And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (4 page)

As soon as Frank got settled he put on a shirt and tie and took the train to New York to make arrangements for starting his job. He was twenty-three and was starting a new life. As it turned out, his accounting firm now had an opening in their Philadelphia office, and Frank grabbed it. It meant things would be much smoother. Everything seemed to be going smoother now that Frank was back.

We could always move to New York in a year or two.

Five weeks before the baby was due I was sitting in my political science conference course—we sat around a large, round table—when several sharp pains shot through me in rapid succession. They were so strong I gasped.

The professor looked at me with a raised eyebrow, wondering if perhaps I was about to disrupt his class by giving birth to a bouncing baby boy or girl on his conference table. I smiled bravely, wondering if I was, too. Fortunately the pains went away in a few minutes.

Still, I felt heavy and tired when class was over, so I took the bus straight home instead of going to the library. It was a bitterly cold February afternoon, gray, windy, and bleak. There were patches of ice on the sidewalk. I picked my way carefully around them as I walked home from the bus stop. When I got in the house, I took off my coat and shoes and rolled into bed with my clothes on, chilled and exhausted. Both Frank and Mother were at work. I lay there in the silent house, the covers up to my chin. I thought about calling the doctor to ask him about the pains, but I didn't want to bother him. I decided to take a nap instead. Now that I was getting warm, I was getting sleepy. I guess I dozed for about an hour before I awoke abruptly, in terror.

Warm water was coursing out from between my legs.

I didn't know what it meant. I called for Frank, for Mother. Nobody was home yet. I was alone. Since it was a real physical symptom, I decided to call the doctor. The nurse put me right through. I wondered if I'd be taking him away from some other nervous mother-to-be whose stomach his hand was on.

He came on the line and I told him what was happening.

“It's probably your water bag,” he said calmly.

“Does that mean I'm in labor?” I blurted out.

“You might be.”

“But I'm not due for another five weeks.”

“Or it might mean nothing.”

“How will I know if I'm in labor?”

“Just rest now.”

“I've
been
resting.”

“And call me back if there's any change.”

He hung up and I got back under the covers. The phone rang. It was Frank. He was on his way home. I told him I didn't think I'd be able to make dinner tonight, if that was okay. He offered to pick up some Chinese food. I was relieved. He asked me if everything was okay. I said it was, that I had been leaking a little for a while but that I was fine now. The flow of water had subsided, after all.

I got back in bed with my books and studied until the water started to leak out again. I called the doctor again.

“Are you having any pains?” he asked.

“No. No, I'm not.”

“Just stay put. Keep in touch. Relax.”

Frank came home with the Chinese food. It smelled good. I was suddenly starving. Whatever was happening to me had no effect on my appetite. I folded a couple of towels, put them on a kitchen chair, and sat on them while I devoured my dinner. I had just about cleaned the plate when I got my first contraction. It was like a menstrual cramp magnified a hundredfold. It sucked my breath in, doubled me over.

“Are you okay?” asked Frank, eyes widening in terror.

I shook my head. He took my hand and helped me upstairs. I got into bed and he sat beside me. Ten minutes later I got another contraction. We called the doctor.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“What it means,” he explained, “is that you're in labor. You don't need to go to the hospital just yet, but when the pains are five minutes apart, you'll want to leave for the hospital. They'll call me when you get there.”

“But I'm not supposed to have the baby yet,” I protested.

“Evidently the baby has other plans.”

I packed a suitcase and gathered my textbooks and papers. Midterms were coming up, and I thought I'd have plenty of time to study. The pains started coming closer together at midnight, so we left.

Frank drove slowly to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. It had started to sleet and the streets were slick. He was amazingly calm. He drove to the emergency entrance, helped me out of the car, and told me to be careful. He proudly announced to the nurse at the desk that I was in labor and commanded her to phone my doctor. She did.

