chapter twenty-one

The first night I spent in the maternity ward was the loneliest night of my life. It felt like being locked in a prison cell, a psychiatric ward, and a hospital room all at the same time.

On arrival, I was told that I was entitled to a free hospital dinner every night of my stay. I was given instructions on how to get to the kitchen to collect it, and a sheet of bar-coded stickers to trade in for my aluminium tray every evening. I wasn’t even remotely hungry, but at the designated time, I obediently limped to the lifts, my bright red visitor lanyard and key card hanging around my neck.

I had no idea where I was going – the hospital was a labyrinth. These days, I know the place like the back of my hand, and I don’t know if that should make me feel proud or sad.

I found the kitchen, eventually. They told me I was too late – through my tear-blurred eyes, I’d misread the collection time on my information sheet. I guess I cut a pretty pathetic figure, because the clerk’s face softened, and he asked me to wait a minute. He came back from the kitchen with a few leftover sandwiches from the lunch run. They looked revolting.

By that time, it was eerily quiet in the hospital. Most of the staff, visitors, and day patients had gone home. I shuffled through the empty corridors in the silky, teal dressing gown that mum had bought for me, stained in snot and tears, swiping my pass at each locked door, until I finally reached the maternity ward.

I walked in through the common room. The lights were off, and the curtains were drawn. The little red light blinking on the TV was the only sign of life.

The communal kitchen had bottomless loaves of bread for the ward residents, as well as all the jam, butter, tea, coffee, and milk you could need. But there was no toaster. Many years back, an unsuspecting new parent had forgotten about their toast and the toaster had erupted in flames, almost burning the kitchen down.

They confiscated the toaster and replaced it with a sandwich press. You want toast now? You make it in that.

I unpacked my sad lunch leftover sandwiches and smeared a bit of butter on them. I threw it into the sandwich press and hoped that would revive it a little. It did not.

I filled my water bottle at the sink and tapped my pass once again at the large double doors. They made a loud beep and swung open with an even louder clunk into the dark corridor. The only light came from the tiny, frosted windows cut into each of the four doors. I couldn’t hear any crying, which was equal parts comforting and disconcerting.

Back in my room for the night, I called Luke to check in. He sounded so tired. I ate a small piece of chocolate I’d bought earlier. At least I think I bought it earlier. I don’t remember buying it, but how else would it have gotten there? I brushed my teeth and looked at (and ignored) the text messages that were accumulating on my phone. Other than our immediate families, no one knew Jasper had been born, yet. I turned on the hospital-issue TV that played the sound through a tiny speaker in the remote. And I sat on the edge of the bed and stared blankly at the wall.

I couldn’t understand how I’d gotten there. A few days ago, we were going to have a baby, spend a few nights in the hospital, go home, and get on with it. Instead, my baby was two days old, and I’d barely touched him. Within the past ten hours, he’d undergone an x-ray on his chest and another on his neck, tests checking his liver function and levels of his calcium, magnesium, phosphate, sodium, chloride, and creatine, and a full blood count. Not to mention several changes of his breathing and feeding tubes. These tests and procedures would all become a very routine part of our lives over the following months.

Instead of joining us to meet our family and friends, our baby would spend the foreseeable future in the hospital. Instead of dressing him up in the cute little clothes we’d bought him, he’d be wearing tubes and monitors. Instead of feeding him his bottle in the rocking chair we’d bought, he’d be fed through a tube that went in through his tiny nostril and down into his stomach. Instead of holding him and rocking him and singing to him when he woke up crying in the middle of the night, he’d be comforted by the nurses; strangers.

Logically, we knew it had to be done. Sacrificing a few months of not having Jasper home with us to get him the medical treatment he needed to live a long, happy, healthy life was a no-brainer. That didn’t make it hurt any less. We expected to be walking out of the hospital, hand in hand, grinning like idiots, with our baby boy in his capsule ready to come home. Instead, we were up for years of hospital visits, check-ups, and operations. We’d been assured that at the end of it all, he’d be just another perfectly normal little boy. But until then, we were going to be hurting. We would feel guilty for every minute we didn’t spend at the hospital by his side, we’d feel incredible anger that our little boy would have to go through so much pain, and we’d feel violently hurt by everything we’d just been robbed of.

