by Ann Leary
“Hi, I’m Denis,” the man said. Then, lighting a cigarette, he said, “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” and all ten of us pulled out cigarettes and lit up.
The class was fun and the only class I never missed. I had a crush on Denis from the start, and later I learned that everybody else in the class did as well. We wrote short essays that were supposed to be humorous and sample scripts for shows like Cheers and M*A*S*H. It was the only writing workshop I’d ever participated in where all the members were genuinely kind and supportive of one another. We would always summon up a few chuckles for even the most vapid material and insist that we liked everything that was read, offering only constructive criticism. It was during this class that I came to the sad realization that it’s one thing to yuck it up with your friends but another thing altogether to write smart, funny dialogue for television. I was the worst, producing the most hopelessly derivative material, which, my classmates gently had to remind me, had been subconsciously lifted from old Mary Tyler Moore and Gilligan’s Island episodes.
I knew that Denis was attracted to me. He flirted with me in class, but the most obvious giveaway was his habit of wandering casually by the shop where I worked and then, seeing me carrying in containers of flowers from the sidewalk, exclaiming, “You work here? Oh, that’s right. I remember you told me.” He did this at least twice a week. One time he strode into the store to tell me that a guest speaker from some television studio was coming in the next day. “I know,” I replied. “You told us in class.” Finally the semester was over. I received one of the only A’s in my life, and Denis asked me out on a date. Within two weeks we were living together.
BEFORE GOING TO London, we had lived in a rental apartment in Boston, but Denis also shared a studio in Greenwich Village with two other comics. He taught his class at Emerson only one more year after we met, and then he did stand-up full-time. He performed in and around Boston regularly, and then he would take the train to New York a few times a month to perform in clubs like Caroline’s and Catch A Rising Star in the hopes that he would be discovered by a network scout or Hollywood agent.
In the five years between the time I finished college and became pregnant with Jack, I dabbled in many fields—primarily the waitressing field. I had also worked as a secretary at a real-estate development company, as a casting assistant at a talent agency, and as a copywriter/gofer at a small ad agency. I worked for a while in an archaeology lab and then in a substance-abuse counseling office. I worked as a cashier in one bookstore and then another, but it was difficult holding a day job, fantasizing about becoming a famous novelist, and going out to clubs to watch Denis and our friends perform each night. Early on in our relationship, I thought I had found the perfect solution when the manager of a downtown comedy club asked me if I would work the door a few nights a week. My job was to take the cover charge from customers as they came into the club and then to keep an eye on the audience during the show. If a drunken college kid got loud and disruptive, I was to alert a bouncer and have him removed.
I imagined that I would have plenty of time to write notes for my novel or, if I ever came up with an idea for a plot, to write the actual novel while seated at the back of this club. The nights I worked were usually open-mike nights. These were nights when aspiring comedians would get onstage and do ten minutes of comedy before an audience, sometimes for the very first time. It was during these open-mike nights that I became aware of the sad, demented, insidiously warped mind of the aspiring comedian.
On my first night at work, once everybody had paid and was seated, I sat on a little chair inside the door and watched the opening acts. First an experienced comic, the emcee, did about ten minutes of solid material, and then he would call up the new guys. Some were funnier than others, but toward the middle of the show that first night, an older man was called onto the stage. This man was about forty, and when he took the microphone off the stand, he shook so hard that he caused the amplifier to hum with feedback. His voice trembled when he spoke, and it was clear that the adrenaline rush of walking to the stage in front of all those people had drained his mouth of saliva. His lips stuck together each time he closed his mouth, and swallowing was obviously a very deliberate effort. In this man the audience and I immediately recognized the unbridled fear of the doomed, and I for one wished he would run from the stage and seek the anonymity of the night. But instead he croaked his way through painfully unfunny material, and when a heckler told him to get off the stage, he lost his place and turned beet red and looked like he might cry. He finally finished his act, however, and as he walked from the stage accompanied by a polite smattering of applause, my heart ached with pity. That’s that, I thought. He’ll go back to work tomorrow at his accounting firm and give up this comedian dream for good. Imagine my shock when he walked up to Craig, the club manager, who was standing a few feet from me.
