By the time Brynn got Dr. Smith on the phone, Lucas was asleep in his bassinet, and his fever had gone back down to 99.
“Brynn,” Dr. Smith said, “there’s unfortunately not much you can do. Most likely, he’s got a virus that his body is just trying to fight off. That’s what fevers are. They indicate the body working in overdrive to fight something off. You just have to let it run its course and monitor it closely. Hydration and rest are the best tools you have right now.”
“But how do I know it’s not something more?” Brynn asked. “Something else, I mean? Could it be Covid? Or some kind of infection?”
“You can give him a Covid test, if you’re comfortable administering it,” he said, “but even if it is Covid, the care would pretty much be the same right now, considering his symptoms at this point. Just keep an eye on him. If his temperature rises or if he stops drinking, or gets a rash, anything like that, let us know. Otherwise, just hang in there, kiddo. You’re tough as nails, like I always say. Lucas will be okay, and you will, too.”
By now, Dr. Smith surely knew about Cecelia’s death and Ross’s arrest. Everyone did. Even everyone off-island knew. Brynn waited for Dr. Smith to say something about it—to imply that he was on her side, that he believed her, that he felt sorry for her, that when he said she would be okay, he wasn’t just talking about getting through the night with a sick newborn.
“Thanks, Dr. Smith,” Brynn said when it became clear that Dr. Smith was done. “I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it, Brynn. Call if anything changes.”
When Brynn hung up, the house was silent. She waited, as though suddenly, somehow, she’d hear Ross come clamoring through the door, asking where his jacket was, or his keys, or whether they had any more of their favorite pinot noir. All the noises he made that had angered her. All the requests that had made her feel like he’d stopped seeing her and instead only needed her for logistics, for domestic things, for function. But not for love, not for partnership. When had she started hearing his words this way? When had it all changed? When and where had it all gone wrong?
In retrospect, it seemed that the chasm between Brynn and Ross had only formed once Lucas was born; before that, Brynn and Ross had been a team. Their bond had only grown stronger with excitement as their due date approached. They stayed up late writing down possible baby names, reading chapters out loud from a book for expecting parents. They’d babyproofed the house together, they’d taken a birthing class together, Ross gave her nightly foot rubs and rested his head on her belly, eagerly awaiting Lucas’s next kick.
Before Lucas, everyone in Brynn’s life told her that she would be such a good mom. The best mom. She was always the first one to play with the little kids at a family barbecue, the one who showed up with the cutest baby gifts when her friends became moms, toting bags of organic cotton onesies with matching booties, hand-knitted hats with kitten ears, books about unicorns. She volunteered to babysit for friends whenever they needed it—even for some coworkers now and then in New York—and she loved it. She could calm even the fussiest baby or the most manic toddler. But she dreamed of having her own child. A chunky little boy, she had said, was what she always wanted.
That person she used to be—the babysitter, the energetic friend who loved kids, the woman who couldn’t help but coo at a stranger’s baby across a restaurant—was a stranger to Brynn now. She’d been warned about the change in hormones, the baby blues, and the effects of sleep deprivation. But she had assumed that wouldn’t be her. It just wouldn’t. She had been a joyful pregnant woman. She’d loved building her baby registry, having her shower, getting Lucas’s nursery ready, picking out little onesies. She and Ross had even done a two-month-long birth class together to prepare for the aftermath: life with a baby. She’d gone through it all with joy and gratitude and genuine happiness for what was to come.
But once Lucas was born, her old self had been replaced with this new one. One who mostly looked the same, but who sometimes felt nothing for her child, who missed her old life, who often regretted her choice to become a mother, who was sure that this life was not the one she was meant to be living. And, above all, who knew that her son would be better off without her. She knew that in her core. She knew that even when he drank milk from her own breast and was comforted by the smell of her skin. This new version of her, she thought, was not only incapable of loving her son, but incapable of being loved by anyone in return.
But, she wondered, when exactly had it all changed? Was she destined for this change or had something gone irreparably wrong that day when Lucas came into the world?
Her water had broken a week early. It was a raw, bitter day in March, one that teased the threat of late spring snow with near-freezing temperatures. The air was wet and icy. Ross was at work; spring was the busiest time of year for him by far. Summer was jammed, too, of course, but spring was when homeowners started to grow impatient. As summer loomed nearer and nearer, demands grew higher, deadlines got closer, and workloads became less manageable.
