by Ann Leary
“Hey, I almost forgot to tell you!” exclaimed Denis. “Joe Strummer was there and it turns out he and his wife had a premature baby right here at UCH a few years ago and—”
“Joe Strummer? Joe Strummer, from the Clash, was at the party?”
“Yeah, his kid’s fine now, but he was telling me some stuff about the doctors here and …”
Denis’s lips were moving but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I was too busy picturing him in the center of a boisterous crowd, being toasted by Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. Keith Richards and Elton John were tugging at his sleeves trying to get his attention, and photographers from HELLO! and OK! were fighting each other to get his picture. At the end of the evening, in my newly caustic mind, it was Naomi Campbell lending Denis a sympathetic ear, and I was seized with jealousy and rage.
“I just don’t understand how you could go to a party and have the time of your life with a bunch of celebrities while your wife and baby are trying NOT TO DIE!”
“Shhhh!” Denis whispered. “Now you’re talking too loud!”
Thrilled with the opportunity to escape my bitter hospital bed, Denis went out and bought me some books and magazines and brought me my things from the hotel so that I could finally brush my teeth and hair. The other girls had visitors, quite a lot as it was Sunday, and Denis and I spent the afternoon eavesdropping on their conversations, playing gin rummy, and drinking a revolting soft drink called Lucozade. At six it was time for visitors to leave. Denis had gotten himself booked at the Comedy Store. He could stay one more night in our hotel, and then he had to find a cheaper place.
That evening at supper, all the girls got up and sat around the table, which the housekeeper had set up for dinner. I remained in my bed as the housekeeper brought in the trays of food.
“Yer not sitting at the table?” the housekeeper asked.
“I don’t think I am supposed to …,” I began, but the housekeeper handed me my tray and served the others at the table. I ate my supper while staring at a Jeffrey Archer paperback that Denis had brought me. I had just discovered that, in addition to my other problems, I was now unable to read. I looked at the pages but was able to absorb only one or two words before my thoughts would veer from the book to my frantic fears and misgivings. Will the baby live? Will it be normal? Do the other women think I’m a snob for not sitting at the table with them? Will the baby live? Why did I get on that airplane? Why did I come? Does everybody in this ward understand that I’m on bed rest?
“What are you reading? Ralph Nader’s Consumer’s Guide to Hospitals in the UK?”
I was startled by the man’s voice and looked up to see a blond man, fortyish, wearing a tuxedo.
“Ummm …,” I replied.
“Maxwell Prosser. I’m your consultant. I was going to meet you tomorrow, but I had to look in on another patient, so I thought I’d see how you’re getting on.”
“Oh, okay,” I replied.
I had been told by the nurses that they were talking to my “consultant,” Mr. Prosser, about me, and I assumed that this Mr. Prosser was a hospital administrator. The British use of the term “Mr.” for surgeons, I later learned, dates back to the Middle Ages, when surgeons belonged to the same guild as barbers and were described as “barber surgeons.” By the eighteenth century, there were three types of medical “professionals”—physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. Of these, physicians ranked highest in status, apothecaries lowest. Physicians were educated in universities and were required to qualify for a degree. They were addressed as doctors but were never trained in surgery and never allowed to “cut” patients. Surgeons did not receive a degree from a university. Instead they served as apprentices to other surgeons, and when their apprenticeship was over, they took an examination. If they passed, they were awarded a diploma, not a degree, and were therefore unable to call themselves doctors and were referred to as “Mr.”
Of course, today both doctors and surgeons must attend medical school to receive their degrees. If a doctor chooses to become a surgeon, he is required to receive further postgraduate training before he can become a consultant surgeon. So, in effect, my consultant began his career as Mr. Prosser, became Dr. Prosser, and, upon reaching consultant status, became Mr. Prosser again.
Apparently I was staring at Mr. Prosser’s dinner jacket as he said, dryly, “I always dress like this when tending American patients.” Then he lifted the chart off my bed and stared at it for a moment.
“Right,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve got my wife waiting in the car. We’re going to a charity event, but I’ll give you the quick rundown. A full-term pregnancy lasts forty weeks. Your membranes ruptured at twenty-six weeks. That’s too early. If your baby were to be born today or tomorrow, it would only have about a fifty percent chance of survival. We’re going to try to keep you from having the baby as long as we can. A baby born at twenty-seven weeks is better than a baby born at twenty-six weeks. A baby born at thirty weeks is even better. Once a baby reaches thirty-two weeks, its survival rate is excellent, and our goal is to get you to at least thirty-two weeks.”
My mind was swimming. “But if the baby’s born in the next few days …,” I started.
“The baby will be very ill.”
Amazingly, I found Mr. Prosser’s forthright British manner comforting. The information he was conveying was devastating, but his no-nonsense delivery, his dry humor, and his formal attire gave him an air of such authority that it was impossible to imagine a baby’s having the audacity to be born before Mr. Prosser said it was okay. Mr. Prosser said he’d check in during rounds tomorrow, and then he was gone.
FOUR
BEFORE I WAS admitted to University College Hospital, my knowledge of Britain’s National Health Service was almost nonexistent. What little I did know, I would try to use to my advantage when mouthing off my liberal views during political arguments with friends, coworkers, or family members.
