by Selena Kitt
“Looks like we’re saved,” Erica said with a shiver.
“Looks that way.” Father Michael sighed as he opened the driver’s side door, getting out.
Saved.
Then why, Erica thought, do I feel like I’ve been damned to hell for eternity?
Chapter Fifteen
Something woke her up. Snow was falling outside the window—she could see it in the moonlight. Leah felt the baby moving. Something had woken him too. Martha and Frances were snug in their beds, snoring softly. She couldn’t bear to think of them as the “new Marty,” and the “new Frannie.” Elizabeth had given birth two nights ago. She was gone. Leah rolled to her side, not an easy feat at her size. She’d always been thin, lithe, and this baby had stretched her to her limit. She rubbed her belly through her nightgown, feeling the baby kick twice in succession, as if trying to send a code, “All’s well.”
Then she had another pain. This is what had woken her. Leah had always been aware of her body, hyperaware even. She experienced the world through her senses completely, and she knew it was time. Her womb contracted like a vice, compressed muscle, squeezing hard. She gasped out loud at the intensity of the wave, and then it was gone. She could breathe again. She knew from listening to the other girls, how it would go. First babies take a long time. That’s what they said. So she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
She managed it, on and off, until morning. The nuns rang the morning bell, coming up to usher them all into showers, but Leah stayed in her bed. Sister Benedict frowned in her direction, calling her to come.
“I’m in labor.”
“No you’re not.” Sister Benedict rolled her eyes. ”Get up, let’s get you in the shower.”
That’s when a wave of pain doubled her over. She couldn’t talk through them when they came, not that she’d tried until now. Sister Benedict was at her side, looking at her watch, frowning. When it had passed, Leah took a reviving breath, and looked at the Sister.
“How far between?” Sister Benedict asked.
“Maybe five minutes.” Leah looked up at the Sister’s face. She knew what happened now. She would be whisked away to the hospital, her things would be packed, her gray dresses laundered, the “Lily” name tag taken out of each with a seam ripper. She knew what happened here at Magdalene House when someone had a baby. She was less familiar with what went on in the hospital. And the other girls hadn’t given her many details. She wasn’t sure what to expect.
Sister Benedict wasn’t forthcoming. She ordered Leah to put on a pair of boots and come with her. When Leah inquired about changing, Sister Benedict shook her head, so Leah tramped downstairs wearing boots and a white nightgown. She sat there in the hallway. The sister handed her wool coat over, going into the doctor’s office to make a call. It wasn’t long before a taxi arrived at the back entrance.
“He’ll drop you off at the hospital.” Sister Benedict shooed Leah out the back door. Another pain hit halfway down the steps, doubling her over again, and Leah hung onto the railing until it passed. She went down the rest of the steps, feeling shaky. The taxi driver opened the door for her and she got into the back. It was a very short ride, just down the road, and the taxi driver pulled up to the front of the hospital, where it said “Emergency.”
“What do I do now?” Leah wondered aloud.
“Go in and tell them you’re from Magdalene House.” The taxi driver obviously knew the drill.
She did what he told her, tracking snow to the front desk, telling the nurse there, “I’m from Magdalene House.”
From there on out, the hospital machine began to work. Leah was put into a wheelchair and taken up to the third floor. They wheeled her past the nursery, and she strained to see the babies, all wrapped up in their little white burrito blankets. There were a lot of them. She had a pain on the way, and sitting down during it was horrendous. She asked the nurse to stop so she could get up, but the nurse refused. Leah writhed and moaned and struggled to bear it. They were getting stronger and closer together.
She heard the room before she ever peeked inside. There were moans and shrieks and screams of pain echoing down the hallway as they grew closer. Leah remembered Jean, sitting quietly on her chair in the corner. How bad could it possibly be? She had watched a cat give birth to kittens once when she was young. The cat hadn’t howled or even mewed in pain. She just breathed, panting each newborn kitten into the world.
The pain came again as the nurse rolled her into the room, so Leah didn’t really see much. There were other beds with curtains drawn around them, but the nurse stopped at the first one. Leah struggled to listen, to pay attention to the nurse’s instructions. Get undressed, put on a gown, get in bed. The nurse left her, and she managed to do all three of those things before the next contraction hit, although climbing into bed was a chore.
The nurse came back, checked her blood pressure and temperature, and put a wristband on her with her name. Her real name. Leah Marie Wendt. It had been a long time since she’d seen it. She would go back to being that girl right after this ordeal was over. That’s what everyone thought, it’s what everyone expected. She would go back into her life and take on that name, as if nothing had ever happened.
The nurse made her lean back and spread her legs. Leah did so, shamefully, closing her eyes as the nurse put her fingers inside, digging around in there. Leah winced, biting her lip. It went on and on. And she felt another contraction coming. She moaned, trying to push the nurse away, trying to get up. But the nurse pressed her other hand to Leah’s chest, pinning her to the bed. She was still digging around in there. What was she doing?
