burris soon tired of contesting this regimen, and in any case could hardly advocate the orthodox medicine that his lawyer was busy trying to discredit. Indeed, both he and Rachel had now begun, if only half consciously, to distrust and eschew doctors, with the result that they neglected to obtain all of Oxley’s vaccinations.

  When he was twenty months old, Oxley developed a fever that was worse than usual. He vomited, refused to eat, and screamed ceaselessly for a day and a half before Burris wondered whether a doctor shouldn’t examine him. —“He’ll be fine,” Rachel said. “It’s only a little temperature.” —“We won’t know what it is unless we have a doctor look at him.” —“We can’t take him to a doctor every time he bruises a knee or gets a runny nose.” —“No, I suppose not . . .”

  The next day, Oxley was no better, so Rachel took him to her mother’s. “Give him a cool sponge bath and lots of liquids,” she suggested. “He’ll come out of it all right.” Rachel stayed the night, to avoid a confrontation with Burris.

  The next morning, she took Oxley’s temperature; it was a fraction of a degree higher than it had been the previous night. She solicited her friends’ advice. —“Have you tried cream of tartar?” asked Chelsea. —“I always make raisin tea,” said Alexis. But nothing helped. That night, feeling restless and apprehensive, she phoned Burris. —“All right. If he’s not better tomorrow morning, we’ll take him to a clinic, first thing.”

  He was not better, but he was no worse; so she kept him at her mother’s. By this time the weekend had arrived, so Burris did not protest; but on Monday he drove his family across the city to a clinic they had never visited before, and which he therefore did not yet distrust. —“It’s only a little temperature,” said the doctor. “Keep him dry and cool, and mix an ibuprofen into his juice to keep the fever down. If it doesn’t clear up in three or four days, we’ll take another look.” —On the drive home, Burris pounded the steering wheel with his fist. “The man is obviously a moron. It’s already been three or four days! We’ll take him to someone else tomorrow.” —Rachel was silent.

  That night, she stayed awake at Oxley’s bedside, replacing the damp washcloths that he swatted from his forehead, and pleading with him to be healthy. Shortly before dawn, he began to convulse.

  She picked him up and put him down several times. She tried to get him to drink. She removed his pajamas and dabbed him with water. She rolled him gently back and forth. “Oh honey, don’t,” she murmured continuously as she paced the room on her toes. “Oh honey, oh honey, please don’t.” At last, with a gesture of tearing herself free, she wrapped him in a sheet and carried him across the hall to where Burris was sleeping. “Should we call an ambulance?”

  “Oh, God,” he
said. He reached out for but did not touch his son. After a moment of anguished indecision, he said, “No, it’ll be faster if I drive.”

  She did not put Oxley in the car seat, but held him in her arms. “Take the freeway,” she said. —“I know, I know.”

  The seizure had stopped by the time they reached the emergency room. After a nerve-racking hour’s wait, a tired nurse told them that they had done the right thing bringing him in, but that there was nothing to worry about: febrile seizures were common and harmless in children under five. Meanwhile, a better-rested resident noticed that Oxley’s abdomen was tender, and that he was guarding it with raised knees. “Before you go,” she said, “let’s do a few tests, just to be safe.” —“What kind of tests?” asked Rachel. —“Oh, just a urine test, a blood test, and maybe an X-ray.” —“Why is that necessary?” —“Simply in order to rule a few things out.” —“What things?” —“Well, appendicitis, for instance.” —“Would that be serious?” asked Burris. —“Let’s just say that we’d want to address the problem as soon as possible.” —“But really,” said Rachel, “what are the odds that it’s appendicitis?” —“We won’t know that till we’ve done the tests, I’m afraid.” —“They’re just tests,” Burris told his wife. —The nurse, who was rebuking herself for overlooking the child’s abdominal pain, said shortly, “You really don’t have a choice.”

  With Oxley thrashing and screaming, the resident found it impossible to insert a catheter into his urethra. So she asked Rachel and Burris to hold him still while she took the urine sample directly with a needle through the abdomen. Feeling like monsters, Rachel and Burris pinned his wrists and feet as Oxley alternately choked and shrieked with rage. “Super,” said the resident, though the sample was small. “Now for the blood test.”