Funny, he seems genuinely concerned. I presume he’s just worried about the blow to Soviet prestige should this American woman die in childbirth in a Communist hospital. I follow him down the white corridor to Iris’s room at the end. Along the way, I catch glimpses of other patients, other rooms, all of them serene and private, and it’s only later that I learn this is a special hospital for party officials and their families.
I’ve resolved to remain calm. After all, our plan depends on a difficult labor—the more difficult the labor, the more plausible our actions. During our days in Rome, Fox and I studied Iris’s medical history, the likely complications, the points at which intervention might occur.
But nothing prepares you for the sight of your sister lying gray-faced and sweating on a hospital bed in the throes of a mighty contraction. Nothing prepares you for the sound she makes when the pressure reaches its zenith. I hurtle to the bed and snatch her hand. I demand to know why they haven’t given her something to numb the pain. They don’t understand me. Iris gasps, “I don’t want it! I don’t want to go to sleep!”
“I won’t let them do it, pumpkin. Trust me.”
The contraction eases. When Iris catches her breath, she looks wanly at me and says she’s sorry.
“My God. Don’t be sorry at me. What do you need?”
The nurse says something to me in Russian. I gather they don’t want me here—a woman in labor isn’t allowed to have guests who might, by their pity, soften her too much for the task at hand. I look the nurse square in the eye and tell her I’m not going anywhere. We glare at each other, mutually stuck by this inability to communicate in words.
I turn to Iris. “How much Russian do you speak?”
“Enough.”
“Because I can get a translator.”
“I don’t need a translator. I need—” She bites herself off and digs her fingers into my hand.
An illogical idea takes hold of me as those fingernails cut tiny crescents on my skin—that whatever pain she inflicts on me somehow diminishes the share she endures. In my terror, I imagine this pain flowing like a current of electricity through her fingers into my palm, so that I can bear her agony and she can be free.
The first hour passes, inch by inch, and I don’t see how either of us could endure another. But we do, hour after hour. At three o’clock in the afternoon, I leave to use the toilet and see how Digby’s holding up. But he’s not inside the waiting room; Fox sits by himself in a chair, nursing a cup of coffee. He shoots to his feet when he sees me.
“You look like hell.”
“You should see the other guy. Where’s Digby?”
“Went home to look after the kids. How is she?”
“She just keeps going, that’s all.” I lower my voice. “I’m not going to have to put on an act, you know that? I want her out of there. I want a doctor I can understand, a nurse with even a grain of sympathy—”
“What can I get you? Coffee? Glass of water?”
“Coffee. Please.”
I don’t know where he goes, some kind of cafeteria or canteen or something, but he brings back coffee that isn’t half bad. I gulp it down black and hand back the cup. I’ve forgotten all about the night before. What we did to each other. What I felt and said. I’ve almost forgotten my own name.
By six o’clock in the evening, the doctor’s shaking his head and looking tragic, and a few more doctors gather to shake their heads and look gravely at one another. I can’t exactly ask Iris to translate for me—she’s too tired to speak, spends the minute or so between each contraction just lying there with her eyes closed—so I march over and ask if anyone can speak English.
One of them makes a shallow, affirmative inclination of his head. He’s about sixty years old—tall and gaunt with wide cheekbones and cobweb hair. He looks at me as if he thinks I’m going to be trouble. I can’t imagine why.
I speak as nicely as I can. “Can you tell me what’s happening? Is my sister in danger?”
“We are talking possibility of operation,” he says, in a heavy accent.
“You mean a cesarean section?”
“Yes.” He makes a tiny circle with his hands. “Cervix growing too slow.”
“But she doesn’t want a cesarean!”
He gives me a withering look. “Then she dies.”
“That’s not true. She’s had three babies before, all—you know—the ordinary way.”