Southampton Spectacular (9 page)

The woman glanced uncertainly at Peter, and gave ground.

She reached her room, and then her bed, and immediately requested an epidural. The nurse in her room pressed her lips together with false patience and nodded. She had just started her shift, and assumed, because she had not asked, that Cynthia had been in labor for less than an hour. “You’ll want to wait on that until you’ve walked around for a bit more, and then – ”

“My wife has officially asked for her epidural,” Peter Hall said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I am seconding her request. Your advice has been heard, evaluated, and ignored.”

The girl tucked her chin into her neck and raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. She turned and left the room without a word.

Cynthia looked at her husband. “Do you think she’s getting the epidural people in here, or going to file a complaint with her supervisor?”

Peter sighed. So far, this experience had been nothing like what the brochures and books had promised them. “Are you okay here for a second?” he asked gently. “I’ll go out and make sure they’re on it.”

She nodded, and he was about to walk away when a nurse they had never seen came gliding through the door like a small tugboat. “I am Ms. Greenland,” the new nurse said, pausing to present herself like a cadet, her immense bosom thrown forward. She was black and huge and unsmiling, her uniform crackling with starch and competence. “Let’s get this show started.”

Cynthia felt as though someone had just injected a powerful sedative into her I.V. tube, and Peter returned automatically to her side. He let himself exhale.

Ms. Greenland secured the epidural. She had the anesthesiologist at Cynthia’s bed inside of four minutes, and suddenly everything was proceeding according to plan. This was how the books said it was supposed to go. The Ms. Greenland way.

“Where does it hurt the most now, Dear?” Ms. Greenland asked. Cynthia told her, and Ms. Greenland smiled broadly. As if pain were a wonderful thing. “That’s exactly where it’s supposed to hurt,” she said, and Cynthia found herself agreeing. Yes, it was painful, but it was a pain she had read about. Just as it was meant to be. Ms. Greenland checked the baby monitor and said that their unborn child was in no distress, that she was waiting patiently to come. “She’s strong and happy,” Ms. Greenland said, and said it in a way that was both strong and happy. She calmed them.

Cynthia began to push. Her effort was fine, but the progress was not as fast as Ms. Greenland wanted it. “You’re doing
great
,” she said. “But your little girl’s feeling too comfortable in there. We need to get her moving.”

After two hours, Ms. Greenland instructed a three-minute rest. And damn the contractions.

After three hours she began shouting her encouragement along with Peter.

When the four-hour mark came and went without success, Ms. Greenland looked at her watch and frowned. “Need some help now,” she said briskly.

In two minutes the delivery room went from nearly empty to nearly full. Ms. Greenland had somehow summoned a doctor and a doctor’s assistant and an entire team of neonatal specialists. The temperature of the room, now suddenly so full of bodies, rose three degrees. Cynthia was beyond exhaustion, her breath coming in long, windy gasps. “What are we doing?” she said between gulps of air. “Why are all these people here?”

There was a brief silence, and then the lead doctor answered. “Episiotomy and vacuum extraction,” she said. “Piece of cake.”

Peter and Cynthia hall looked for reassurance from Ms. Greenland, who nodded slowly and seriously. The message was clear:
this is not a piece of cake, it’s nothing even like a piece of cake, but this doctor is the one to do it. She’s the Ms. Greenland of doctors.

They took a breath together and nodded at the doctor, who began preparing a sterile field around Cynthia’s lower half. The team of neonatal doctors crowded around the empty receiving warmer, hovering with tiny emergency devices at the ready. The doctor flipped a transparent shield down over her face like a welder, and went to work.

Peter focused on his wife’s face.

“There we go,” the doctor said.

“What?” asked Cynthia quickly, suddenly paranoid.

Devon, whose name was not yet Devon, cried out, strong and loud. Cynthia burst into the tears she had been holding at bay. The doctor put the baby girl into the medical cradle under the warming lamps, where she was descended upon by the neonatal staff.

“Is she okay?” Cynthia demanded, when she had found her voice again.

