A
A reader and long-time friend writes:
As I read articles lauding Alice Munro, I have begun thinking how unsung your work and your life is. You are and have been a more remarkable, absolute North Star.
As you nursed, as you taught, as you nurtured and loved/ befriended, nourished bodies and souls, are mother, wife, sister, and writer, you have excelled and pointed others to their North Star.
I hope you know what an outstanding example of the best of humanity you are. I hope you know how many people you touch with love and grace.
I wish people could get to know you through your writing. I have had an inside view along with your blog, but others should have the privilege through the publishing of your work.
Until then, hold close to the knowledge that you healed, nourished, nurtured and enlightened peoples’ bodies and souls. Love BC
To respond to BC, I am sharing this: a scene from my novel, which I believe has value. Would you keep reading…and don’t hold back….thanks, Beth
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“Mama, I can’t do this shit. Make it stop, make it stop!”
Sixteen-year old LaToya Jackson, primigravida, no prenatal classes, now in labor…Ella Singleton’s first patient on her 3-11 shift, the girl’s mother silent, occasionally leaning forward from a chair near the door.
“Push, LaToya, push. Like I showed you. You can do this. When you feel a contraction coming, take a deep breath and push, push like you mean it.”
This was Ella’s first patient on her 3-11 shift.
“Mama, make it stop. Can’t do this shit. Tell the lady, make it stop.”
Ella tried again. “LaToya, it’s going to be okay, but you have to push. It’s what all woman have to do to have a baby. Your mother had to, I did…”
Ella reminding herself to keep her voice firm but quiet…her patient just a sixteen-year-old girl having a baby. And though Ella had helped others in smiler stress at Chicago Community Hospital, LaToya was more frightened, fragile…her chart absent of the name of this infant’s father…some boy, some man lost during the last nine months of LaToya’s life. Not there to witness LaToya’s face crumple in pain and fear as Ella urged her again.
“You have pain? Use it. Hold your breath and push.”
And maybe the girl would finally get it, stop thrashing, focus, get this baby out. Because with each push Ella could see dark hair advancing, then receding, the girl writhing in the grasp and then release of contractions, and Ella, an experienced nurse, no longer caught up in her patient’s pain, though as a mother she remembered the burning of the perineal tissues, every pain receptor lashing out at the weight, the force of that head.
“Mama, make it stop!”
“It’s okay, Toy, you can do it.” The mother’s voice warm pudding, soothing, she glancing at the girl before looking back to the television, her face flaccid, her distant demeanor palpable in the chaos of beeping monitors, thrumming IV pumps and now the click of the blood pressure machine as it began its fifteen-minute automatic check. And then LaToya, screaming: “Shit—cut me, make it fucking stop.”
The girl’s words…familiar, Ella checking the infant’s progress on the fetal monitor, noting that during a contraction the fetus’s heart tones dipped from pressure on the umbilical cord. Normal, but time to have LaToya change her position, get the baby off the cord, heart tones quickly recovering, 130’s, 140’s—strong, quick beats. Ella moving to the head of the bed, wiping the girl’s forehead with a soft cold cloth.
“You’re doing great, you don’t want a C-section, and it’s almost time to move to the delivery room. LaToya you can do this. I’m going to help you have this baby.”
“Mama?” Tears mingling with sweat on the girl’s face, she crumpling up the smoothness of glistening skin, then grunting, “Get this out a me!”
Ella moved quickly, no need to check the patient with sterile, gloved fingers, all the signs now there. And as LaToya bore down again, Ella could see a large circle of dark curly hair, approximately four centimeters.
“MOVING THREE!”
In seconds nurse Zoey appeared, unplugging the bed from the wall, disconnecting monitors, the two tugging the bed toward the door, IV bags swaying back and forth.
“We’ll make it, lots of time, delivery right across the hall,” Ella said, her words directed to no one in particular, LaToya’s mother working to cover nose and mouth with a mask, pull on a head cap, LaToya moaning, crying, “It’s comin, it’s comin–”
In the OR, every second counted, other personnel appearing to break down the bed so LaToya could be placed in the lithotomy position, her feet in stirrups; Zoey spreading cloths on the floor, the resident MD placing sterile drapes over LaToya’s legs and abdomen. Ella swathing her patient’s perineal tissues with sterile betadine solution, the staff waiting, ready to grab the baby to be born. A strange silence settled over the room, and when the next contraction began, LaToya screamed, pushed, delivering the head, she now crying, not hearing the resident’s instructions to slow it down, slow, slow so he could maneuver the delicate shoulder, and LaToya pushing again, delivering her 6 lb. 5 oz. infant. Ella noted the time. Only then did she look at the genitalia, announcing, “It’s a girl, at 18:32.”
