MATERNITY WARD ABUSES

          Even though Jill considered most of Eddie’s friends to be undesirables – pathological gamblers, alcoholics, junkies, losers, bums – the fact that Eddie worked seven days a week as a courier, and held his job for years, set him apart, made him above his so-called friends.  His work was a large part of his life.  No one could call him a bum.    

But Jill didn’t know that her mom had good insight about the way they treated each other: she and Eddie shouldn’t speak to each other so disrespectfully. 

Eddie would say that Jill was “like paper!” but she had a right to be sensitive, and why should she become thick-skinned and put up with insults anyway? 

The way she started to see it, making jokes was a way for Eddie to express hostility without being accountable – and occasionally having others laugh along with him as if in agreement. Joking made verbal abuse seem alright.  But it wasn’t.  Anytime Jill became angry with Eddie, all he needed to say was, “I’m just kidding,” and he could get away with practically anything.  After a while, “kidding” became a meaningless explanation.  Do you rob a bank and tell the police you were just kidding?     

          Jill was used to her husband’s non-stop TV-watching, newspaper reading, and lack of conversation, so she began spending all her time at her desktop computer. Eddie complained about her eBay shopping, that is, until she switched from buyer to seller. The couple had cohabitated for four years before marrying, and at this time, it was approaching their eighth year together as husband and wife.  It was now a twelve-year relationship – far longer than Eddie had spent with either of his two former wives.   

All the problems that existed in the marriage had been addressed so many times over that there was no point discussing any of those issues anymore.  Jill learned she’d have no choice but to tolerate his dirty socks on the living room floor and newspapers scattered all over the place, piling up higher and higher. If she didn’t remove the papers herself, they’d remain on the rug for eternity. Eddie, of course, was aware that Jill would eventually pick them up if he ignored them. Many times she was embarrassed because a pair of Eddie’s worn underwear was conspicuously on the middle of the living room floor when guests came over. 

Eddie put up with her compulsive habit of repeating herself, or re-wording what she had just said several times. But Jill blamed Eddie for this. She’d always been a bit O/C, but never to such an extent until she’d lived with Eddie for so long.  He rarely listened or acknowledged a word she said.  Jill never knew when he was so absorbed in the T.V. that he was oblivious to her and all else in the real world, or when he was simply expressing a blatant disregard for whatever she had to say.  She saw it as disrespectful, and it was the way he had treated his mother and sister in the past. Perhaps he didn’t respect women. Maybe he didn’t know how to treat them. He didn’t know how to treat a wife. Jill developed the habit of repeating herself because Eddie rarely heard her speak, and she wanted to be heard. She blamed him for making her more neurotic. 

Jill spent time talking on the phone with friends, who were mostly male.  This helped keep Eddie on his toes, since he had a strong tendency to become jealous. The balance of power in the relationship sometimes shifted. Jill dominated in the more obvious ways, some of the decision-making, the bookkeeping, and daily plans, but Eddie had passive means of getting what he wanted. He knew exactly how to provoke Jill, what buttons to push, and he enjoyed making her react. It had been said that Eddie was somewhat intimidated by Jill’s stronger personality.  She could do little about this power he had. After so many years of marriage, they were used to each other and the way their lives were arranged.  Being “used to” something isn’t the ideal situation, Jill thought, and believed that lots of her activities like Internet and eBay shopping, served as a substitute for what she lacked in her marriage.   

There were expressions of affection, and Jill did believe that Eddie loved her, and that he showed it in ways he could.  Eddie expected his wife to interpret these gestures correctly.  It was hard for him to communicate his feelings; he was not a talker like his mom. 

He seemed to have an infinite number of vices: television, junk food, cigarettes, weed, beer, bourbon, beer, and gambling.  Perhaps their purpose was to numb him or help him escape, and at the same time keep him on a slow suicide track. There were never any outbursts or overflow of emotions from Eddie; it was as if the blandness and equanimity were his total personality, the face he showed both to the world and at home.  Perhaps nothing lay beneath it.  For a long time, Jill believed that Eddie was truly empty inside.  The exterior was all there was; there was no core or anything deeper. Just appearances, and that was all.

Eddie confessed to Jill that he “goes in different circles” from people such as, say, his cousin lawyer or lawyers in general, doctors, pharmacists, teachers, and the like. It lowered his self-esteem to be just a courier. Eddie never had luck in life. He felt he could never fit in with higher class people – not even his cousin. Jill believed she could stand up to anybody, that no one’s intelligence was so superior to hers that they could run circles around her. She didn’t lack the confidence and self-belief that Eddie did. It was sad for Eddie.

Jill had always loved Eddie; this was the reason she married him.  It certainly wasn’t for money.  There was something innocent and lovable about the man. She liked the ways he showed he cared.  When it came to sex, Eddie was always interested. And he was “smarter than the average Joe, Dick, or Sam.”  He read the newspaper every day – which Jill refused to do - and was knowledgeable about U.S. and local politics, history, and current events, though he spoke little to Jill about these topics.  He seemed to prefer male companionship, and Jill sometimes scolded him for disrespecting women.  Eddie claimed that he had no real prejudice; these were more of his “jokes.”  But Jill didn’t appreciate Eddie’s claim that all women were whores – except for his own mother, and he couldn’t explain why this was.

