Empty Arms: A Novel (4 page)

Nurse Unger returned a couple of minutes later, but my arms tightened around my daughter. “I need to speak with my mother.”

Mom stormed into the room, her eyes angrier than I’d ever seen them. “Don’t even say it, Catharine. You can’t keep her.”

“Mom, please. Just listen …”

“No. This isn’t a discussion. This is exactly why I didn’t want you to hold her in the first place.”

“But, Mom …”

“Say goodbye,” she hissed, reaching for Emily.

“Get away from me,” I hollered and Emily began to cry.

“Orderly!” She called over her shoulder.

A big black man barreled through the door, and I squirmed under his weight as he pressed my shoulders against the hospital bed. Mom’s hands coiled around my arms like a boa constrictor and Daddy held my ankles. Nurse Unger appeared between them as I struggled to break free. “You’ll forget,” she said, prying my baby from my arms. Emily’s frightened screams matched mine as I struggled to hold onto her. Nurse Unger wrestled her free, and the pink cashmere blanket fell to the floor as she rushed her out of the room. It was the last time I ever saw her.

Daddy carried me to the car that day, and I pounded against the rear window, begging him to go back, but the car kept rolling farther and farther away from her until the hospital disappeared behind us.

The mere sight of the building always makes the memories come rushing back. I steer my car into the employee lot and wrap my scarf around my face so my cheeks don’t freeze off while I trek across the complex.

The hospital lobby is an atrium of windows that floods the building with sunshine. It’s a far cry from the fluorescent lights and yellow walls I remember. I wave to the security guard and wait for an elevator. The one behind me dings and the doors open. A young brunette steps off and my heart seizes. She’s the right age and has the right hair color. I watch her walk across the lobby, and it takes all my resolve not to chase her down and ask her if she’s adopted.

“B
OY, AM
I
GLAD
to see you,” Delaney says, when the elevator delivers me to the fifth floor. Her dark brown boy cut is tucked underneath her scrub cap, making her look more androgynous than usual. “Crystal quit on us. With no notice, of course. And we’ve got a 16-year-old at nine centimeters.”

After working together for fourteen years, I know Delaney well enough to know that no question will follow that statement. Asking for things isn’t her style. Neither is telling people information that doesn’t pertain to them. So I drop my things in my locker and follow her to the birthing suite, where
The Real World: London
blares from the television set and a young girl is lying in the bed with her hands tight on the rails and her face contorting in pain.

Reminding Del that this is outside my job description would be a waste of breath. As nursing supervisor, she knows exactly what my role here entails: feed and change the nursery babies, cuddle and calm the criers. Nothing more. Nothing less. But when you’re down an intern and the maternity ward is bustling, it’s all hands on deck.

Del swoops into the room and assesses the situation. “Correction, ten centimeters.”

The girl’s face is glistening, and her bleach-blond hair is matted against her forehead. Black mascara tears sketch lines down her cheeks and pool around her silver lip ring. Her whimpers tell me that the ferocity of labor has defeated her tough-girl façade.

I glance around the room for her parents or a boyfriend, but the guest cot is empty. I realize only hospital staffers are present, and suddenly my role becomes clear. “Hi,” I whisper, leaning over the bed rail. “I’m Cate.” I offer her my hand, and she squeezes it with a crushing grip.

“Amber Thompson,” she pants. Her eyes are filled with panic, and her breathing is shallow and erratic. The sight of her takes me back to 1973, when I was lying where she is, scared and alone.

“You know what helps? Try breathing like this.” I suck in a deep breath and push the air out slowly, repeating the pattern until she matches my pace.

It takes a minute or two, but she calms down.

“Better?”

She nods and a glimmer of gratitude flashes across her face. It’s nice to know that my soothing skills work for people of all ages, not just newborns.

Before long, the calmness disappears and her body arches in pain. She squeezes my hand so tightly the color drains from her knuckles. She thrashes in the bed, and I cringe, remembering the feeling.

Delaney glances at the monitor. “Okay, Amber, it’s time to push.”

The young girl looks at me and shakes her head. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.” I place my hands behind her shoulders and lift her up until her back is rounded. “Now push.”

