|
"From the Diary of a Prisoner's Nurse, Mississippi, 1972"
We had her open into the uterus
down to the bag of waters still intact around the baby—
floating, oblivious, asleep.
Oh! the surgeon said. I had never
heard one of his kind sound so innocent, surprised. Never seen
the womb laid open to a fetus sleeping head-up in its home—
translucent sac. But you can't stand around all night
like Biblical shepherds, dumb with adoration. The surgeon has to
shred the bag—glistening surgical birth. Now
go back
to the bag of waters and its cloudy light, silvery mizzle
like March rain at midday and the light way back behind it.
Light in prison can be like that, skim, before sunup,
gray to bluish where they found her in labor, tetanic contractions,
the uterine muscle stretched morbidly thin, the baby
breech, head palpable as a cat under an old quilt, something
wrong, her first baby, the woman screaming and the inmates, louder
screaming over her Get her a doctor!
Uterine rupture. A basket splitting from the weight of its fruit.
She was twenty-one. Wheat. Wax. Dust. How
we got the kid out, I don't know—the surgeon was slow as an old cur.
She just bled out.
After, the doctor offered me a smoke
which I took to avoid letting him catch me in the eye.
The eyes of the dying sometimes glaze over like cloudy plastic
stretched over a window to thwart the rain—the film of it
fuzzes the light. The old eyes of the scrub nurse, eyes over the mask,
sad cynic: Give it up. They didn't try to save the mother.
One year out of school, I would not obey, went for the anesthesia cart,
albumin in drawer three—
then her pressure—the bottom dropped out.
I couldn't get her back. The baby screamed at birth.
The baby screamed at birth.
—Belle Waring
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