Eddie did take more abuse from Jill than he ever dished out.  He called her a “bully” because she didn’t get even, she got ahead – many times over.  If he hit her once, she’d have to punch him back twenty times or more before she considered the retaliation sufficient. Eddie always strived to avoid confrontation, (but he loved the violence on T.V.)  Jill never watched with him.  She was angry with the world and showed little interest. After eight years as Mrs. Willis, Jill decided to become pregnant.  The marriage had been going well for a long time.  Eddie had stopped gambling years previously, and there was no evident drug use on his part.  Jill had no problems with vices either.  If she had the choice all over again – the circumstances exactly as they were at that time – she would have unhesitatingly done it again.

She began remembering ideas she had all her life about raising a child – what she’d do and how she’d do it, the right ways and the wrong ways, what she believed in, and what she was against – and all the things she wanted to teach a child.  It seemed to her that this was something she’d always intended to do. 

She examined every probable and possible problem, situation, or circumstance that might arise, every motive she might or might not have, and all the pros and cons, and spent all the time she needed to address each question honestly – until she was sure it was a good decision. 

The money would work itself out – it always had to be that way. Nothing was ever guaranteed. It took courage. But Jill was entering her mid-thirties and didn’t have forever to mull it over. It had taken her eight years of marriage, and that was a sufficient length of time to think about it and make a decision.

The pregnancy went well. She didn’t even have morning sickness.  Everyone made remarks about how good she looked. Kathleen said she was “radiant in new motherhood.”  Eddie often said she had “the glow” or rudely: “that satisfied, pregnant glow” or “the glow of a satisfied, pregnant cow.”  Jill couldn’t help laughing about jokes that were on her sometimes; she was in good spirits and rarely became angry. Eddie knew this. 

He also said she was fat, which didn’t bother her at first, but after hearing it many, many times, it began upsetting her. Jill told him to stop, but Eddie wouldn’t. 

Jill had been proud of her huge, pregnant gut, and liked noting people’s reactions.  Most were friendly and struck up conversation, asking questions about the child-to-be. 

A handful acted as if they’d better move out of the way; they seemed afraid of bumping into her.  She felt better than she ever did and enjoyed the attention. 

She fell in love with the baby within; maternal hormones overwhelmed her, and she didn’t care if the love had a biological basis or not.  She adored the little guy that she could not see (except in the sonogram photos), to such an extent, that the worst notion of all to her was that she might die in childbirth and never get to meet her son in person. Music she listened to, that reminded her of the baby, would make her cry – not out of sadness, but from the intensity of love. 

Jill played classical music for him – mostly Chopin and Mozart - as well as blues, folk, rock, progressive, pop, jazz, punk, alternative, grunge – she had already begun his education – in music. She read that fetuses can hear their mother’s voice, a dog barking, virtually any noise in the outside environment. She often played James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” since it had his name in the title, and she hoped he’d recognize the song after he was born. 

Once, Eddie’s favorite song at the time – Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” came on the radio, and Eddie turned the volume way up. The baby began kicking and kicking hard, until Jill turned the knob to quiet the loud music. “He doesn’t like that shit,” Jill told Eddie. She believed that what had really happened was that Baby had been asleep, and the noise was an unwelcome “alarm clock.”         

Jill learned on her own what her friend Kathleen had told her in an email: there is no greater love than the love between a mother and child. Sometimes that love was so strong and intense it was suffocating, to the point of being almost unpleasant. 

Jill knew in advance that she was going to name him “James.”  It was the only name the couple could agree on.  James had been Eddie’s dad’s name - the father who died a year before Eddie and Jill met.  He was hit and killed by a drunk driver while walking across the street on the east side of Main.  He was seventy-five and in excellent health.  He had just quit smoking.

Jill asked one of Eddie’s friends what his dad was like. “An older Eddie,” was the reply. 

Jill had had a white, stuffed rabbit named James that she’d kept around for a long time. She’d so named it when she lived on a pretty street called “St. James Place.” Jill preferred unique names like Axel, Calbert, Drew, Jared, Gates, Daryl, or Noah.  Eddie liked the more common names, Robert, William, Richard, and Samuel. “James” was a common name, a name that suited Eddie, which Jill was willing to accept.

Before she became pregnant, she had quit smoking – many times. The first lasted more than five months, and at that time she truly had it beat; but a frivolous incident ruined her new lease on life. Jill felt that having that one cigarette was the stupidest thing she’d ever done (aside from starting smoking to begin with). 

Jill managed to quit even longer for her baby’s health, and chewed a lot of nicotine gum, and occasionally used patches. She also ate healthy, nutritious food, and her appetite had increased to cover two people.     

A few months down the road, and Jill’s smoking increased to five or fewer cigarettes per day. Another couple months, and it increased to ten or less, and she kept it under half a pack a day up through the last months of her pregnancy. The nurses at the gynecologist’s office said she was doing well. They were genuinely impressed by her reduced use of tobacco. They made good reports about her, and every test at the doctor’s office yielded good results. James was a healthy fetus.     

It wasn’t until she was in labor that she smoked and smoked, trying unsuccessfully to relax between the agonizing contractions. 

She never took drugs – not weed, cocaine, crack, heroin, Methadone, Darvocet, Darvon, Oxycodone, Codeine, Lortabs, Fentanyl, Percocet, or any other painkillers, and no Benzodiazepines other than the small dose of Ativan she was prescribed by her psychiatrist.  She had no trouble discontinuing it a few weeks before her due date, as the doctor instructed. 