Her skin flushes. A vein throbs in her temple. She grunts and tears spill onto her hospital gown.

“Try tucking your chin into your chest. And here”—I position her hands behind her knees for leverage—“sometimes this helps.” Her body trembles with effort. “Good,” I encourage. “Keep going.”

She pants and heaves. When the contraction ends, she collapses in a pile. I pat her forehead dry and pass her the cup of ice chips from her bedside table. “You did great, Amber. Now just rest until the next one comes.”

She moans and rolls toward me. “I can’t wait to get this thing the hell out of me.”

I slide a chair next to her bed and sit at eye level. I hold her hand and pretend not to notice that she called her baby a
thing
. I tilt my head to match hers and try to comfort her, like I wish my mother would have. “It’s hard to imagine now, but all this pain will be worth it when you finally hold your son or daughter in your arms.”

She snorts. “Yeah right. This has been the worst nine months of my whole entire life. I can’t wait to get this over with and forget it ever happened.”

“You’re not going to keep your baby?”

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “I’m sixteen. Definitely not.”

A sliver of indignation pierces my insides. “It’s not that easy, you know.” I whisper so the others don’t overhear. “You can’t just hand your baby over to a stranger and go back to your life as if nothing ever happened. It doesn’t work that way.”

“It has to.” She pulls her hand away and rolls to her other side. Her shoulders begin to tremble.

This is exactly why I’m better off dealing with the newborns and never meeting their parents. It hurts too much to realize that not all mothers love their babies.

Amber’s body jerks as she whimpers, and her hair falls from her shoulder, revealing a heart tattoo on the back of her neck. Little does she know, hanging out with friends, going to parties, kissing boys, getting tattoos, none of it will ever be the same again. She’ll be haunted by the fact that her son or daughter exists somewhere in the world. Her life will forever possess an undercurrent of emptiness, a sense that something’s missing, like a phantom limb. I want to warn her, shake some sense into her. Tell her that she’ll think about her baby every day. That she’ll never forget. That she’ll never be the same. I want to make her understand that the same way that little heart is stamped on the back of her neck, motherhood is stamped on your soul. And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can never erase your child.

But I can’t say any of these things. It’s not my place. So instead, I tell her everything will be all right and hold her hand when the pain returns.

I
T’S NEARLY LUNCHTIME
when Dr. Hartley announces that Amber is crowning. “Give me another good push.”

Amber grits her teeth, closes her eyes, and roars. Jealousy gnaws at me. Back in the seventies, Lowville General didn’t have birthing suites with TV sets and pullout couches for guests to spend the night. They had delivery rooms, but only married women were allowed to use them. Girls like Amber and me were banished away to whatever empty space they could find. This girl has no idea what it’s like to labor alone in a storage closet, convinced you’d been left to die. She never experienced the shame I felt when people saw your swollen stomach and bare ring finger. She wasn’t ostracized by her family and shipped off to hide out at a maternity home. She can’t begin to appreciate how lucky she is to be able to choose adoption rather than have it forced upon her.

“I can’t!” she howls.

I squeeze her hand. “You can. You’re almost there.”

“Make it stop. Please!” She throws her head back and sobs like a baby. “I’ll never have sex again. I promise!”

“Don’t give up now. It’s almost over.”

“Can’t you just cut it out of me?” she screams at Dr. Hartley and then collapses in a pile of tears and hiccups.

Dr. Hartley, Del, and I exchange a glance. The girl is spent, and it’s my job to get her to finish what she’s started. “Come on,” I urge, lifting her back. “A little bit more and then all of this will be behind you.”

Her eyes are overflowing with tears, her lips are trembling with pain, and her skin glistens with sweat. She pushes with an ear-splitting shriek that reverberates down my spine and clenches my stomach like a vice.

“Harder,” Dr. Hartley demands.

Amber bellows and gives it everything she’s got.

“Okay, now stop pushing for a second.”

The girl tosses her head back as Del rushes to the doctor’s side to suction the baby’s nose and mouth.

Dr. Hartley turns back to Amber. “This is it. One more big push.”

I squeeze her hand and she summons every last molecule of strength in her exhausted body.