“I think it’s a disgrace that poor people in this country have to go without medical care simply because they can’t afford it. Why, look at Britain and Canada …,” I’d say, and then my voice would trail off, as I knew almost nothing about British and Canadian health services except that they were free.
Once I found myself trapped in the very heart of the National Health Service, however, I was consumed with dread. How good could a hospital really be that provides all its services for free? I wondered. During those early days, I mentioned to several of the doctors that I had health insurance.
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” I hoped they might say. “Let’s get you out of this place and into a nice private hospital.” Instead they looked embarrassed and told me I shouldn’t worry too much about things like that, and that a hospital administrator would be in to see me soon.
I had read that Princess Diana had given birth to her boys in a private hospital, so I knew that one existed in London, and it only made sense that all the very best doctors would be there. I assumed that this private hospital was modern and luxurious and relatively quiet and empty, since the majority of British people, lacking insurance, would be forced to opt for the ridiculously attainable free care that I was receiving. I was sure that the administrators at this private hospital, dazzled by my insurance card, would welcome me with open arms, if I could only figure out how to get there.
Finally, toward the end of my first week in the hospital, I received a visitor. He arrived in the ward after breakfast one morning, and, seeing my name on the chart at the end of my bed, he said, “Mrs. Leary?”
“Yes?”
“Roger Bagley. I’m an administrator with the hospital.”
“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”
Roger Bagley looked around and cleared his throat nervously. Gesturing toward my bedside chair, he said, “May I?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Bagley perched on the side of the chair.
“So … how are you getting on?”
“Um, okay …,” I replied.
“G
ood. Good. I suppose you’ve never stayed in a British hospital before …?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m sorry you had to experience one under these circumstances, but I hope everything is to your liking.”
“Yes, everything’s fine,” I said. “But I’m not sure if I’m really supposed to be in this particular hospital. I actually have health insurance, and …”
“Ah, yes,” Mr. Bagley said. He seemed immensely relieved. “Would it be possible for me to contact somebody from your insurance company, then? We just need to certify that… well, since you’re not a British citizen, and you aren’t eligible for free services …” Mr. Bagley was clearly embarrassed, as if he had just served me a meal in his home but was now asking me to chip in and pay for it.
“Oh, of course,” I said, removing my insurance card from my wallet. “But, since I do have insurance, shouldn’t I be at a private hospital?”
“A private hospital?” Mr. Bagley echoed. “No, private hospitals aren’t equipped to deal with high-risk pregnancies like yours. Portland Hospital is only a few blocks from here—that’s where all the royals and pop stars have their babies. Some of our own doctors have a private practice there as well, but if a mother or baby develops any problems, they’re rushed here.”
“Oh,” I said. “I imagined that the private hospital would be somehow … better. Not that this isn’t … just great. I mean, I love it here, but…”
Mr. Bagley smiled. “Don’t worry, you’re in the right place. We have some of the best doctors in the country here at UCH.”
Now I was relieved. Surely some of the best doctors in Britain must be up to par with American doctors, I thought, in my hopelessly American way. Mr. Bagley took my card and examined it.
“So shall I just ring them at this number, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s my policy number on the front.”
I was touched by Mr. Bagley’s discomfort at having to discuss payment with me, and I thought about a time when I had slammed my pinkie in a car door and was allowed to bleed all over a Boston hospital clerk’s office while she grilled me on my insurance data.
THE DAYS IN the ward quickly settled into a routine. At seven-thirty breakfast was served. This was always an assortment of rolls and pastries, cornflakes, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, and some kind of fresh fruit, set up family style on the table in the middle of the room. After breakfast the ward doctor, usually Scott or another young doctor named Dr. Ubin, would do his rounds with one or two resident doctors or medical students. I have to admit that I began to look forward to the doctors’ rounds, perhaps a bit too much. In what I can now only believe was some manifestation of the Stockholm syndrome, I had developed crushes on Scott and Dr. Ubin, as well as on Mr. Prosser, my consultant. I found myself blushing when they visited each morning, and when they attempted conversation, I was able to speak only in monosyllables punctuated by guttural, snorting giggles. Was it my imagination, or did Scott linger after that last examination? I wondered one morning after he had left. I cursed myself for not asking Denis to bring me some cosmetics, and I passed away many of the long hours fantasizing about being married to a London doctor.
Every morning, the minute the doctors finished their rounds, most of the other women in the ward would file down to the smoking room for a “fag.” I can’t begin to describe how deeply I resented this. I had quit smoking several months before conceiving my baby and would allow nothing alcoholic or caffeinated to cross my lips. These girls, who smoked like chimneys and moaned about how they wished they could run across the street to the pub for a pint, were going to have big, whopping healthy babies, while my baby would be lucky if it weighed two pounds. The girls grew increasingly friendly toward Denis, and I was annoyed to learn that during his frequent “walks” around the hospital, he was actually in the smoking room with my ward mates. I pictured them all laughing it up, flirting, and bumming cigarettes off each other like high-school kids. These girls, who were still slightly standoffish toward me, apparently shared their life stories with Denis, and he would then fill me in on why they were here in the hospital.