Dr. Park told her also to stay on the Stelazine, since it would have no adverse affects on the baby, and it was a medication she needed. If mental illness set in, she knew, she’d be of no good to the baby, herself, or anybody else. Jill went on Maternity Leave from her job at ClientLogic, a month before her son was born, and never went back. 

On a few occasions she’d had a glass of wine, and sometimes half-decaf coffee in the mornings.  She didn’t drink any other beverages that contained caffeine. Her mother made her all-natural juices to drink. Jill was physically in excellent health, and she was giving Baby James a good environment in which to grow and develop until birth.      

The labor began about 2:00 AM on a Saturday. That was the usual time James would kick and move around.  She’d feel him stirring in her belly, awakening to frolic in the night life, as she drifted off to sleep.  But this night she was alert until the early morning, with contractions eight minutes apart.  About 9:00 AM they suddenly stopped, and Jill went back to sleep. “Did you change your mind?” she asked James.

The following night, labor began again.  Jill looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table: 2:00 AM. She knew this time it was for real. She’d been doing a lot of walking and mild exercise to induce labor – advice given by her friend, Carlene, and much the same from a talkative nurse at the OBGYN’s office.  Jill felt kind of ill.  Eddie drove the half-hour ride to the suburban hospital. 

There she was wrenched in pain with every contraction. She didn’t know how much more she could tolerate. What’s worse, the staff at the hospital was sending her home. They tried to stretch her cervix, which felt like someone trying to tear her uterus open, and the pain was immeasurable. But still, she wasn’t dilated enough. 

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be back again later tonight!” the woman in housekeeping said with a cheerful laugh, while she mopped the floor in the hallway, making it shine. “Trust me, that’s what always happens!” she said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be back again tonight!” Jill felt comforted, though none of the nurses had said anything to that effect; only the cleaning help.

Hours passed, and Jill could hardly stand the painful contractions. She smoked a cigarette in the basement and had to stop midway up the stairs when the crushing pain returned. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was strange: not even so much a “pain,” at least not a sharp pain, just something so intense pushing on her insides, all the way to her tailbone, it was unbearable.  Although she felt like she had to pee, when she went to the bathroom, it was hard to get more than a drop out.  The baby, who’d previously squashed her bladder to a fraction of its size, was now blocking it completely, so not a trickle could get through.  The discomfort was agonizing. 

The family dog, Sharkey, looked at Jill, confusion in her eyes.  “I can’t explain it to you,” Jill said. Sharkey listened. “But you’ll see later,” she informed the shepherd-husky, “when I bring the baby back home,” though she could hardly imagine getting to that part of it. Jill was frightened about the ordeal ahead. 

Between contractions, nothing bothered her at all. But while they persisted, she had to scream. She didn’t even try to talk anymore; the crushing pressure would return, more quickly, more intensely, and longer-lasting than the time before, and she’d have to stop talking mid-sentence. And scream.

Jill was sure that if she went back to the hospital, they’d send her home again, and that would be too awful to bear. 

But after a while, the contractions became so intolerable, she called the doctor again. Eddie had timed the contractions at five minutes apart, and it wasn’t long before the space decreased to four. Dr. Preston asked her how soon she could get to the hospital. 

“Half an hour,” she said.   

The doctor began questioning her about something, but the terrible pain had fallen upon her again, and the phone fell to the floor. She managed to stifle her screams until it was over. She would have been embarrassed if the doctor heard. Finally, the pain subsided, and she scrambled to pick up the phone.

“Yes,” she said to Dr. Preston, feeling awkward. “We’re leaving right now.”  

“Okay,” the doctor answered, though it seemed there had been more he wanted to say.  

“We’re going to admit you,” the nurse at the hospital announced, after examining Jill. What a relief that was to hear!  Why was Jill so certain they were going to send her back home?  It took a while for her to overcome her disbelief, and for the calm to settle in. She lay down in the hospital bed and stretched out her arms and legs. 

“Hey, we’re gonna have the baby tonight!” she told Eddie. 

Eddie was lying in a large hospital chair near the bed, watching TV. He yawned. Then he got up and began making phone calls - to his mother and to Jill’s mother. Twice he handed Jill the phone, and twice she complained, and threw the phone on the floor, screaming in agony. 

“I’m glad the baby is okay,” Elinor said, in Jill’s ear. And as an afterthought, she added, “And I’m glad you’re okay.” 

Jill was disgusted with her mother-in-law ‘If I died, she wouldn’t care, as long as she gets the baby and can brag to her friends about being a grandma,’ Jill thought. Elinor had once offered her a thousand-dollar bribe to have a child, so that she could become a grandmother. Jill was not one bit okay, and she wanted to yell and swear, “I’m in hell right now, you stupid bitch!” at Elinor. Most of all, she wished that Eddie had never handed her the phone.       

“Tell your mom to come up with the money,” Jill said. 

“What are you talking about?” Eddie asked, irritated.

“The thousand bucks.”

The nurse walked into the room and told Jill that she could have a painkiller medication or an epidural. Jill thought it over for several moments. 

“An epidural,” she decided.

She had to wait over an hour for the anesthesiologist to make his way to her room. They seemed to be in no hurry. Some of the nurses were downright mean. They didn’t care about her agony or how much she screamed.  

“AAAaargghhhh!” she shouted, as the anesthesiologist’s needle was jammed into her back, in the space between two vertebrae.  This was a crunching pain she’d never forget her entire life.  It was a like a corkscrew being pushed deep into cartilage, or forced into a thick layer of hard tissue, right in the middle of her spine.  The memory of it could be summoned back anytime she desired, and it was a recollection that made her wince.