An orderly appeared with a wheelchair. He told me to sit in it. I did. He grabbed my suitcase, smacked it down on my non-lap, and started to whisk me down the hallway.

“Wait!” I cried. “What about my husband?”

“What about him?”

“Can't he come with me?”

“He having a baby, too?”

“Huh?”

Down the hallway we went. I never got to embrace Frank or say good-bye. I managed a half-wave over my shoulder before I was shoved through a set of double doors.

I was put in a bed. A group of nurses and doctors stood around
me, murmuring. I could hear the sleet bouncing off the window.

“How long does it take?” I asked one of the nurses.

“A while,” she replied.

“How long is a while?”

“Are you in pain?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We can sedate you now.”

“Is my doctor here?”

“We'll sedate you now.”

She gave me a shot. I was in a twilight state almost immediately. I dozed for a while and awoke sometime during the night, nauseated and in even more pain. Two nurses were at the foot of my bed discussing the merits of the hamburgers they'd just eaten downstairs in the cafeteria.

“I didn't think they were so bad,” said one.

“They were okay,” said the other, “if you like your meat gray.”

I burped Chinese food.

They turned to me.

“Are you in pain?” one asked me.

“Uh-huh,” I replied.

“We're gonna give you something for that.”

I heard a woman scream somewhere nearby.

“Will I scream like that?” I asked.

“Maybe,” one of the nurses replied.

They gave me another shot and I went under again.

Sometime during the night I thought I saw Frank standing next to me, holding my hand. I dreamed that—he told me later he hadn't been there. I also thought I saw my mother standing over me, wearing a white doctor's coat and stethoscope, her cool hand on my forehead. That actually did happen. She was working as an administrative secretary in the medical school and had “borrowed” her boss's coat to check up on me.

Very early in the morning they gave me a needle in the spine. I don't remember anything after that.

Nancy was born at 6:52 a.m. on Thursday, February 27, 1958. I slept through the entire birth.

After it was all over, somebody woke me by pounding on my chest. “You have a baby girl, Mrs. Spungen!” he yelled in my ear. “A baby girl! Six pounds, five ounces!”

Nancy
, I thought.
A baby girl, Nancy
. Nancy had been my grandmother's name.

I fell back to sleep, only to be awakened again, this time by my doctor, who towered over me in his surgical greens.

“Are you going to nurse?” he asked.

I looked around. I was lying on a gurney in a corridor.

“Huh?” My mouth was dry.

“Are you going to nurse? We have to put her on a schedule.”

I seized on the word
schedule
and began to tell him my class schedule at Penn. “I have psychology, um, Tuesday and Thursday, from ten to—”

He broke in with laughter. A bunch of other people stood around laughing at me, too, having a merry old time.

“Go back to sleep,” he said.

I did. Later I woke up back in my bed. Frank was there, really there this time, holding my hand.

“Did you see her?” I asked him.

“Sure did.”

“How does she look?”

“Beautiful.”

He looked funny. Something was bothering him.

“Are you okay, Frank?”

“Of course,” he assured me. “The doctor sent me home about two, two-thirty, and then he called me at six. I never got much sleep.”

Something was bothering him, though. I could tell. But I was too sleepy to pursue it. He kissed me. He hadn't shaved. He said he'd be back to visit me later. To visit
us
later.

I slept off the sedation but was still a little groggy when I woke up. I drank some water from a pitcher next to my bed and waited for someone to see I was awake and bring me my baby. I wanted to see her.

My obstetrician finally came in about noon. He still wore his green scrub suit.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Okay. Can I please see my baby now?”

He sat down on the edge of my bed. I noticed that for the first time since I had started going to him, he was not in a hurry.

“Can I see my baby?” I repeated.

“She's … she's experiencing some problems, Mrs. Spungen.”

“What kind of problems?”

“She was born cyanotic.”

“What's that mean?”

“Blue—her cord was wrapped around her neck, depriving her of oxygen. But don't worry, we gave her a heart stimulant and her intake is improving. We're monitoring her vital signs. I'm not too concerned about it.”