“That’s Cindy,” he’d say quietly, nodding toward one of my neighbors. “She has genital herpes, so they’re going to deliver her by C-section.”
“Herpes?” I replied. “She told you that?”
“Well, yeah,” Denis said. “I feel sorry for her. She’s only nineteen years old.”
“Hmmmm,” I said.
“What?”
“Did you and the girls have a pillow fight at your little pajama party?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It sounds so cozy down there in that smoking lounge, that’s all,” I said, and I wondered then who I was. I had never been jealous or catty in my life. I hated women who were, but now, lying swollen, belly-up on large sheets of absorbent disposable bed liners, I felt defective and vulnerable, and the ripe, overdue young girls floating in and out of the ward together, whispering and giggling in their crisp accents and fuzzy slippers, seemed to be somehow mocking me, though they rarely looked my way.
Morning, for me, was the longest part of the day. From the moment breakfast was cleared, I began eyeing the clock to see if it was almost lunchtime. My days had become a series of meals. There was nothing else on the agenda for me, and I began to understand why the animals at the zoo get so restless at feeding time. It’s the highlight of their day. Now it was mine. Lunch was served at twelve-thirty, and Denis would usually arrive sometime after that. He always brought me food and magazines, and he usually hung out for the afternoon with me, and we ate the food and looked at all the magazines. Then, as six o’clock approached, he would leave. It was time for tea, and then the long night stretched before me.
I still couldn’t read anything more than picture captions. I was filled with anxiety. Crossword puzzles were possible but would take me days, as I had the attention span of a chigger, so I occupied my days and nights alternately crying and spying on my roommates and their visitors. One of the night nurses, a sweet, soft-spoken Irish girl named Claire, told me I should try knitting. She said that the repetitive motion and concentration that knitting requires make it an excellent way to relax. Claire kindly brought me some yarn and some knitting needles the next night. She showed me how to “cast” the row onto the needle, and then she began, effortlessly, to knit. The gentle stabbing of the needles, the clear clacking sound as they met, and the graceful arching patterns performed by the girl’s hands had me almost instantly lulled into a contented trance. She knitted a few rows and talked to me about her mother in Belfast, who had taught her to knit as a little girl, and when she stopped, I begged her to continue.
“I need to watch you knit a little more, and then I’ll get the hang of it,” I said.
She clickety-clacked away, describing her flat in Maida Vale, and her flatmates, and a party they had thrown the night before for a friend who was moving back to Ireland. “There,” she said. “Now you have a go.”
“More,” I begged. “Let me watch you a little more.”
“You can do it,” she said cheerfully. She handed me the two needles that were now attached to each other by a thin, neatly woven wool panel, and the instant they were in my hands, the needles slipped free and the knitting came unraveled and lay in a tangled heap on my lap.
My attempts at knitting were pathetic and downright dangerous, as one of the needles would occasionally slip from my fingers and shoot like a missile right at my eye. Yarn is slippery, and so are plastic knitting needles, and I thought that when this was all over, I might invent a new knitting needle—short and fat, with a sandpaper finish—and market it for beginning knitters like myself. I hadn’t been taught anything new in years, and I realized that whatever capabilities I’d once had for retaining and processing information were now gone. Again and again Claire would explain the simple knot one must tie at the beginning of the line. Then she would show me how to hold the yarn and how to move the needle ove
r, under, and through it. I watched carefully. Then, when it was my turn, I was stumped in the middle of the knot-tying part. I was determined, though, and I tried for days to figure it all out. The idea of hand-knitting the baby’s very first sweater was hugely appealing to me, and I imagined him or her delicately lifting it out of a cedar chest one day and unfolding it before the mesmerized eyes of my grandchildren. “Your granny knitted this, bless her soul, while in hospital waiting for me to be born,” my child would explain, and the eyes of my grandchildren would mist over with tears of familial love. Ultimately I ended up with a knotted, twisted cord, which I decided would do all right as the baby’s first belt.
By the end of my first week in the hospital, all the women who’d been on the ward when I arrived had given birth and gone home, except for Sophie, who had required a cesarean and was recovering in the postnatal ward down the hall. Now there were new patients in the ward, including a Japanese woman who spoke not a word of English and a Nigerian woman, and I felt less like the gate-crasher at a family picnic.
One morning Sophie brought her baby girl, Nicole, in to see me.
“You can hold her if you like,” Sophie said. I was very moved that she would allow me to hold her baby, and I reached out my hands for the chubby newborn. She was adorable, like most babies, and as I admired her, Sophie told me about her labor and delivery, and I hung on every word. I couldn’t get enough.
“Did you have to beg for the epidural, or did they just give it to you?” I asked. “Could you hear them cutting the skin?” “Could you feel it?” “Did the baby cry the minute she was born?” “Did you hold her?” “Did you nurse her?”
Sophie happily answered all my questions, and then, to my surprise, she asked if I would watch Nicole while she took a shower.
“Won’t the nurses take her to the nursery?” I asked.
“What nursery?” asked Sophie.