She saw lots of blood in a tray on the table near the bed.  Her blood.  The pain had been the equal of any contraction, and this made Jill a bit angry.  But there was that up side: now she could relax and let the contractions come, and she’d hardly feel it.  She could still tell when they were occurring, by the slight pressure she felt against her tailbone; but she didn’t need to scream anymore. 

Jill didn’t know why she acted so crazy anyway.  It wasn’t like her to yell like that.  She might shout, “Ow!” “Ouch!” “Shit!” or “Fuck!” but not scream.  It just seemed the natural thing to do to try to ease, or respond in some way, to the contractions. 

“Thank God for epidurals,” the woman in the next hospital bed said to someone over the phone. That thought stayed in Jill’s consciousness. Her mind’s ear had repeated it, in her roommate’s voice each time, throughout her entire stay at the hospital. 

‘Yes, thank God for epidurals. And spinals,’ the thoughts returned again and again. But this auditory imagery was unfortunately accompanied by the tactile imagery of that hard crunch she felt in the middle of her back.

Jill believed the anesthetic came not a moment too soon; one more contraction and she might have thrown herself out the twelfth story window - if only it would have helped.   

The nurses scolded her, asking copious times how many cigarettes she smoked. She kept telling them the scenario, about how she quit, then cut down to under five a day, then ten, and how mostly she just chewed nicotine gum.  But they nevertheless kept questioning her as if they didn’t believe her, and none of the nurses seemed able to obtain info from each other; they all had to get it straight from the patient. She was stupid, she felt, for telling them anything, and she regretted letting them know about the pack and a half she smoked during labor. 

“Did you take any drugs?  Like crack cocaine?” one of them asked.

“No,” she said.  “I didn’t do anything like that,” she kept answering. But they kept asking, and Jill resented it. 

‘Are they prejudiced against me, or do they harass everyone this way?’ she wondered. But her mind was centered of one thing: having the baby, so she put up with the haranguing. Jill didn’t believe the nurses harassed everyone. Just her. She was the only patient there on Stelazine. 

“The baby looks pretty good in spite of your smoking,” a nurse said.

‘No shit,’ Jill wanted to say.  She knew full well that her baby was in great health; she didn’t need to be informed by any these bitches. In retrospect, Jill wouldn’t have put up with the ‘treatment’ she got.  She wouldn’t have been so wimpy.  She would have fought back, and gone with a lawsuit, or formal complaint, if it came to that. What a difference a few years make…         

‘This is a lot like the mental health system,’ Jill realized.  But in her compromised, pregnant state, she couldn’t defend herself as well as she might have, and if she’d had more confidence at the time, it would’ve helped.  The nurses knew she was on Stelazine, so it was as if the words “Mental Patient” or “Schizophrenic” was tattooed on her forehead.  She was in a vulnerable position with her baby on the line, the thing she loved more than anything in the world. 

          Testing for HIV was mandatory.  Whatever the laws were, the hospitals had the right to test mother and baby, whether you liked it or not. 

“Just take it out of my wife’s IV,” Eddie said, ending Jill’s argument with the nurse. That was the most humane way to do it, Jill agreed. “Leave the baby alone,” she said to the nurse. 

She procured the blood, gave Jill a dirty look, and was gone. 

Jill had voluntarily been tested anonymously two years earlier, and the results were negative, so she believed she didn’t need to be tested again.  But Jill made a mistake – she could have gotten the blood test at her OBGYN’s office, and had declined, since she’d already been tested negative, and had done nothing to put herself at risk since then: no intravenous drug use, no sex with anyone but her husband. Jill tended to believe Eddie when he told her that he never cheated. (Drug use was another matter.)  

          Later in the night, when all was quiet, an obese nurse in her mid-fifties, wearing round wire glasses and a mean look on her round, fat face, invited herself into the room and sat down in the corner chair across from the bed. Eddie was snoring in the large plastic chair to the right of Jill. 

The woman began, “As for your HIV AIDS test -”

          “What!?” 

Jill’s heart rose into the back of her throat and she nearly choked on it, and the beating in her chest was so rapid, she could hear it pounding in her ears. 

The woman went on reading about HIV from a nurses’ handbook, and the more she read, the more it sounded to Jill that she and her baby had contracted this dreaded disease. Her anxiety escalated so much her hands were shaking. 

After a pause that seemed too long, Jill mustered the courage to ask, in an even, uncontrolled tone, “Was the test positive?” 

The fat woman acted as if the question caught her off-guard. I’ll check,” she said. 

‘I’ll check!?’ Jill mimicked silently in her mind. ‘What the fuck is the purpose of this discussion?’ Her outrage was so immense that she couldn’t find words to express it verbally.  The red in front of her eyeballs obscured her vision of this evil broad in the corner chair, and there was pressure on the backs of her eyeballs. Jill was both fearful and enraged. The woman flipped through more pages.  Just as it seemed she was about to speak, Jill’s heart and breathing stopped completely. 

The nurse said, indifferently, “Negative.”

Jill was confused for a moment, not knowing whether to get up and grab her by the throat, or to just sit there in awe of her heinous display of nerve.  But all too quickly, the nurse had dragged her fat ass out of the room, before Jill could even begin to think about searching for the name on her tag. 