He didn't budge from the bed, though.

“What
are
you concerned about?” I asked.

“Her color. She's jaundiced.”

“How come?”

“Well, ordinarily it's caused by an RH-negative blood condition. But your blood has been typed as O-positive, which would rule that out.”

“It
is
O-positive.”

“First thing we're going to do is retype it, just in case an error was made. You never know. You might have been negative all this time. It's happened before. That's probably what it is—an error. Anyway, we're going to take some blood from you, okay?”

“Okay. When do I get to see my baby?”

“Soon.” He patted me gently on the arm and left.

A couple of minutes later someone came and took my blood.

I called Frank on the phone. “Something's wrong with Nancy,” I said.

“You mean about the cord?”

“You already know?”

“He told me this morning. Before I saw you.”

“Why didn't you say something?”

“I didn't want to upset you.”

“Now it's something else. She's jaundiced. They don't know why. Something to do with my blood or her blood or something.”

“I'll be right there.”

But it took Frank over an hour to get to the hospital, during which time my doctor returned in his street clothes to tell me my original blood typing was correct. I was indeed O-positive. He said Nancy's jaundice wasn't improving and that he was calling in a specialist, a pediatric hematologist. The hematologist had requested some additional blood samples from Nancy, and they were being sent to Children's Hospital by police car for processing.

He patted me on the arm again and left.

I didn't know what to think. I was confused and afraid. I didn't know what any of this meant. I didn't know if she was actually going to die and nobody was telling me so as not to upset me. Maybe she wasn't supposed to exist. Maybe she didn't exist. I didn't know. I still hadn't been allowed to see her.

Frank finally arrived. He looked sad and bewildered. He gave me a hug and I clung to him.

“She'll be all right,” he assured me unconvincingly.

“What if she isn't? What if she dies?”

“She won't die.”

He began to pace nervously around the room. I shared it with one other woman, whose curtain was drawn.

“We just have to wait is all,” he said. “Wait.”

“Where were you?”

“I had a stop to make.”

“Maybe we'll go to New York now. You wanted to.”

“Cut it out.”

“We both did. We both wanted to.”

“That's not important now. Just … just forget about it. This'll work out.”

“Where did you have to stop?”

“I went to the store where we bought the crib. I changed everything to pink instead of yellow.”

“What's wrong with yellow?”

“She's
yellow. I just thought … I don't know what I thought.”

I took his hand. He thought changing the color of the crib would make her okay. He sounded like a kid. I sounded like a kid. We
were
kids, confused kids who were unprepared for responsibility, facing a future that seemed to be slipping out of our control.

We met the new doctor, the hematologist. He was thin, dark, calm. He had diagnosed Nancy's problem as ABO incompatibility.

“It's similar to RH-negative, at least in effect,” he explained. “Actually it's the opposite of RH-negative. It occurs in firstborns.”

Frank and I looked at each other, baffled.

“What do you do about it?” Frank asked.

“We change the infant's blood.”

“How?” I gasped, horrified.

“A series of exchange transfusions. We can't change it all in one transfusion—too much of a shock.”

“Okay.” Frank nodded.

“Why did this happen?” I asked.

“There are a number of causes,” my obstetrician said.

“None of which fit this particular set of circumstances,” the hematologist pointed out. He turned back to me. “We'll start the exchange series tomorrow morning. First thing.”

Frank cleared his throat. “How … uh, is it pretty dangerous or what?”

“The fatality rate is fairly low.”

“How low is ‘fairly' low?” I asked, my voice quavering. Frank took my hand.

The specialist explained that the main concern was Nancy's bilirubin level, which measures the bile in the blood. It presently measured over nineteen milligrams and was climbing rapidly. He said that twenty-two milligrams and above was considered the level where neurological damage—cerebral palsy, mental retardation—could occur. It was imperative, he said, to lower Nancy's bilirubin level.