Brynn had just finished assembling a new cordless vacuum when she felt a damp trickle inside her stretch pants. Her hospital bag was already packed—it had been for weeks—but nothing could have prepared her for that moment. She called Ross.
“I think it’s happening,” she said.
She heard a scuffle and a thud.
“Brynn? Brynn?” Ross yelled into the phone. “Sorry, I dropped my phone, I … Oh my God! Okay, should I come get you?”
“Yeah,” she said. She wasn’t having contractions yet. She felt completely fine. “I don’t think you need to rush just yet. Come get me. I’ll let the hospital know we’re coming.”
“Okay, see you soon. Okay. Wait, are you okay? What do you need? Do you feel okay?”
Brynn laughed. She wasn’t nervous, she wasn’t in pain. Not yet. She was just excited. It was finally happening. She was happy.
“I’m great. We’re having a baby, Ross! See you soon.”
Ross sped into the driveway only minutes later. He raced inside.
“Brynn?” he yelled. “I’m here!”
She waddled into the kitchen, her bag over her shoulder.
“Ross, take a second,” she said. “Take a deep breath. We’ve got some time. You should pack a bag, too. They’re still not letting us leave the hospital once we’re there, because of Covid. Remember?”
“Right, right. Shit. Okay, uh, let me throw some things together really quick.” He ran upstairs to their room. Brynn had told him to pack a bag for weeks now, but he hadn’t.
Ross’s nervousness had been soothing to Brynn, somehow. It made her laugh. He cared so much. He was so eager to become a dad, and to support Brynn becoming a mom. He was almost more excited than she was.
He emerged with a boat bag stuffed with clothing and a toiletry kit, and then he hastily threw some snacks from the kitchen cabinet in it.
“We can’t leave, right?” he said. “I want to make sure you have food you like.”
“Thanks,” Brynn said.
An hour later, after being examined by a nurse and a midwife, they were told to leave the hospital and come back in three hours. It was entirely anticlimactic. Brynn hadn’t started dilating or having contractions yet, and there wasn’t an available birthing room yet, anyway. It was a small island with a relatively small hospital, after all.
“Come back?” Brynn had asked.
“Well, you’d just be waiting around here,” the midwife said. “Go enjoy the last few hours you have with just the two of you. Trust me.”
Brynn and Ross walked out to the parking lot.
“Do you want to go home?” Ross asked. It was early evening now. “Or we could go out to dinner?”
Brynn wasn’t sure going out to eat was a good idea. But she was hungry, and she wasn’t sure when she’d be able to eat once they came back. Going home felt strange; what would she do? Refold laundry? Reorganize the diaper station? She was as ready as she’d be.
“Let’s get dinner. The last one with just the two of us,” she said.
They went to dinner at Beach Road. It was quiet; they had just reopened after winter. They were seated right away at a table overlooking the pond in back.
“We’re celebrating,” Ross told the waitress. “My wife is in labor.”
The waitress’s eyes went wide and she looked at Brynn, confused.
“Not really,” Brynn said. “Well, sort of. We’re going to the hospital after this.”
“Well, you better order then,” the waitress said. “No time to waste!”
And they did: a glimmering seafood tower with all the raw crustaceans and shellfish that Brynn had painfully avoided over the last nine months, a feathery light shrimp tempura, a fusilli pasta with bursting tomatoes and buttery lobster, and, the restaurant’s secret star, a plate of piping-hot, extra-crispy fried chicken.
They ate, and they laughed, and they celebrated what they knew would probably be the last meal between the two of them before their lives changed forever, before it would never just be the two of them again, not really.
Brynn had felt so lucky at that table, so loved, and content, so certain that she’d chosen the right person. She’d found someone who understood her, and loved her, and wanted her to be happy. She knew, in that moment, that whatever happened to them and whatever life hit them with, they would be okay if they were together. She and Ross, she thought, could weather any storm.
