The anemia. I must’ve fainted when I got up.
She felt around the back of her head. There was a large bump. It began to scare her.
She felt a warmth between her legs.
Did I wet myself when I fainted? This is so embarrassing. I better clean up before my family gets home.
This time, carefully, she got up from the floor. She carefully crossed the apartment to the kitchen, picked up a rag, and slowly wiped the floor with it. The warm water continued to gush as she wiped the floor. A bit of red came up with the rag.
She went to the bathroom. Her underwear was soaked in red. Judging by the smell, the warm liquid was not urine.
It can’t be …
She opened the pregnancy guidebook the obstetrician had given her. “Call the hospital if any of the symptoms below occur.” One of the items was “If a clear liquid keeps coming out （if your water broke）。”
Her stomach suddenly hurt. The pain ebbed and flowed over her like a rapid tide.
With shaking hands, she called the obstetrician. The back of her head began to throb.
A young nurse picked up the phone, who upon the mention of fainting and anemia and water breaking began to panic. There was now hemorrhaging, and her stomach hurt.
“Look, I’m all alone at home, what do I do? My head keeps hurting from when I bumped it—”
“We’re sending an ambulance! It’ll be there soon! Don’t move, stay on the floor!” The nurse quickly confirmed her name, address, and phone number. “Don’t leave your house! The ambulance will be there in a flash!”
The ambulance was indeed there in a flash. The doorbell rang and she opened the door to a group of tall men who rushed in, put her on a gurney, and loaded her onto the ambulance. Another man was standing by outside to help bring the gurney in.
She immediately recognized him. “Um … hey …”
The man’s eyes also widened in recognition. He started to say something, but the other men shoved her in before she could hear him. The man quickly shut the door and ran to the driver’s seat. He started the engine.
The journey to the hospital was a nightmare. The vehicle shook, the siren was loud, and the paramedics constantly measured, prodded, and questioned her. She had an IV stabbed into her vein, a blood pressure cuff on her arm, and a cold stethoscope traveling across her belly. The back of her head felt like it would split in half from the pain, and she felt a strong urge to throw up. But her labor pains did not return.
Despite the lack of pain, the fetus in her belly was becoming more and more active. As if making up for months of inactivity, it now seemed as if it was about to somersault out of her womb; she could imagine the baby knocking against the walls of her uterus screaming, “I want to be born, I want to live, find me a father!” The paramedics kept asking if she could feel the contractions and at what intervals. She kept answering that she had no contractions and began to fear that there was something wrong with the baby, a fear that became a dark cloud that grew larger and larger and soon enveloped her whole. She grabbed a nearby paramedic and begged him to be the baby’s father. Just then, waves of pain overtook her as she moaned and hugged her stomach.
The ambulance suddenly stopped. The driver urgently pressed down on the klaxon.
She shouted the driver’s name. She got up from the gurney and crawled toward the driver’s seat.
“Please be my baby’s father!” she begged her first seon date. “It’s not too late! The baby is about to be born! Please help me! It’s not too late …”
The ambulance driver stuck his head out of the driver’s seat window and shouted, “Hey, asshole! Get out of the way! This is an ambulance! We’ve got a pregnant lady with a concussion!”
The paramedics dragged her back onto the gurney and laid her down. The ambulance started moving again. It ran red lights, jumped lanes, and sped past countless cars, zipping by at manic speed. They finally arrived at the hospital, where she was carried out of the ambulance. The man who had been her first seon date restarted the engine and gave her a reluctant last look through the rear-view mirror as she was rolled into the emergency room. The ER confirmed the concussion was fairly light and sent her on to the delivery room.
The delivery waiting room was full of other women with bellies as big as Namsan Mountain, some clinging to their husbands’ arms and screaming that they were going to die while others were nonchalantly walking about, quietly sobbing, or conversing with nurses. As for her, the fetus was threatening to burst out at any moment and her body was slowly cracking open with each kick. Pain engulfed her. As it subsided, she was left with a pounding headache that felt like her heart was in her skull. The nurses urged her to walk if she wanted the baby to come out quicker, but her headache was so intense that she couldn’t even sit up. She lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling until her eyes became sore from the white fluorescent lights. Her head pounded to the beating of her heart. She felt her head inch away from her body with every beat and slowly float up toward the white ceiling. But it was then yanked back whenever she felt another wave of pain that twisted her like a wet rag. The alternating contractions and headaches lulled her into an eerie sense of calm as her vision was flooded with white light.