“What’d you think?” asked the unfunny man.
“Hmmmm? Oh. Well, not too bad,” said Craig, without turning his face away from the stage.
“It went good, huh?” said the unfunny man enthusiastically.
“I don’t know about ‘good,’” replied Craig.
“So how about next Tuesday? Can I go on again?”
“You know … I don’t think it’s a great idea. You need to work on some new stuff. Come back in a month.”
“A month then!” said the unfunny man, and he left the club grinning from ear to ear.
Later I learned from Craig that the unfunny guy was an open-mike veteran, that he had some sort of masochistic desire to perform, and that guys like him were a dime a dozen in the comedy world.
When I learned I was pregnant, my stepfather was kind enough to hire me to work at his law firm as a receptionist, so that I could be on an insurance plan. Denis and I lived hand to mouth, earning just enough each month to cover our expenses, and now that we were in London and weren’t working, we were rapidly running out of money. But we had a plan.
Denis had an upcoming college gig that would net him enough to cover the rent on both the Boston apartment and the Greenwich Village share. We decided that after the coming weekend, Denis should exchange his first-class return ticket for a round-trip economy ticket and go back to Boston for the college show, which was on a Wednesday night. He could pay our bills and return to London on Thursday. What were the odds that the baby, after waiting all this time, would arrive on one of the few days that Denis would be gone? Both Dr. Ubin and Scott said that he could safely go. The baby had waited this long; it was unlikely to be born anytime soon. It seemed like an excellent plan, and when you’re in a hospital, especially a British hospital run by ward matrons and formally attired consultants, it seems possible that even an unborn baby can be persuaded to stick to a plan.
EIGHT
DENIS FLEW FROM Heathrow to JFK on Sunday. When he arrived at the apartment, there was a message on the machine from me. I was going to have the baby within a few hours, was the message. So Denis went back to JFK, and by the time he got to Heathrow the next morning, he had missed not only the college booking but also the birth of his son.
There’s really not much to tell about the actual birth. Early Monday morning I awoke feeling some very slight pangs in my lower abdomen. An ultrasound was performed, and it was discovered that the baby was a boy, he was breech, and he was succeeding in working his feet through the birth canal. Mr. Prosser was summoned, and when he arrived, I was rushed into the operating theater for an emergency cesarean.
Obviously it wasn’t like the fantasy births I had imagined. For one thing, it was a cesarean, and, for another, my mother was there instead of Denis or a handsome fireman. Mr. Prosser had several residents in attendance, and he explained everything to me before they began. Mine was a complicated delivery and a valuable learning opportunity for the attendants. Since the baby was breech and was surrounded by very little amniotic fluid, instead of the horizontal incision that is usually made on the uterus, Mr. Prosser would perform a classical cesarean�
�meaning a vertical incision—which would make it easier to retrieve the tiny baby but also meant, Mr. Prosser told me gravely, that I would be able to have only cesareans in future deliveries. In the broad scheme of things, this seemed trivial. That whole vaginal-birth business is overrated, I thought. Let somebody else have a slimy baby plopped onto her belly. There are more important things.
During my time in the antenatal ward, many conversations I had with the other patients inevitably revolved around childbirth, and every imaginable horror story had been divulged. Somebody’s sister had had her uterus rupture while pushing out the baby. Another knew a girl whose baby was born dead after thirty-six hours of labor. But the story that haunted me for days was the one about the woman who’d been given an epidural for a cesarean. This woman, somebody’s sister’s friend, had a rare resistance to the epidural medication. It wasn’t until the doctor started cutting that they all realized the epidural hadn’t worked and the woman had complete sensation, but they’d already begun the surgery and had to finish cutting the woman open unanesthetized.
When I was all laid out on the operating table and a curtain was hung across my chest so that I couldn’t see the gore below, I admit I panicked.
“Wait!” I said. “Wait. I don’t think the epidural has taken effect.”
“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Prosser.
“DON’t CUT!” I cried.
“Too late,” said Prosser. “We’re already inside.”
Apparently the epidural had worked after all.
For the benefit of the residents, Mr. Prosser was explaining what he was doing, but he wanted to spare me the details, so he spoke in a cryptic series of half sentences, which I desperately tried to follow.