Dr. Hartley pulls a slippery little body free, and Del cuts the umbilical cord. Amber’s grip loosens and she falls into the bed with a heave.

“It’s a boy,” Dr. Hartley announces, holding up a squirming pink body.

Everybody stops what they’re doing long enough to get a peek. A tuft of scarlet hair stands straight up on top of his head. He reminds me of a little troll doll, all wrinkly and cute. His tiny eyes blink, trying to adjust to the light, and the cool hospital air makes him shiver and cry.

Dr. Hartley hands him to Del and congratulates Amber before she leaves the birthing suite and moves on to the next patient. Del wipes away the blood and mucus and swaddles him in a blanket. She walks over to Amber and extends the bundle to her, but the young mother takes one look at her son and turns away.

B
Y THE TIME
my lunch break comes, I’ve lost my appetite. I grab a magazine from the waiting area and take the elevator down to the cafeteria, a much-needed escape from the maternity ward. I buy a Diet Coke and claim my normal table near the window. I flip to an article about anti-aging creams and touch the corners of my eyes, assessing the damage. Outside the window, a robin lands on a tree branch with a beak full of twigs and colorful scraps of plastic. She hops over to a clump of dirt tucked in a nook between a branch and the trunk and adds to her stash, carefully pecking it into place. Some mothers love their babies. My mind wanders back to the ignorant girl upstairs, who thinks she can give away her son and forget he ever existed. And then to Paul, who thinks that any baby will fill the void. And finally to Emily, the missing piece of my soul.

It’s cruel that God would give a beautiful, healthy baby boy to someone who doesn’t want him and refuse those of us who desperately do. The robin hops and pecks, building a protective fortress for her future offspring. Maybe my unexplained infertility is God’s way of punishing me for not protecting mine?

A familiar figure appears in the doorway. He’s wearing black corduroys today, with Doc Martens and a button-down shirt that looks like he ironed it on a setting too cool for cotton. As he approaches, I wonder if he even ironed it at all. He looks like he used to be in a rock band but was finally forced to grow up and get a real job. I assume he works here at the hospital because I see him every day. I doubt he’s a doctor; he doesn’t look smart enough. Cute? Sure. Handsome even, but not doctor smart. Besides, none of the male doctors in this hospital have long hair that they wear tucked behind their ears. And since I never see him in scrubs, I’m fairly certain he’s not part of the medical staff at all. That leaves the administrative offices. He looks too happy to do anything that involves insurance claims. Maybe IT? He picks up a plastic tray and tucks it under his arm. I can see him doing something with network infrastructure or long strings of code. I wonder what his name is. I imagine it being something weird and cool, like Cord. Cord in the corduroys. I roll my eyes at the absurdity and return to my magazine before
Cord
sees me watching him.

Somewhere behind me he makes his way through the lunch line. A couple of minutes later he appears in my periphery and walks past my table. A butterfly bounces in my stomach followed by the hollowness of guilt. It’s just a smile, I remind myself. It’s not like we ever talk or have lunch or sneak away to the janitor’s closet. I don’t even know his name, for Christ’s sake. Our whole relationship is limited to one smile per day.

When I sense that he’s standing at the condiments station, I glance up. He’s looking right at me. His lips part into a smile so sincere it hurts. I let mine do the same, and for one precious sliver of time, I’m not a daughter who failed her parents, I’m not a mother without a child, I’m not a wife at odds with her husband; I am simply a woman in a crowded cafeteria returning someone’s smile.

T
HERE’S A NEW BASSINET
in the nursery when I return from lunch. Inside, the cute little troll boy squirms beneath his blanket. I can’t help but smile. I like to think of myself as the welcoming committee. No matter what the future holds, it’s my job to give these babies a good start. “Welcome to the world.” I look to his nametag.
Baby Boy Thompson.
My heart splinters. “She didn’t even give you a name?”

My question is met with waving arms from a tiny orchestra conductor. I turn on the musical mobile above his bed and watch his eyes follow the cows and monkeys in slow circles. Some babies are criers, others are sleepers, but Baby Boy Thompson is curious. So I decide to call him George, like the monkey. “Welcome to the world, George. I’m so glad you’re here.”