Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [66]
In the hallway I fold my hands like two fists under my chin. My eyes are wide open, even though there’s nothing to see.
“There were maybe two other cars in the lot,” Charlotte says. “Hardly anyone there at all. James went into the office while I stayed in the car. He told me not to yell, so I bit my hand. He came out and got me inside. I can hardly remember what the room looked like. There were these curtains. Green plaid. Ugly.”
“I’ve seen the room,” my father says.
“I lay down on the bed,” she says. “The contractions were every minute or so. There was hardly any time in between. I was grunting. I thought because of the blood the baby would come fast, but it didn’t. It felt like I was there for hours.”
“You didn’t think of getting to a hospital?” my father asks.
“I said once, ‘I need to get to a hospital,’ but the contractions were coming so fast, I thought I would deliver any minute, and I didn’t want it to happen in the car. I was in so much pain, I didn’t know how I’d even get to the car.”
Charlotte pauses. “I didn’t know what it would be like. What was normal to feel. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to die.”
“And what was James doing all this time?”
“Sometimes he sat with me. I remember digging my fingernails into his arm when I was having a contraction. He paced. He’d bought some Demerol from a guy to have on hand for the pain, and he gave me two with a glass of water. And then when it got worse, he gave me two more. I didn’t even care what the right dose was. I’d have taken a hundred of them. I just wanted the pain to go away.”
I can hear my father sighing.
“I started wanting to push,” Charlotte says. “I realized then that I couldn’t get up from that bed and make it to the car. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen in that motel room. And that’s when James really started to fall apart. He kept yelling, ‘What are we going to do? I don’t know what to do.’ So I had to tell him. I had to talk him through it. I asked him if he could see the head. I made him wash his hands. I was just grunting then. I tried to breathe the way they say to in the books, but it didn’t work.”
I wrap my arms around my legs.
“And then I couldn’t stop pushing, and the pain was just unbelievable,” Charlotte says. “I felt as though I was being torn wide open. I was sure I was going to die. I yelled, and it’s amazing someone didn’t hear us.”
In the kitchen there’s a long silence.
“And then she was out,” Charlotte says finally. “The baby was born. James was crying. I told him to pick the baby up and get the mucus out, and she cried right away. She was covered with that white stuff. James thought there was something wrong with her. I told him to cut the cord—the scissors were in my bag in a plastic bag—and he did. And then I told him to wrap her in a towel. I told him to watch for the placenta, the placenta had to come out. There was a lot of pain then, and this surprised me. I think something got torn. I was shivering, and I had a terrible headache.”
There’s another silence.
“I think that’s when I realized how much James didn’t want the baby,” Charlotte says. “I really started to lose it then. I was crying. I told him to pick the baby up and hold her and to check for all her toes and fingers. He seemed calmer then. I said, ‘Give her to me,’ and he did. He just laid her across my stomach. I put my hand on her, but I was drifting by then, drifting in and out. I remember I propped myself up and looked at her. She had her face turned toward me. I had a tremendous feeling of relief. And then I lay back again, just resting for a second. And then I must have passed out.”
“You passed out?” my father asks.
“The next thing I knew was James was in my face, and he was saying, ‘Get up. We have to get out of here. We have to get you to the car.’ And I said, ‘Where’s the baby?