‘That bitch made me so sure Baby James and I had AIDS!” she raged, over and over again, trying to recover from how appalled she was. Jill would never forgive this nurse’s callousness – her downright meanness - for the rest of her days. 

Unpleasant memories were so much more salient and vivid in her mind than happy ones, Jill regretted.  She knew she needed to concentrate more on the positive things in life, and the good that dwelled within people, but it was hard to re-program her mind and ways of thinking.  A person isn’t always conscious of their thought patterns, Jill knew, which made it all the harder to change.

          Throughout the night, nurses came and went.  Jill didn’t have any time to sleep. Her blood pressure was way up.  Her nose was stuffed up and it was hard for her to breathe. Some kind of amplifier was placed on the baby’s head to monitor his heartbeat. The night nurse finally informed Jill about what was happening.  

“The baby is playing games,” she said.  During a contraction, sometimes he’ll move down, and sometimes he doesn’t. It’s possible that the cord is around his neck, but we don’t know for sure what’s going on.  We have to check on you every fifteen minutes.”  No sleep.

          In the morning, Doctor Preston arrived to examine her. 

          “I think maybe we should do a C-section,” he said. 

          “Yes,” Jill agreed, without enthusiasm. She herself was fine, but Jimmy was in distress, and she didn’t think it should go on any longer. Jill knew that labor took a lot of energy out of a little one, not just the mother. She was depressed about not having the baby vaginally, “the right way,” but she couldn’t imagine that working out. She had hoped. But most of the female members in her family had had to have Cesareans. They all had small pelvic bones. 

          “Maybe he is just too big for you,” Dr. Preston said. Jill liked her doctor.  He was always honest as well as competent, and she trusted him.  Dr. P. was the only doctor Jill had ever thought highly of, even admired. 

          As they wheeled her towards the operating room, she suddenly felt even more depressed, to the point of crying. Dr. Preston asked Jill if she was alright. She managed a smile. 

Then the doctor asked if Eddie would be going. Jill said yes. 

          “Everybody has to hurry and get dressed and covered,” Dr. P. said, beginning to take charge.  

          “I can’t watch them cut you open,” Eddie said. 

          Jill answered, “You won’t have to see that. In the class, they told us the husband stands behind the wife, and there’s a sheet in front of us, so you can’t see. Remember?” 

          Eddie shook his head. Jill became angry with him, and more upset.    

          Dr. P. said, “There’s no point if someone is not going to be feeling well.”

          Jill didn’t want to keep arguing. She would have yelled at Eddie, but it wasn’t the time and place. She didn’t want to appear loonier than everybody already thought she was. 

          She would have to deliver the baby alone; though having this child was supposed to be something she and her husband did together. Eddie was supposed to be there with her, and for her, and for the baby.

          The anesthesiologist made her number. He stood behind her. In the Operating Room, the nurses placed a sheet over Jill’s chest and face, so close that it covered her nose and mouth and made it even harder for her to breathe. She was still stuffed up. She saw that Dr. Preston was on her right, and an old male doctor wearing a surgeon’s mask was to her left.

          “The one thing I’m not sure of,” she heard Dr. P. say, “is whether you do the stitches this way…or this other way.”

          “It’s a matter of preference,” the old doctor answered. He coughed loudly, and it sounded wet like he was congested. Jill was glad he was wearing the mask over his face; the old man gave her a prolonged dirty look when he saw her watching him. 

          Some of the nurses were asking where the father was. Jill knew the situation didn’t look good.  She was too upset to answer any questions about the location of her husband.  She didn’t know where he was anyway. The anesthesiologist made Jill feel slightly better; he was making an extra effort to be friendly.  He knew she was sad.

          Jill felt pain on her abdomen, so she knew when and where they were cutting, even though it didn’t hurt all that much. After a short time, she heard the sound of a deep inhale, followed by a little cry.  It was at that moment she knew that James was out in the world. No one said anything; the two doctors chatted to each other about irrelevant matters, and their conversation didn’t include Jill.  It was a bit rude.

          Thirty-six hours of labor.

The nurses took Jim over to a small bathing area way back behind Jill’s head, and to the right, so it was hard for her to turn her head far enough to see.  She received only a few glimpses of her baby.

          Based on the class Eddie and Jill had taken at the hospital, it was the husband who was supposed to hold the baby up for the wife to see.  Who knows whether or not Eddie was paying attention during that part of the course? 

Another impatient nurse held the baby up in front of Jill for her to see. Jill touched the top of his head and wanted to touch him more, but the self-important nurse whisked him away quickly. He looked like a chubby little “Mick” to her, an Irish boy. She wondered if he was truly hers. She overheard them saying that it was a healthy boy.  He had shown no reaction to his mother’s pats.  Except for the little cry, he’d done no other vocalizing.  He was probably exhausted from the long labor, Jill assumed.  After a moment, the nurse sighed as if exasperated, and rushed off with Jill’s baby. 

          For the next few days, Baby James mostly just slept.  Even the loud, non-stop crying and commotion from the baby girl on the other side of the room did not awaken him.  He seemed like a peaceful lad, very sweet and very cute.  Jill didn’t know how to describe him except as a “blob.”  His mind was empty, almost like a blank slate, Jill thought.  A nurse said she believed newborns have “little dreams.”  One of the nurses said she loved James’ handsome little face.  He had a cleft chin, a perfect little nose, plump rosy cheeks that were irresistible, and a smattering of reddish blond hair.  There was plenty of healthy baby fat, chubby arms and legs, and feet that were round and cute.  Everyone said he looked so healthy.  When he opened his eyes, Jill saw that they were so dark they were almost black, like his mother’s. 