“It hurts!” Leah complained, trying to roll away from it.
“You should’ve thought of that nine months ago,” the nurse snapped, but she withdrew her fingers. “Maybe next time you’ll keep your legs closed.”
Leah felt tears stinging her eyes, sliding down toward her temples. She was shaking all over. The nurse went to the sink, washing her hands. Leah closed her eyes and wished she was anywhere else but there.
“You’re about four centimeters dilated.” The nurse came over to the side of the bed where she had a tray set up. “You have to get to ten. That’s when the baby comes, That’s when you can start pushing.”
None of it made sense to Leah. She just knew she was in pain.
“What are you doing?”
“Shaving you.”
Leah turned her head away, as the nurse shaved off her pubic hair. It was humiliating. Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, as the nurse was cleaning up, and Leah struggled through another contraction, the nurse told her to come to the bathroom.
There was only one bathroom for all eight beds. Leah tried to keep her gown closed, and she followed the nurse into the bathroom. She was instructed to sit on the toilet, which she did, and she asked the nurse if it was okay if she peed. The nurse said it was fine, so she did, and she had another pain, this one huge, bigger than all of the others, and she heard herself moaning with it. She hadn’t been paying attention to the nurse, but all of a sudden she was having Leah put her head between her knees, and then sliding something inside…
“What are you doing?” Leah groaned, feeling something slide up her anus into her bowels, and she glanced over at the nurse, hanging an enema bag beside Leah on a stand. It didn’t take long for the bag to empty, and the nurse then left her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, evacuating everything in her body. Leah thought her insides were coming out. She thought she was going to die. And then she had another contraction, which made her literally see stars. When she closed her eyes she saw hundreds of stars.
Finally the nurse came back, ushering her back to bed. Leah got in, trying to follow instructions. She wanted to crawl under the bed and hide. She’d never been so humiliated. But the nurse didn’t seem to think anything of it. Then another pain hit, and she howled, trying to get out of the bed. It felt so much better standing than sitting.
“Oh no you don’t.” The n
urse had leather straps with buckles, and she strapped one to the railing, putting the other around Leah’s wrist. Leah, just coming back to the land of the living from her last contraction, stared dumbly at the restraints.
“This is the call button.” The nurse showed her. “You feel any urge to push—it’s like you have to go to the bathroom, number two—press that button.”
“Is that all?”
“I’ll be back to check on you.”
But she wasn’t.
Leah tried to stay in bed as the waves hit, each one bigger than the last. She tried to stay on top of them, to ride them, like the surfers she had seen riding the waves when Mr. Nolan had taken them to California to see the ocean, in the years before Disney Land made it a tourist destination. How old had they been? She couldn’t remember. But she had been fascinated by the surfers, by the tremendous waves, how they stayed upright. It seemed impossible
She tried. But the sounds of women in labor all around her, wails, screeches, grunts and groans, were enough to drive anyone mad. Her pain grew to a crescendo and crashed down again and she rolled back and forth on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position. The pain came in waves, but it was persistent, like the waves crashing onto the shore, endless. She didn’t know how long she spent trying to ride it out. A long time.
Finally she got out of the bed, standing and walking next to it, still restrained to the bed rail. She checked the straps, thinking she could undo them, but they had locks. She was literally strapped to the bed. Another pain came and she squatted down on her haunches, hanging onto the mattress. That made it bearable. Almost. This went on a while, Leah standing bent over with her elbows on the bed between contractions, eyes closed, just floating. Another contraction would hit and she would squat again, panting like she’d seen the mother cat do, like Jean had.
Women were laboring all around her, their curtains drawn. She was alone and she felt it. She wanted a hand to hold onto, someone to put a cool cloth on her forehead, to whisper reassuring words. Just a hand to hold onto would have been bliss. Instead she squatted and groaned and gripped the mattress and tore at the sheet. Exhausted, she got back in the bed, crawling to the top, and curling up in a ball of unbearable pain.
Things were happening out there. Women were screaming, nurses shouting. She heard the words “Get her to the delivery room,” several times. They talked over laboring women’s heads about lunch and recipes and how busy they were on the ward. She thought about pushing the button, but she refrained. She didn’t want to be a bother. Besides, no one cared if a whore was in pain. They believed she deserved it. Like Eve, she writhed with the agony of childbirth, her punishment for her sin. That was the way of the world.
Something was tearing her in two.
Leah fumbled for the button, unable to reach it from her position on the bed. It was too far, she was too exhausted. It came again, and again, forcing her to bear down, something stuck up inside her, stuck fast. She couldn’t move it. Was this what the nurse had meant? Was this pushing? She didn’t know. Leah stumbled out of bed, finding the button on the wall, pressing it. The red light came on but nothing happened. She pressed it again and again. Nothing.
She squatted down on the floor, gripping the mattress again, feeling the sensation of being ripped apart, torn in two, bursting at the seams. She grunted and strained, her eyes shut tight. She thought it would never end, that the pain would continue forever, endless waves, an ocean of torment. No one came. Leah was all alone.
