Chapter 25: Corabelle
Somehow, I sleep.
The sonographer says the baby looks fine. The monitors show he’s handling the contractions like a champ. An IV drug is ordered to stop the labor.
I know it’s not working. Every half hour or so, a contraction takes on a new intensity, rolling more deeply. It’s going to keep going until this baby is out.
Dr. Petersen stops by again, reviewing the monitors and frowning. “You’re right. You do not respond to terbutaline,” he says. “We’ve administered the corticosteroid for the baby’s lungs. We have also given you antibiotics in case there is something disturbing the membranes. Now we just wait it out.”
I can’t believe there is nothing else to do. Another contraction begins, and I huff along. They haven’t given me a spinal block, assuming my labor would stop.
Dr. Petersen is polite enough to wait the contraction out before he leaves, patting my leg. Oh, I want Dr. Jamison back. I glance at the clock. His office will open soon. Hopefully he will come before his appointments start.
Gavin calls my parents. I talk to them briefly, just after a contraction ends but before another can start. I don’t want to alarm them.
“If we can’t get a flight, we’ll just drive,” Dad says. “We’ll be there by evening either way.”
I feel like an utter failure. I can’t carry babies properly. I can’t give them healthy hearts. I’m broken. I should not have children at all.
Despair crashes over me like a wave. All this work, the vasectomy reversal, the appointments, the sickness, it’s all for nothing.
This was not meant to be.
How long will this one live? One week? Two? Until surgery?
I don’t even want to give him a name. It’s pointless.
I’m not sure which is harder to bear, the contractions or the rolling waves of despair. I close in on myself, refusing to talk to anyone, not even Gavin. I must simply endure this day, this week, whatever it’s going to be.
I will never ever get pregnant again. I wish we’d kept the money for the vasectomy reversal. It could have been a down payment on a real home.
Sometimes tears squeeze out of my eyes. Other times I stare vacantly at the window as light dawns and morning burns on.
The nurses change shift. I don’t care who they are.
Then things get worse.
I feel wet down below.
My water has broken.
I look over at Gavin. He’s fallen asleep on the sofa in the corner. What does it matter? They will have to take the baby now. Without amniotic fluid, the risk of infection is high. Birth defects. Stillbirth.
I remind myself of these complications as if they are happening to someone else. My hand reaches for the nurse’s button, but it has fallen down the side of the bed.
I don’t bother to pull it up by the cord. It just doesn’t matter.
The new nurse aide pops in. “How is Mama doing?” she asks. Her ebony face is cherubic and her accent rolls up and down in a singsong way. South African, I’m guessing.
“My water broke,” I say blandly. “I’m pretty wet.”
“Oh my gosh,” the woman says. “Let me page the doctor to see if he wants to stop the terbutaline.”
She pokes at her phone, sending a message to someone, I guess. I turn back to the window. Gavin stirs, looking from me to the nurse.
“Is something wrong?”
“Her water broke,” the nurse says. She approaches the printout. “The baby is still doing fine. But this changes things.”
The RN charges in. “Let’s get her changed,” she says. “Dr. Jamison is on rounds. He’s going to skip to you in just a second.”
So he is here. I find I don’t feel any more comforted by my own doctor. He’s just a man with a degree. The things that are about to play out cannot be altered by him.
Gavin grips my hand. His face is tense. “I’m sorry, baby,” he says.
I shrug. “He got an extra week over Finn.”
Another contraction arrives. This one is dramatically stronger than anything that came before. “Can I get an epidural now?” I ask.
“Dr. Jamison is on his way,” the RN says.
The two of them lift me up, whisking away wet things and somehow changing the sheets just by moving me around.
I’m only just settled again when the doctor comes in.
“Corabelle, I didn’t expect you here,” he says.
And that’s when Gavin blows. “We TOLD you we had premature labor last time. You SHOULD have done something to prevent this!”
Dr. Jamison nods. “I’m hearing your upset. This is a stressful situation.”
He checks the printouts on the baby monitor. “No more terbutaline,” he says, swiping through screens on an iPad. “The baby’s already had a corticosteroid, good.” He comes near the head of the bed. “Corabelle, how is your pain level, do you think you’ll want an epidural?”
I feel like I’m the demon in The Exorcist turning her head all the way around when I look at him. “Yes, I want an epidural,” I say, doing my best not to growl the words. I’d prefer, actually, to be knocked out completely. But at least let me not be in pain.
“Contractions aren’t really progressing, but that might change now that the membranes have ruptured,” he says. “I’m going to go ahead and request the anesthesiologist. By the time he can get here, we’ll know more.”
My eye falls on the little icon that shows the baby’s heart beating. I want it to go away, for the monitors to be done, for all this to end.
Hope might be a thing with feathers, but it is a vulture, a monstrosity, dark and feral. I feel it circling but I won’t turn my eye to it at all. My ability to cope is already at its limit.
The last damn thing I need right now is hope.