Eddie said that James was a jackal and the son of Satan.  He’d made remarks like that throughout Jill’s pregnancy: that she carried “Rosemary’s baby” or “Damian the Anti-Christ” or that she’d been “impregnated by the devil.”  Jill thought these jokes were quite funny.  Sometimes Eddie credited the mailman or the plumber as being the father.  Eddie and James both had the same fat fingers that tapered down towards the tips.  That must be a rare genetic trait, Jill believed.  She did not cheat on Eddie.    

          Jill wished she had more time with the baby to herself, especially in the beginning.  The staff said that Jimmy was breathing too fast, and that it was due to his swallowing and inhaling too much meconium.  There was nothing they could do to clear it from his lungs, they’d just have to wait, and monitor him.  Jill was extremely impatient and worried that something was seriously wrong.  Eve, Jill’s mother, and her friend, Miriam, tried to persuade her not to worry.  But they couldn’t.  Jill didn’t understand why her own mom took all of this so lightly.

          It was the second day Jill was recovering from the Cesarean.  Eve and Miriam were visiting again.  A nurse walked in with Jill’s baby, and said, “I won’t make you get up and wash your hands, because I know you’re in pain from the surgery and it’s hard for you to walk. Take this,” she said, handing Jill a white plastic bottle of antibacterial lotion. “Rub this on your hands and you can hold the baby.”  Jill obeyed.  The nurse still seemed a bit reluctant to hand Jimmy over. 

          Miriam was furious about the nurse’s conduct. “It’s her baby!” she said. The nurse continued to act haughty and self-important. She placed the child on Jill’s shoulder, as if she was doing her a favor, and stood on the spot looming over the bed for another moment before turning and walking out. 

          “I’m glad you aren’t so angry yourself,” Miriam said, in her typically hard-to-understand Israeli accent. “That makes me feel better.” But Jill started to realize that Miriam was right, and that she should have been angry. She should have been pissed as all hell about the way she’d been treated by many of the staff members at the hospital.

          A social worker was called in to speak with Jill. She later learned that it was Dr. Preston who had made the request. It was the only thing Jill had ever held against Dr. P, though eventually she found it in her stone heart to forgive him.  But if it wasn’t for that fact, the one thing he did wrong, the OBGYN’s record with her would have been impeccable. 

          Jill wished she’d brought her own Stelazine from home, ‘so none of these ignorant bitches would have any fuel for threats or other bullshit against me.’  Jill didn’t know that at the maternity ward, things were much different from regular hospitals where people were sick.  You could bring in any kind of medication, even a bottle of wine or champagne to celebrate. Her friend Kathleen had brought a bottle of White Zinfandel, and the two drank all but the last ten to twelve sips, which Jill had left on the counter at the back of the room. She kept checking to see if anyone drank it, but never found it empty. ‘Those nurses get better drugs, so why would they want my alcohol?’ she acknowledged. All the nurses Jill had known socially in the past had been drug users.

The social worker, Nancy, was in her early forties, average, with short, shit-brown hair that curled around one ear, and a sharp tongue. There was a controlled anger or bitterness that permeated her plain appearance. Jill, for one, would not have been surprised to hear vicious, cutting, brutal, or ball-breaking remarks fly from her mouth, and she’d pity the person on the receiving end.  Perhaps Nancy needed to get laid, Jill thought. 

Nancy had no children of her own.  Her whole life she’d only been a child, never a parent herself.  In spite of this, she approached her job as if the purpose was to assess Jill’s competence as a mother. To Jill, this seemed a bit like hiring a plumber to evaluate a carpenter’s work.   

There were numerous demerits stacked up against Jill: first, she was thirty-five, and this was her first baby. The nurses suspected that she was abusing the hospital painkillers, but rather than making accusations, they just hinted here and there, reduced her dosage, changed the type of meds, reduced the dosage again, and so on. They questioned her often about how much pain she was in. She did exaggerate her pain. And she did abuse the hospital painkillers. Did that mean she wasn’t qualified to be a mother? 

Furthermore, Jill’s husband had been absent during the delivery.  It was also conspicuous to some of the staff that she lived in Riverside - an area considered to be a rough part of town - mostly by people who’d rarely if ever seen it. Jill imagined that all they knew were unreliable stories they’d heard. Jill had also heard about Riverside’s bad reputation and high crime, and was afraid of the area, until she’d lived there long enough to know there were good working-class people on her street, and they were the nicest neighbors she’d ever had.   

And without a doubt, the most damning of all was the unalterable fact that she was on antipsychotic medication.    

          Nancy bombarded her with questions: “Why aren’t you with the baby now?  Why isn’t he here in the room with you?  Why isn’t your husband here?  Does he usually work at this time?  Every day?  Do you have anyone to help you with the baby at home?  Who?  Does your mother work?  Do you have any other family in the area?  Who lives with you at your house?  Who is the doctor prescribing your Stelazine?  Where do you see him?  What’s the address?  And the phone number?  How long have you been going there?  What’s your diagnosis?  What other doctors do you see?  When were you last hospitalized?  When did you first become mentally ill?  What day is it?  What year is it?  What time is it?  Who’s president of the United States?  I think you need to have a visiting nurse come over to your house.”

Jill never felt so threatened and mistreated in her life. She began to cry. 