“She’s perfect,” said the attending neonatal doctor, who sounded almost chagrinned at the lack of any real challenge. “She’s a ten on the APGAR. Enormous, twelve pounds, steady heartbeat, great color, alert. Congratulations.”

Peter Hall looked from Cynthia’s bed, to the baby warmer, and back again. He put a hand gently on top of his wife’s head. Her hair was damp with sweat. “How are we doing?” he asked her.

She spoke to him without opening her eyes. “Go look at the baby,” she said. “Tell me what she looks like. We still need to name her.”

That was right. Peter skirted the bed and went to the tiny warming crib where his daughter still lay under the scrutiny of several pairs of expert eyes, her smooth skin lit bright orange by the strong lamps above her. The neonatal team continued their observations, taking notes and occasionally making small sounds of approval. She was apparently continuing to satisfy all their prerequisites for health.

“Pardon me, everyone,” Peter said, trying to nudge his way through.

“Just another moment, sir. We’re going to check – ”

“You don’t need to be in here anymore,” Ms. Greenland said quietly. Her voice was kind, but firm. “Child’s all right. You said so. Give us some breathing room.”

The lead neonatal specialist did not look up. “Couple of minutes,” he said. “This is a good learning case for rest of the group. It’s important to let them see a perfect baseline.”

The baby began to cry again. Hesitantly at first, but then with increasing volume. Cynthia Hall opened her eyes. “Is she all right?”

“Absolutely fine,” the neonatal doctor said. “We’re just going to – ”

“That’s not how it works,” Cynthia said. She spoke with a renewed strength her husband envied. Four hours of pushing, and yet here she came with her teacher’s voice. And the Ob-GYN still down between her legs, squinting and working on her like a mechanic trying to tighten a balky nut. “No extra tests now,” Cynthia declared.

“Mrs. Hall, this is a teaching hospital.”

“I’m well aware,” she said, her tone still strong, “but I’m also aware of the correct procedures. I’ve submitted to three extra blood tests and at least two inexperienced nurses today, and each time I was asked first whether I would be willing to endure such things. Each time I said yes. Now I’m saying no.”

The doctor sighed. “Mrs. Hall, may we please – ”

“Absolutely not. Next time ask first, as you’re supposed to, instead of trying to bulldoze your way through. Out of my room, please.”

“We’ll only – ”

“Out.”

There was a moment of silence, as the students on the neonatal team watched to see whether their leader would actually defy the wishes of The Mother, who was always assumed to have final say unless the health of the baby was at risk. Which it clearly was not. They each had to admit to themselves that this baby was nothing if not healthy. Twelve pounds was positively immense for a newborn, and this little girl also seemed supremely alert.

The neonatal doctor put down his clipboard with a noisy, disappointed harrumph, and he left without nodding to his team. They filed out behind him.

Ms. Greenland glided forward to take their place. She wrapped the child quickly and expertly in a swaddling blanket, put a tiny pink hat on her head, and moved her to the standard receiving crib. This crib had little wheels attached to the bottom, and she pushed it to a spot in between Mr. and Mrs. Hall.

“Tell me her name,” Cynthia said to her husband quietly, her voice once again betraying her deep fatigue. “Tell me.”

They had known the naming would fall to Peter. For all Cynthia’s decisiveness, she could not warm to the task. She feared giving the child a name that would be prophetic, or affected, or too-easily mocked.

“Devon,” Peter said.

Cynthia blinked. She had been prepared for something very upper-crust, something New England. Emily or Katherine or Eugenie or Hartley. Which would have been fine, because she didn’t want anything that sounded like the names her family would have picked out. She was ready for a name that would make the folks from Augusta, Georgia, wrinkle their noses. But Devon?

“It’s not a boy’s name?” she said.

“It was my brother’s name,” Peter said, with a little shrug. “And now it will be hers.”

Devon began to cry again, and Peter, newly ready and energized, hesitated. He looked at Ms. Greenland. “Should I pick her up?”

Ms. Greenland smiled warmly. “It’s up to you from now on,” she said, nodding her huge head at him. “What feels right, that’s going to
be
right. When you feel ready to pick her up, that’s the time.”