“There we are. See that …? That’s why we have to …” Then silence and some mad shuffling about by all three doctors. “That’s fine … that’s what’s meant to happen. No, don’t…” Silence. “Right then, here we are …”
“Have you a name for the baby yet?” asked the nurse, standing next to the anesthesiologist at my head.
“Yes … what’s going on …?”
“What’ll you call it, then?”
“He’s John Joseph Leary, after his grandfather…. We’re planning to call him Jack.”
“Oh, I like that …,” the nurse began, but then she was summoned to the bottom of the table.
“Watch yourself there…. That’s it… right,” said Mr. Prosser.
There was silence, and then, amazingly, there was a cry. Mr. Prosser had warned me not to expect the baby to cry, as his lungs would be too weak. But he did cry out, and instantly he was no longer “the baby.” He was Jack. Mr. Prosser held him above the curtain for a microsecond, and then he was whisked away to the SCBU.
I found out only later that it’s pharmaceutical heroin that British doctors inject into your IV once your baby is delivered via cesarean—which would help explain the euphoria that followed. I found myself in a small room, filled with warm sunshine, which seemed odd to me, since there were no windows. Dr. Ubin entered the room and told me he had heard about the delivery.
“I know,” I gushed. “I’m a mother”
“I’m sorry. I really thought he would hang in there for you.”
I replied, “I’ve never been happier in my life.” And it was true.
Dr. Ubin left, and nurses came and went. It’s all a bit of a blur, but I can easily say that that recovery room stands out in my mind as one of the few places I’ve been where I’ve felt at absolute peace with the world. I’m a mother, I thought. I have a son.
AT SOME POINT I was moved to the postnatal ward, and within a few hours, in response to my constant harassment, a nurse agreed to wheel me down to the SCBU. The trip to the neonatal unit from the maternity ward takes about three minutes altogether, including the elevator ride, but I was still stoned out of my gourd, and it seemed as if it took days. I dozed off in my wheelchair as we awaited the elevator, and I had an intricately plotted dream that featured dazzling colors, music, and a cast of thousands. I awoke with the sense that I had slept for hours, but in fact I was only being wheeled into the elevator. I dozed off again and had an entire series of dreams. Warm, beautiful dreams that carried on into infinity, and when I awoke again, I was being wheeled out of the elevator into the SCBU. Now I focused on keeping my head erect and remaining awake. I was about to meet my son, but one of my eyes wouldn’t stay open. It watered and slammed shut spasmodically, over and over again. I was wheeled down the corridor, through two sets of doors, and into Room A.
Even when you’re drugged, the sounds of a neonatal unit are disconcerting. From the moment we entered Room A, I was enveloped in a constant symphony of beeps and alarms. I blinked at the dizzying array of machinery. Then my wheelchair spun around, and I was facing Jack, my beautiful baby boy, whom I recognized instantly. His hair (he had hair!) was flaxen blond, and I could see the swirl in the back that would later become a pesky cowlick. His nostrils flared slightly like mine, and his lips were pursed like a Kewpie doll’s. His legs were long like his father’s, and his chin had a handsome dimple, like Kirk Douglas’s.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Leary. My name is Ruth. I’m Jack’s nurse today,” said a quiet voice with a lilting West Indian accent. I turned and saw Ruth standing next to my chair, a middle-aged woman with brown skin and startlingly exquisite gray-blue eyes.
“Hi,” I said. “Is he … okay?”
“He is doing very well. The doctor will talk to you later today, but I can say that we are all pleased he is breathing on his own. That’s just a little oxygen we have blowing on him,” she said, pointing to a tiny oxygen mask lying next to Jack’s face.
Jack was asleep, but every few moments his forehead would furrow and his mouth would work its way into a frown, and when it did, he looked like an old man trying to recall something precious from his past. A web of wires was strung across Jack’s tiny body, and Ruth patiently explained each one.
“This is the pulse oximeter,” she said, pointing to a tiny light bandaged to Jack’s foot. “It measures the oxygen saturation in Jack’s blood. These leads go to the cardiorespiratory monitor,” she said, pointing to red stickers holding wires to Jack’s chest and abdomen.
