Chapter 19 Victoria #2
“Liz, look at me,” Victoria commanded. “You are going to be okay. Your baby is going to be okay. I’ll be right by your side, every step of the way.
” Victoria said this, assuming she could go into the OR, without getting official confirmation, but she would break down the doors if need be.
Victoria took her eyes away from Liz for a second to direct her attention to Dr. Rosenblatt.
“I am allowed to go in with her, right?”
“She has to!” Liz screeched.
“I’ll have the nurses help you get geared up.”
“Just don’t go into labor,” Dr. Waldman said to Victoria with a smile, then turned to Liz.
“Dr. Rosenblatt is extremely experienced and I agree with his assessment entirely. I’ll stick around in case either of you need anything, but I’m not at all worried.
Congratulations, Liz, you’re having your baby. ”
“Thank you so much,” Victoria said to her doctor, and then the nurse, Gayle, came in with a set of scrubs for Victoria and a surgical cap that looked like the kind of hairnets worn by cafeteria workers. Gayle looked between Liz and Victoria, amusement dancing on her lips.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Gayle said. “And this is a new one. What was that movie about the mom and daughter giving birth at the same time?”
Victoria and Liz stole a look at each other, but neither filled in Gayle on the familial twist. Their situation was more like the exaggerated drama of a movie than Gayle knew.
The anesthesiologist, a man in his fifties with a shiny, bald dome of a head, came in and asked Liz if she was allergic to anything, described his involvement in the procedure, and wanted to know if she had any questions.
Liz looked like all she had was questions, but she shook her head mutely.
Then Dr. Rosenblatt returned, minus his entourage of residents.
He instructed Gayle to unhook some of the monitors and then they told Liz they were going to roll her down the hall to the OR. It was time.
“Don’t leave me,” Liz said to Victoria, frantically squeezing her hand.
“I’m not going anywhere. Let’s go meet your baby.”
The OR was smaller than Victoria expected, sterile but not unpleasant in its asceticism, and filled with a small army of doctors and nurses whose movements were purposeful, which imbued Victoria, and she hoped Liz, with confidence.
Victoria looked at her friend, but no—Liz’s face was still bathed in terror.
The anesthesiologist asked Liz to sit up, then started the process of numbing Liz’s lower half. Victoria nodded encouragingly.
“You’re doing great.”
“I’m freaking out!” Liz said. “What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t,” the anesthesiologist said.
“It won’t,” Victoria reiterated.
“What if it does?” Liz said, a tinge of irritation creeping into her voice, and Victoria realized she was wrong to discount the possibility, to suggest that it didn’t exist. There was risk inherent in everything in life, and to pretend otherwise was to peddle in denial at a time when it was crucial to do otherwise.
“If something happens, we’ll deal with it.
You have an excellent team of doctors,” Victoria said, pointing around the room at said team.
“And you have me, and I’m right here. There is nothing we can’t handle together.
” Wasn’t that the Faustian bargain that life made?
Throwing shit at you but also equipping you to handle it?
Liz didn’t seem comforted, however. She looked at Victoria as if she were going into brain surgery and might not make it through to the other side.
“If something…happens…make sure my baby is okay.” Victoria opened her mouth, but Liz pressed on urgently. “Promise me. I know this is like a scene from Beaches, but please. Promise.”
“Of course I will. But nothing is going to happen to you. You’re going to be taking your baby to the coffee shop in one of those twee carriers because you’re going to be one of those moms who wear their babies strapped to their chest. And I’m going to make fun of you and you’re going to tell me to leave you alone, and I’m not going to listen this time because I don’t care if you don’t want to talk to me or if the situation is weird, you’re stuck with me, and that’s all there is to it. ”
“I won’t tell you that again.”
Victoria smiled at her friend, with whom she had formed a connection as unlikely as it was irreplaceable.
“Can you feel this?” the anesthesiologist asked, pressing on Liz’s lower back.
“No,” she said.
“Good, how about this?” he asked, pressing on a different spot.
Liz shook her head, then looked at Victoria.
Their eyes met, and a silent moment of understanding transpired between them that was interrupted by a nurse asking Liz if she wanted to watch, or if she’d prefer them to hang a curtain.
“Watch?! My body being cut open? No!”
“We’d like the curtain, please,” Victoria said.
“You got it,” the nurse chirped, and began erecting a piece of fabric that was hung from two metal poles, no sturdier or more substantial than a curtain at a slipshod theater production.
“Whatever you do, don’t look,” Liz begged Victoria. “I don’t want you to see my guts.”
“We’re starting now, Liz,” Dr. Rosenblatt said from the other side of the curtain. “You might feel a slight pressure, but this shouldn’t hurt at all.”