She wished Marty was here. She wished Erica was here. She wished for Rob. She wished any of the girls, even the new Martha and the new Frances, were here. Just a familiar face—a soft touch, a gentle caress, a kind word. She even wished for her mother. She cried out for her, not hearing anything around her anymore. She didn’t know if they were all gone or she was just too far gone inside. The pain was immeasurable.
Leah cried, sobbing, wishing she was dead. But there was no one there to save her. No one came. No one cared. She was going to have to do this all on her own. She was afraid, but she reached down between her legs, feeling something odd, strangely soft yet hard the same time, filling every available space inside of her. Was that the baby? Was that her baby?
Suddenly she remembered the reason she was in pain. She was giving birth! There was a purpose to this pain. Another wave came and she went with it this time, not fighting it. She grunted and pushed, feeling the thing inside of her, knowing it was her baby, and the harder she worked, the faster she would meet him. She pushed and pushed and pushed. And then she collapsed, exhausted, panting for breath.
She reached down and felt it again, this time there was more, she was opening, and the baby was coming. The next wave hit, and she was ready, on her side, pulling one knee back and bearing down hard. She gasped as she felt something shift between her legs, a searing pain, a horrible burning sensation, and then relief. Leah reached down again, amazed and horrified at the same time to feel her baby’s head completely outside of her body.
The next contraction did it all. She barely had to do anything, and the baby slipped out. Leah half sat, wondering why it wasn’t crying. Why wasn’t it moving? And then she realized that her water had never broken. This baby was still completely contained, so she peeled off the sac, like peeling an egg, soaking the bed, but her baby cried. And so did Leah. He was slippery and wet and she grabbed onto him pulling him up to her chest, cradling him and rocking.
She had done it! All by herself, she had done it!
She would never forget the moment when she looked down between the baby’s legs, the umbilical cord still attached, trailing down and disappearing somewhere inside of her, and seeing her baby wasn’t a boy after all. She was a girl. And she was the most beautiful girl Leah had ever seen in her life. Leah held the baby in her arms, wrapped in her gown, so delighted she could barely breathe.
“Hi, baby,” Leah whispered, kissing soft wrinkles on the baby’s forehead. She was quiet now, no longer crying. She had long, delicate fingers. And yes, there were ten. And ten toes too. And beautiful dark eyes that blinked up at her mother in wonder. She’d been right about one thing though, she had Rob’s dark, thick hair. So much of it. And his sweet cleft chin. Leah fell in love, more completely and immediately than she ever had in her whole life. This tiny little being in her arms, still part of her, still attached to her, was her child.
Leah had picked out names already, knowing the adoptive parents might not use them. But when she looked into her baby’s eyes, she knew she could never give her up. This wasn’t a monster, this wasn’t some thing, some object to be given away, this baby was hers, completely. The first thing in her life that had ever been wholly her own.
“Grace.” Leah christened her daughter right there, with a kiss.
“How are we doing here?” The nurse pulled the curtain back, and stared at Leah, gaping. They were both frozen in place for a moment, too surprised to speak or act. “What happened in here?”
“I had my baby.” Leah heard the pride in her own voice. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Why didn’t you push the button?” The nurse looked and saw the light on. She scowled. “Damn thing. They said it was fixed.”
Grace waved her little fists, her face scrunching up as she began to cry. Leah rocked and soothed her, knowing it was the nurse who had interrupted their peaceful meeting, and resenting her for it. The nurse called for help, and suddenly there was a sea of white coats, nurses and doctors.
“Don’t take her!” Leah begged, but they had clamped and cut her cord and whisked her off before Leah could even protest again. Dr. Glum was on duty, scowling as usual between her legs, this time pressing on her abdomen so hard she screamed in pain. The nurses grabbed another restraint because Leah was thrashing, kicking, trying to get away. They strapped her other arm to the other bed rail.
“Retained placenta.” The doctor grabbed hold of the umbilical cord still trailing up inside Leah’s womb, and pulled. Leah howled in pain. “She’s got
a third degree tear. I’ll have to sew that up. Should sew the whole damn thing up. Keep this from happening again.”
She heard Grace crying and strained to see where she was. They had her in a bassinette, and then they began wheeling that out of the room.
“No!” Leah tried to set up, but she was strapped to the bed. “Bring her back! Don’t take her!”
“Your baby is sick.” The nurse told her, pushing her back into the bed. “Let them take care of her. We’re going to take care of you.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Leah cried, trying to see, but the bassinette was gone. “She was perfect! What did you do?”
“Give her a shot.” Dr. Glum was still pushing and pressing on Leah’s abdomen, making her howl in pain. “Get her ready for the operating room. I’ll have to extract it.”
The nurse jabbed a needle into Leah’s arm, and she screamed. They were bustling all around her, everything white, and she called for her baby, over and over, but no one answered. Things grew foggy, there were more prods and pokes, more needles, and then nothing.