She couldn’t stop the tears; they were uncontrollable and ushered out while Nancy cross-examined her like a murder suspect, ignoring her tears as if they didn’t exist.  When it was clear that Jill would not answer another question, or speak to her at all, Nancy left, triumphantly. 

Jill sobbed and sobbed, and she continued to sob, and her face was wet when Eddie walked in.  She threw her arms around him.  He’d been caught off-guard, and it seemed that every nurse on the maternity ward followed Eddie through the door at that instant.  Now everybody saw her crying.  This was major trouble. 

          From that incident forward, Jill decided to speak openly and candidly about her hatred towards the social worker.  She told every nurse that she despised Nancy, that she didn’t want to see her face or talk to her ever again.  Many of the nurses became concerned that Nancy’s feelings would be hurt.  To Jill, that was laughable.  She wished much worse on Nancy than just making that uppity, stupid bitch feel sad.  That woman would ruin my life and never give it a second thought, and I am supposed to care about her feelings?’ 

          Even though Jill saw her as one of the most dangerously ignorant people in the world, she knew that her personality was far from unique; there were "Nancies" everywhere in the mental health system, people who ruined lives as part of their regular workday, and went to sleep at night as if they did a good day’s work.  It came as easy to them as closing a file folder or locking a hospital door.  They had little awareness or understanding of the situation that involved them – the complete picture - of the humanity they walked on and crushed, and typically they had poor insight into their own motives as well.

          “The only feelings Nancy has,” Jill told Eddie, who was already cracking a smile, “is her frustration over never getting laid, not knowing what a cunt she is, or why she abuses her power and treats other people like shit.”  Jill was just rambling about her rage, and had so much more to say about Nancy.

Eddie nodded his head in agreement, then tried to talk Jill into having sex with him right there in the hospital bed, until she reminded him about the blood gushing out of her.  He turned his head and focused his eyes on the newspaper again.

“It makes her feel like she’s less of an asshole to point the finger at someone else, like me, and talk about what an asshole I am, or somebody else is.  She’s the one who sucks.  It sucks to be her.” 

Again, Eddie agreed, but barely lifted his gaze from the news.  Jill believed he didn’t hear a word she said.

“She has no kids to yell at,” Jill continued on.  “The world beats her down, so she lucks out with me - someone on Stelazine – a mentally ill person - what a lucky break she got today!”

          Jill’s mother walked in and heard Jill’s angry speech.  But in Eve’s opinion, this kind of expression meant that her daughter was feeling better.

          “If Nancy walks into my room again, she won’t have teeth,” Jill said.  “She’ll be picking them up off the floor.” 

          “Good.  I’m glad you’re getting back to your old self,” Eve said.

          Jill went on, “The only feelings Nancy has is knowing what the inside of her asshole feels like.  That’s all she knows, and nothing more!  Nothing more!”

Eddie laughed.  “The neighbors think you’re vulgar when you say things like that,” he said.

“They ought to quit listening then,” Jill said.

Eve was silent, and looked down towards the floor, but not before Jill caught a glimmer in her eyes that told her the statement had amused her, though her mom would never admit it. Nevertheless, Jill thought it reminded Eve of her ex-husband’s, Jill’s father’s, nastiness and hatred towards his fellow man, which was a quality Eve despised about him.

Jill cried the remaining three days she was in the hospital.  She couldn’t stop. 

There was one good conversation she had with a nurse, a woman named Christine, who seemed to understand. 

          “You’re having a hard time now,” Chris said.  “The post-partum thing is usually nothing major.  Usually it goes away.  But if you’re depressed day-in, day-out for a long time, and it goes on and gets worse, it can be very serious, and then it’s something to worry about.  You’re upset, but just be careful.  Be careful.  You take care of yourself and you’ll be able to take care of your son, and you’ll be okay.”

          Jill sat up straighter and nodded in agreement.  “Have some candy,” she said, pointing to the tin of Hershey’s Kisses that Miriam had left.

Chris declined the candy, but seemed outwardly surprised, even flattered that Jill liked her and offered it. At the same time, it surprised Jill that this nurse had seen her as some kind of mean person who would never be nice enough to offer anyone chocolate.  The two continued to chat for a while in a friendly manner. Jill wasn’t a mean person – unless you treated her badly.          

Jill was glad to have the chance to show Nurse Chris that she was a ‘normal person,’ even a cool person, as long as she wasn’t in a threatening situation, trapped, or backed into a corner.   

Jill knew in her own mind she’d snap out of the post-partum stuff, as long as she didn’t have to deal with any further antagonism from Nancy, or people like her.  There was that risk.  But as long as that sickening possibility never came to pass – that her beautiful baby was not in danger of being stolen away - she’d be a hundred percent okay, as Chris had said.  The notion of losing her son always made her tears return. 

          The thirty-five-year-old was over-sensitive, but she knew it was with good reason.  She’d been stigmatized and stereotyped in the past, labeled, and treated poorly and unfairly.  She had a right to be pessimistic about how situations could turn out.  It was negative and realistic.  In the past, she’d had no credibility with which to defend herself, and all these things made her feel vulnerable and powerless in the world.

          At County Hospital, as well as City Hospital, she’d been tied down to a cot and bound in cloth restraints, for in excess of twelve hours, on two or three occasions.  Not many people would know how that felt.  Jill would never forget having her freedom and dignity robbed from her by force.  But this was part of the past that Jill considered closed.  She kept it stashed behind a locked door, a tall black box that she hoped would never be re-opened.    

