“You’re not the first,” the nurse continues. “And you certainly won’t be the last. Just don’t think too much about it. It’ll be over soon.”
The doors open. Evelyn blinks away the tears that have sprung to her eyes again and tries to keep up with the nurse’s quick pace. They make a right turn, then reach a set of doors with a sign declaring the hallway beyond it the maternity ward. To the left is a waiting area full of chairs. There are two men sitting in them, bleary-eyed under a cloud of thick cigarette smoke. One of them is sleeping, slumped over in his chair. The other has his ankle crossed over the opposite knee, cigarette in one hand, flipping through a newspaper laid out in his lap. Like he’s sitting in the park on a Sunday afternoon with not a care in the world.
The nurse pushes through the doors and Evelyn follows.
“That man back there,” the nurse says, not making eye contact with Evelyn. “Wife is in labour bringing their sixth baby into the world. Told me she only ever wanted three. Poor thing.”
They pass a couple of rooms, and Evelyn catches glimpses of pink bedspreads, yellow curtains, and bouquets of flowers propped up in vases. The nurse leads her down to the last room at the end of the long hallway, and Evelyn’s breath hitches. The tiny room has a sad, institutional air about it. Lank beige drapes hang over the single window, a thin wool blanket covers the narrow bed, and the floor space is limited even further by dozens of brown cardboard boxes stacked four feet high along two of the walls.
“It’s a bit of a squeeze in here, I’m afraid. It doubles as a storeroom for the ward.” The nurse pulls a hospital gown out of a small metal dresser beside the bed, thrusts it into Evelyn’s free hand. “Get changed into that. Settle yourself down in bed and the doctor will come see you when he does his rounds later on.”
Evelyn nods, takes the gown.
“There’s a bathroom across the hall if you need to pee.” The nurse pauses, a flicker of compassion in her heavily lined eyes. “What did you say your name was?”
Evelyn clears her pinched throat. “Evelyn.”
“Evelyn what?”
She’s been denied her own last name for so long now. The question stirs something inside her, a thirst for something true. “Taylor. Evelyn Taylor.”
“All right, Evelyn Taylor, I’ll let the doctor know and we’ll start you a chart.” She turns to leave.
“What happens?” The words burst from Evelyn’s mouth before she can stop them.
The nurse lets out a sigh. “They don’t tell you girls much, do they?”
Evelyn shakes her head. “No. Nothing.”
The nurse shrugs a shoulder. “It’s not really for me to say, but it’s painful. Be prepared for that. And it could be a long night. You girls are usually here for a few days if nothing goes wrong, then you’re discharged back to the home.”
“What do you mean, ‘if nothing goes wrong’？”
“If there are no complications with the birth or the baby. If you start to heal up okay, if there’s no infections.”
Evelyn’s face burns with embarrassment at her own ignorance, but she’s desperate to know what’s coming in the home stretch, the final stage of her ordeal. “What do you mean, ‘heal up’？”
The nurse’s eyes flit to the clock on the wall. Someone’s being paged over the speakers. She meets Evelyn’s eyes. “Honey, having a baby rips you up. All between your legs will be sore. You’ll probably have stitches. And if we have to do a cesarean, you’ll have a big incision.”
Evelyn can’t keep up. “What’s a—what you just said?”
“A cesarean section, a C-section. It’s when the doctor has to cut you open to get the baby out. But he’ll try not to do that, don’t worry.”
Evelyn’s panic tightens in her chest. “What do you mean, ‘cut—’？”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to the desk. Get your gown on and get into bed. Good luck.”
She turns and leaves Evelyn alone in the room. Evelyn lays her travelling case down beside the narrow bed and peels off her wet stockings with difficulty, leaning over her enormous belly as the contractions squeeze and pulsate. She cries out once, but bites down on her bottom lip, pinching her eyes shut against the pain. A minute later when it finally subsides, Evelyn opens her eyes, breathes in deeply, then lets it out in a long exhale. As the nurse said, this could be a long night.
Down the corridor, a woman lets out a cry. She hears a man’s stern voice responding, then the ticking of the clock on the wall. It counts down the seconds for her—the time she has left before her baby is born, before she might be cut open by this faceless butcher-doctor.
Evelyn blinks back fresh tears and wrestles her body out of the rest of her clothes, folds them neatly, and sets them down on top of the small dresser. They’re still damp, and she wonders if someone will offer to hang them up to dry. She heaves herself into the bed and pulls the beige wool blanket up over her belly and breasts. She glances to her left. She’s become so used to Maggie’s presence in the bed right next to hers. She wishes they could go through this together, as they have every other stage of their pregnancies.
The clock ticks away another few minutes of silence before another contraction begins. Evelyn throws her arm out to the side, reaching instinctively for a hand to hold. She needs someone to help her through this, to brush her hair off her sweaty face, whisper that it’s going to be okay, that she’s brave and doing great. That her baby will be in her arms soon, a beautiful baby girl with eyes like a summer morning. But her hand closes on thin air, and in that moment she’s positive she has never in her life felt this utterly, profoundly alone.
* * *
Three hours and several painful contractions later, the doctor comes to her room. He introduces himself as Dr. Pritchard, then, without telling her what he’s doing, lifts the sheets and blankets and starts feeling around between her legs, pushes his fingers up inside. Evelyn gasps; she wants to weep with humiliation. He declares her only eight centimetres dilated, whatever that means, and tells her he’ll come back later. Evelyn stumbles out of bed, fills a glass of water, and flops right back down, exhausted.
She labours alone all night, listening to the crooning of the maternity ward nurses as they comfort the other women. She strains her ears, trying to catch any snippet of their conversation that might tell her what to expect as the contractions become more and more frequent. She wonders, while writhing on her hands and knees at one particularly low point in the night, whether she might be dead. What if no one is coming to check on her because she’s a ghost? Maybe she’s already given birth and died in the attempt and her poor lost soul is stuck in this hospital storeroom, labouring for eternity.
But when the contractions are nearly constant and Evelyn starts to feel an intense pressure between her legs, her only instinct is to start screaming for help, and—finally—it comes. Dr. Pritchard breezes into the room with one of the maternity nurses, and she pushes and cries through the searing pain until her baby enters the world in a bloody, slimy burst.