There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that he’d be in good hands. They just weren’t our hands. And with that thought, I cried so hard I shook until I passed out into a fitful sleep.

chapter twenty-two

When I woke up the following morning, I remembered I had to check in with the midwife before 10:00 am. I felt sick from the violent crying, so breakfast was out of the question. I dragged myself out of my hospital bed and into the bathroom. With an episiotomy wound only two and a half days old, sitting down to pee wasn’t the most fun way to start the day.

It was a long process, but I eventually got myself dressed, cleaned up, and moving. I was relieved not to see anyone else in the shared kitchen as I limped through the doors and down the hall to the midwife’s office.

It was hard not to be a little timid, knocking on Joan’s door in the early hours of the morning. She was an imposing figure – tall and stout, with short cropped brown hair, a booming voice with a heavy English accent, and arms covered in colourful tattoos. I shook my head, bit my lip, and knocked as quietly as I could.

I heard her chair groan before the door swung open.

“Jesus, have bloody a look at ya! Had a baby not three days ago and you still look bloody gorgeous! Put me to shame, you ladies do! Well come in then, let’s get you a seat.”

Joan saw right through my pathetic half-baked smile but never drew any attention to it with pity. Having transferred to the maternity unit in RCH meant I had forfeited the excellent post-natal care I should have received at the lovely private hospital where I gave birth. How lucky I was that Joan was my consolation prize.

After the usual “how are you feeling?” questions and my forced “I’m fine” replies, she told me it was time to check my episiotomy stitches. I’d checked my modesty at the door when I went into labour, so I obediently hobbled over to the low hospital bed in the corner of the room, lay down on the stiff white sheet, and shuffled out of my shorts so this woman I’d only just met could examine my vagina. Joan closed the curtain, turned on her lamp, and lowered herself with a groan onto her stool at the foot of the bed.

“Oh… fuck me…”

That can’t be good.

“Am I okay?”

Joan looked up at me, her face an unreadable mixture of awe and horror. “Well, whoever stitched you up has done a bloody brilliant job. Best stitch job I reckon I’ve seen.”

“But…?”

“But… Jesus Christ, you’re bruised black and purple halfway down your thighs, I’ve never seen bruising this bad… have you looked yet? It’s incredible!”

“No, I have not, and I’m not sure I really want to.” There was an enormous, full-length mirror in my room’s ensuite that I had to contend with when I showered, and I went to great pains to avoid it. I already felt like roadkill – I didn’t need to see the actual evidence. 

I finished up with Joan and went back to my room to tidy up before heading up to the NICU ward for the day. Pulling my dirty hair back into a ponytail over the sink, Joan’s words popped back into my head. Damnit. Now that she’d put the image in my mind, I had to know. I gingerly stripped off my clothes, hanging them off the edge of the sink, until I was naked. I looked up at the mirror and didn’t recognise the woman staring back.

My face was red and puffy from the two and a half straight days of crying; my eyelids were almost swollen shut. My usually rosy, freckled cheeks were pale and sickly looking. My shiny auburn hair was dirty and matted with sweat. My stomach, where Jasper had grown and lived for thirty-eight weeks, was a deflated balloon of flesh. My baby wasn’t in there anymore, but he wasn’t there in my arms, either. I hesitated before I looked down any lower, but curiosity got the better of me, as it often does.

Joan wasn’t kidding – my inner thighs were an incredible shade of inky purple and black. No wonder I could barely walk. I had no idea who this person was staring back at me – she wasn’t even a person, anymore; she was a shadow. I turned on the shower and grabbed the handrails to hold myself up while the steam fogged the mirror enough to obscure my reflection. I pulled the crappy plastic hospital-grade shower curtain closed anyway, just to be safe, and the tears started to fall again, hard and fast. Better here than up in the ward where the nurses can see me, I figured.