Peter waited another moment, trying to feel what was right. To feel whether he was ready.

And then Cynthia began to sing.

It was not singing in the usual sense, because Cynthia could not sing. She had no ear for melodies or notes. But her voice was a supple, powerful thing, and her years as a litigator and then an English teacher had left her with stories and poems and verses, each with a purpose. “I sing of Olaf,” she said, “glad and big. Whose warmest heart recoiled at war, a conscientious objector…”

Peter listened to his wife tell the story of the gentle, iron-willed Olaf, and Devon listened, too. She stopped crying and shifted in her swaddling, and her eyes closed. Cynthia went on. She sang of love and hatred and misplaced patriotism and a terrible, tragic ending. A difficult poem, but a beautiful one. Her voice filled the room, and Peter was reminded yet again that day, for the hundredth time, of how much he loved her. “…and Olaf too,” Cynthia said, coming to the end. “Because unless statistics lie he was more brave than me. More blond than you.”

Her recitation complete, Cynthia let herself sink a little deeper into the pillow. Peter stood over her and the now sleeping baby Devon, wondering vaguely what he would do now that no one needed encouragement or holding. Ms. Greenland stood silently to one side, unobtrusive despite her enormity. The only sounds left in the room were the occasional whisper-rustles of the Ob-GYN’s sterile smock as she sweated and worked to sew and repair the place where Devon Hall had come, finally, into this world.

An hour later they were in a new room, a room where everything was clean and fresh and the only smell was the one coming from flowers that Peter had ordered weeks in advance. Ms. Greenland had left them for a time, but now she was back, and making what seemed to be an unreasonable request.

“Time to nurse,” she said to Cynthia.

“I don’t think so,” Cynthia murmured, sounding barely awake. The Ob-GYN had finished working on her only a few minutes before. “Anyway, Devon’s still asleep.”

As if on cue, Devon rustled in her little crib, and then cried out. Ms. Greenland rolled the crib over so that Cynthia could see through the plastic sides. “She’s hungry.”

Cynthia shook her head. “Not yet. I’m a mess. I don’t know if I have the strength in my arms to hold her.”

“You
do
,” Ms. Greenland said, with a simple certainty that made further argument pointless. She picked Devon up and placed her expertly on Mrs. Hall’s chest. “Just give her a few swallows,” she said, and stood by to assist.

And then, after a few moments: “Perfect. That’s all she needs for now. Daddy’s turn.”

Peter stirred. “What?” He was sitting in the single large chair in the room, and he could feel the adrenaline from the last few hours draining quickly out of him. He suspected that he would be deeply asleep in twenty minutes.

“You need to hold her a bit,” Ms. Greenland said. “Let her know your smell, your feel.”

“I thought you said – ”

“That’s fine, but you need to give it a practice run here. Now. While I’m still around to watch.”

The Halls glanced at each other. The idea that Ms. Greenland might leave them to fend for themselves – ever – was an awful one.

Peter Hall rose out of his chair, and he was pleased to find that there was still some strength left in his legs. Ms. Greenland handed Devon to him, and he allowed her to adjust his arms and hands into a position of proper support. Devon was fully awake now, looking up at her father with rapt attention. Without warning, she began to cry again.

“A baby wants you to move,” Ms. Greenland instructed. “She was moving inside her mother all this time. Rock or bounce or anything. Just do it easy.”

Cynthia Hall watched her husband through eyes that were only half-open, and she allowed herself a little smile. She saw Peter pause, and think, and she knew exactly what was going through his head.

Now he began to move. Very slowly, so that it was difficult to see a rhythm. But the rhythm was there, and Devon quieted at once. If Cynthia Hall’s special talent was voice – sound, communication, support – then Peter’s was movement. Cynthia remembered their early years together. He was athletic, yes, but his athleticism extended beyond the college sports he had so loved. Even walking, he was somehow more graceful than others in a crowd. And if he had not been a handsome, successful man – which he was – he might still have been able to woo Cynthia simply with his confidence on the dance floor.