If her baby was taken from her, she’d have no reason to live.  She’d stop caring about herself and her life and go after some of these people - starting with Nancy.  Then Dr. Kenneth, the pedophile from her early childhood.  She’d determine the most effective order in which to get away with it, and she’d have her vengeance with as many people who wronged her as she could.  Maybe, she thought, she should start writing down people’s names, and looking up their addresses and phone numbers – compiling a list - just in case. 

In the past, when times were at their worst, Jill decided that all she had to live for was revenge.  It would take unlivable hell to make her stop caring to that extent.  Now she’d been blessed with something so precious and wonderful, she couldn’t bear to lose it.  Baby James was compensation for all the hard times she’d been through in her life. 

She knew that what she succumbed to at the suburban hospital was the “same old shit,” a part of her past re-emerging.  She believed that it should have been over and forgotten.  It was the worst possible time to be treated like less than human again.  Jill would have to take more precautions from then on to make sure this sort of thing never happened again. 

Too much fighting back wouldn’t help; it was always a tough situation requiring the perfect balance.  Once the scales tipped in the wrong direction, the weight and momentum would continue and increase until there was nothing on her side at all.  She could lose everything including her rights and her freedom.

However, if she was careful and things went right, Jill knew she would be happy.  She had a beautiful, healthy little boy, something that was hers, a part of herself.  It was amazing that she produced a healthy child; in her mind she’d imagined the worst kinds of disease, deformities, and abnormalities, hardly realizing that these images had gradually phased into expectations – until the healthy boy was finally born.  The pediatrician who entered the hospital confirmed that.

She liked to sit in the rocker in her hospital room and hold him and rock him while he slept.  He had a good appetite for his formula; he’d be a good eater like Eddie, she thought.  She wished she could have breastfed him, which certainly would have had advantages, but the psychiatrist and pediatrician both told her she couldn’t because of the Stelazine.   

When he was only a couple days old, he had no control over his mouth movements.  It seemed that his face made all kinds of different expressions.  Jill saw this as exceptionally cute.  He gained control over his mouth a day later, and she was disappointed to lose this lovable feature.  She observed that he didn’t have any eyelashes, on either the top or bottom lid.  He had miniature nails on his cute little fingers and hands.  He had pink chipmunk cheeks and chubby legs in three digits; he was the healthiest, cutest thing she’d ever seen.  

She gave Jimmy her index finger to hold.  It didn’t take long for him to clutch the finger hard, and it surprised her how strong he was.  She didn’t know babies were so strong. 

Sometimes she could barely believe the baby she held in her arms was hers.  A sense of unreality set in every day at the hospital.   

It was such a good feeling being with her newborn infant; she rocked away for hours in the chair with him. It was peaceful. As long as no doctors, nurses, or God forbid, social workers walked in, Jill was content. She still couldn’t stand the threat lingering over her, of having this amazing creature taken away from her. She needed to keep convincing herself that the baby was rightfully hers. It seemed that all her life, she struggled with power and control issues.  

          A black woman came into her room every day, asking questions like “What year is it?  What year were you born?  What time is it right now?”  Jill answered every question correctly, but made plenty of hostile wisecracks, which the woman clearly understood.  She said one thing to Jill repeatedly: “A visiting nurse will come to your house - but it won’t be me.”  Jill didn’t know why she always stressed that last part of it.  Jill didn’t care what nurse it would be.   

When the visiting nurse did come over, Eve was present, and even though Jill lived in Riverside, the woman could see that the baby was well taken care of, that Jill was conscientious and doing a good job.  She had people like her mother for support.  There was a husband who was at work.  The house was neat and clean.  Jill spoke amicably with the nurse throughout the entire meeting. 

When this nurse first opened the door to leave – initially looking around to see if there were any thugs or unsavory people on the front porch or in the immediate vicinity – Jill gave the nurse a very hostile look so she’d know how she really felt about the whole thing - even though she didn’t hold anything against this nurse personally.  A look couldn’t be recorded in a hospital file or put down in medical records – or so Jill believed.     

          Finally, Jill had Baby James home, and he was all hers. 

“Enjoy your baby,” Dr. Preston had said. 

Maybe now she and her son could live in peace.  Looking back, Jill saw that she’d gotten a good taste of the level of suspicion towards parents, and what little rights they really had.  Stelazine or no Stelazine, Haldol or no Haldol didn’t even matter, but of course it didn’t help.  Jill was not mentally ill.  She hadn’t been psychotic for fifteen years.  At what point did she qualify as normal?  Perhaps never.  And who had the right to judge a good mother from a bad one? Jill didn’t even have much chance to parent yet! 

And what about substance abusers? Were they necessarily bad parents?  Statistics were against them. But was drug abuse sufficient reason alone to remove a child from his mother? Jill believed it made a difference to others whether you were black or white. Of course, being white was advantageous. Or was it?  Nothing was fair.  Life wasn’t meant to be fair.  It wasn’t meant to be endured either. Jill didn’t want to spend all her life jumping hurdles. She didn’t want to fight an endless war. She had as much right to happiness as anyone else. And so did her baby, James. Jill brought him into the world without his permission, and she would do whatever it took to make him happy. She owed that to him. 

What kind of mother was she if she brought her little cherub into an undeserving, unworthy world?  Maybe that was the only thing Jill had really done wrong.