A nurse stood at Liz’s shoulder. “You’re doing great, mama.”
Victoria realized that this would be the start of other women addressing them as mama instead of lady, girl, babe, or even bitch in the colloquial Hey, bitch!
kind of way. Not that anyone had ever called Victoria that, but still.
It had been a challenge to graduate from miss to ma’am, and she dreaded the late-in-life dear that would someday announce her entrance into old age, but mama—that would take some getting used to.
Mama implied a status, a vocation, a complete subsuming of identity.
Once you were a mother, you could still be a wife, and a career woman, or a book lover or oenophile or home chef or professor or recluse, but you could never not be a mother again. You would always be a mother first.
Without intending to, Victoria snuck a peek over the curtain.
“Don’t look!” Liz shouted.
“It’s not gross,” Victoria said. “I promise.” It wasn’t.
It was surprisingly tidy and bloodless. Contrary to the rumors and myths, there was no spleen or lower intestines laid out on the surgical tray awaiting redelivery back into the body like a FedEx package that had to be rescheduled because it needed a signature.
Victoria saw that there was an oblong ring of plastic, almost like a basin, lining the opening in Liz’s lower body, stretching her from where the horizontal incision had been placed, several inches below her belly button.
“I know you’re going to say no,” Victoria said, shifting her face back to Liz, “but I really think you’re going to want photos of this.”
“NO!” Liz roared.
“What about Preston? This is the moment his child is coming into the world.”
Privately, Victoria thought that if he was missing this for a sports game, or a signing meeting, or whatever he was so consumed with that he wasn’t answering his phone, Preston deserved whatever reckoning was coming to him, but that wasn’t Victoria’s place to say, and she also didn’t know the circumstances leading to his absence.
Maybe he was blamelessly dead in a ditch and that was why he couldn’t be present at the birth of his child.
“I don’t want Preston to see my insides!” Liz said.
Dr. Rosenblatt’s voice rang out from over the other side of the curtain. “You’re going to feel some pressure, Liz, and then a big push.”
Victoria took out her phone, and at the precise moment that Liz’s doctor broke the amniotic sac and pulled Liz’s baby into the world from her placenta, Victoria captured the moment.
She saw a tuft of dark hair, matted with fluid, and a red, disgruntled little face.
A high-pitched cry pierced the room and Victoria thought she had never heard a more beautiful sound.
“Baby’s out!” announced Dr. Rosenblatt.
“You did it,” Victoria said, forcing herself to tear her eyes away from the screaming new infant being taken for the Apgar test. She smiled at Liz through awe and adrenaline.
“Is my baby okay?” Liz asked, still panicked.
Another nurse came over. “You have a healthy baby boy. Congratulations, mama.”
Liz exhaled with relief. Then her whole body started shaking, the convulsions rocking her like she was having a seizure.
Victoria shot a worried look at the other nurse, by Liz’s shoulder.
“The shaking is normal,” the nurse said. “It’s a side effect of the medication, but it’s nothing to worry about. They’re cleaning off and measuring and weighing your baby, and then we’ll bring him over.”
“Him,” Liz said in wonder, her teeth clacking against each other.
And then he was there. A nurse carried over a tiny bundle wrapped in a muslin blanket who was still screaming in protest about being wrenched from his cozy nook.
The nurse announced that he weighed six pounds, two ounces, and had measured an even eighteen inches.
“Hi,” Liz whispered to her baby in wonder.
“He’s perfect,” Victoria said, her breath catching in her throat. She watched Liz’s eyes trace the contours of her baby’s face. Thirty-six weeks of wondering what this little person would look like had led to this reveal, a mystery unraveled in one transcendent, indescribable moment.
“He is, isn’t he?” Liz said, looking up at Victoria in awe. “Can my friend hold him?” she asked the nurse.
“Of course.”
“Really?” Victoria said, somehow more stunned by this than when she had gotten the unexpected, urgent call from Liz only several hours earlier.
“I’m shaking too hard,” Liz said. The nurse passed Liz’s minutes-old infant into Victoria’s waiting arms. Victoria allowed instinct to take over, and her body knew without needing instruction how to mold itself to accommodate a newborn.
She stared down at his tiny face like the magic of the universe was unfurling before her.
This is life, Victoria thought. And then she wept.
She cried with relief that Liz and the baby were okay.
She cried with gratitude that Liz had relented and asked for her.
She cried with reverence, having witnessed the miracle of all miracles.
She cried with joy, which was spiraling through her body in ribbons and emanating through every ounce of her.
As she did, Victoria was keenly aware that it would forever be one of the most mesmerizing, defining moments of her life.