“These count his heartbeats per minute and also the number of breaths he takes. You can look here,” she said, pointing to a monitor, “to see what they are.”
On the monitor, numbers flashed frantically, but Ruth assured me they were in the normal range. “When they go outside what is normal, an alarm sounds,” she said, and no sooner were the words out of Ruth’s mouth than an alarm sounded on the monitor of a tiny preemie in the isolette next to Jack’s.
“Oh, my God!” I cried, waiting for Ruth to begin CPR, and I was shocked to see that she casually glanced at the baby, then flicked a switch on its monitor to stop the alarm.
“These alarms sound all the time. Usually it’s simply because the baby has moved slightly.” Then she said, “Would you like to have a cuddle?”
I was sure I had misunderstood Ruth, and I gave her a blank stare. Did the nurses’ duties actually include cuddling distraught mothers? “We don’t like to disturb the babies unnecessarily,” she said, “but Jack is due for a nappy change, so you can cuddle him for a few minutes.”
I told Ruth that I was on painkillers and was afraid I would drop him.
“I’ll help you,” she said, carefully removing his tiny diaper and replacing it with a clean one. “It’s important that you hold him now. It’s good for both of you.”
Then Ruth lifted Jack from the table. His entire body fit into one of her hands, and with the other she gently pressed the monitor lines across his skin.
“Unbutton the top of your gown,” Ruth said quietly, and I did. Then Ruth carefully placed Jack against my bare chest, and my hands instinctively went around his warm, delicate body for the very first time. I felt his vital heat against my cold, heart-pounding chest, and I remember thinking, over and over, I’m sorry, Jack … I’m
sorry, Jack….
“I think … I should put him back,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks. “I think it’s too cold for him out here.”
Ruth took a blanket from Jack’s isolette and covered us. “Your body is keeping him nice and warm.”
Then, as if she’d been reading my mind, she said, “It’s not doing him harm, your cuddling him. Skin-to-skin contact with his mum is important to his development. Look at his monitor now. See how his heartbeat is stabilizing? Your breathing is reminding him to breathe.”
Jack’s head lay against my breast. I touched his cheek. Then I smelled his hair.
“He hears your heart,” Ruth said. “He remembers that sound, and it’s comforting to him now.”
I kissed his head and the soft cup of his neck. My fingers moved down his legs and along the smooth soles of his tiny feet, I listened to Ruth explain about early babies in her warm Caribbean voice, and Jack listened to my heart, and gradually the sounds of the unit—the beeping and thumping and ringing—began to fade, and soon I no longer heard them at all.
NINE
I HAD FRIENDS who had given birth by cesarean section in the United States, and I was under the distinct impression that they recovered primarily in bed, for at least a day or two. The nurses at UCH would have none of that. According to them, lying in bed after surgery was an open invitation to blood clots, infection, and bowel disorders, and the moment I lay back against my pillow those first couple of days, a cheerful powerhouse in a blue uniform would be at my side, jollying me up out of bed again.
I never felt I could whine, or say no, or complain to British nurses, and I think that had something to do with the fact that they were called “sisters,” and that gave them a divine edge, in my Catholic mind. I later learned that the use of the term “sister” did have a religious origin, but the sisterhoods that became involved in nursing in Britain in the nineteenth century were Anglican, not Roman. Denis’s actual sister is a nurse, and so are most of his female cousins. Until Jack was born, I thought the only thing that separated these women from me was a degree in nursing. They seemed like normal people at all the weddings and barbecues we attended, sipping their wine coolers and wiping their kids’ noses. Now I know that I have as much in common with them as I do with an international spy or a death-defying Stuntman. Nurses have nerves of steel and the mind-over-matter proficiency of a Buddhist monk. If, for example, you haltingly inform a nurse that you have just passed what appeared to be a large part of your brain into the toilet, via the birth canal, the nurse will not gag but instead will admonish you for flushing it away before showing it to her. Blood, phlegm, and mucus—all things intrauterine or subdermal, septic or dyspeptic—are attended to with efficient grace by nurses, who are the underpaid soothers and healers in every hospital, all over the world.