But Lucas’s birth hadn’t gone according to plan. It had all gone wrong. When they’d returned to the hospital, they were set up in a spacious birthing suite. Brynn started to have contractions. She bounced on a ball. She took a hot shower. She walked around the room. She wasn’t dilating fast enough. Contractions started to become painful and intense. Eventually, they gave her Pitocin over the course of twelve hours. The midwife reached into her vagina with what looked like a knitting needle so she could fully break her water; the pain was acute and intrusive. When the Pitocin didn’t work, they gave her Cytotec over the course of another twelve hours. But that didn’t work, either. Brynn knew that she wasn’t going to deliver the baby vaginally. She could tell. Her body was fighting it. She felt like her body was locking itself down, as if to say I’m not meant for this. I’m not doing this. I’m not ready. But she had to. The baby was coming, one way or another.
By then, the contractions were so painful that Brynn started to become sick, shaking, sweating, and vomiting. At some point, she’d bent over and received an epidural from a visiting doctor in from New York, who assured her the epidural would make everything better. But it hadn’t. She continued to be sick. And every time she had a contraction, the baby’s heart rate would plummet. She was hooked up to a large monitor that showed the baby’s heart rate, so every minute when she writhed in pain with another wave of a contraction, she’d be reminded by the large, beeping neon machine that things were going south. That she had already—even before she’d become a mother—done something wrong.
At that point, Ross demanded that the doctor come in and take a closer look. Brynn hadn’t been able to say what he said for her.
“Something is wrong,” he had said when the nurse arrived. “We need the doctor.”
“Ross, let them do their jobs,” Brynn had told him, embarrassed to be asking for any extra attention. “I’ll be fine.”
“Brynn,” Ross had said, sternly. “Let me take care of you. For once, let me help. Please. I got this.” He rested his hand on her forehead. His palm felt cool and comforting.
When the doctor came in, Ross stood up.
“My wife is sick,” he said. “She’s in pain. Something isn’t right.” His voice was unyielding and stoic, resounding but not shrill.
“It’s probably the reaction to the epidural,” the doctor said. “But let’s take a look.”
“It’s not just that,” Ross said. “My wife is sick. You need to listen to how she’s feeling.”
As soon as the doctor put her hands on Brynn’s belly, she turned to Ross. “You’re right,” she said. “We need to do an emergency C-section right away. Let’s go.”
Even in the midst of her pain, Brynn hadn’t felt entitled to advocate for herself. It was exactly what Ginny had told her. Brynn had known that she’d have to speak up, and she never thought that it would be a problem for her. She’d always been able to ask for what she wanted. But when she had actually been in the moment, she’d been too overwhelmed to even know what to ask for, or how to describe what she was feeling. After all, labor and delivery were supposed to be painful, she told herself. Birth was supposed to be scary and difficult. She had signed up for the pain when she’d decided to have a baby, right? This was what every mother on the planet had endured; Brynn didn’t think she was allowed to act as though it was harder for her than it had been for any of them. The person she was before the baby—a champion of herself—had gone into hiding beneath the scratchy hospital sheets, and she’d remained silent.
If Ross hadn’t been there, and if he hadn’t spoken up for her, Brynn might have lost the baby. She might have lost herself.
And by the time the doctor came in and felt Brynn’s stomach, she said they had to do a C-section, and fast.
Fetal intolerance, prolonged labor, cephalopelvic disproportion, and failure to progress. Brynn would learn later that those were the things that were happening to her and the baby at the time. But she hadn’t known to ask, and nobody had told her. While she was being poked and prodded and observed, Brynn had silently assumed that whatever was happening was simply her fault. She wasn’t equipped to be a mother. It was that simple.
Brynn was wheeled down the hall, and Ross had to stay in the birthing suite. Covid rules. She continued to vomit throughout the operation. No one asked her if she wanted the curtain to be up or if she wanted to see the baby emerge from inside of her. If they’d asked, she would have said that she wanted to see it. But she didn’t think to ask for it, it all happened so fast. So, she just stared up at the lights on the ceiling, occasionally turning her head to vomit in a bag held by a nurse. And then, suddenly, a few minutes later, someone held up a crying baby, and presented it to her as her son. Brynn hadn’t felt him come out of her, and she hadn’t seen him come out, either. She looked at the baby and didn’t know for sure that he was hers. He could be anyone’s baby, she thought. She stared at him. His eyes were black, his skin red and somewhat loose around his small limbs, as though he hadn’t finished growing into himself yet. There was nothing about him, she thought, that made him hers. There was nothing about him that connected him to her. He was a baby, but she didn’t feel that he was hers. She felt nothing.
They stitched her back up while they cleaned the baby. She glanced over and saw a black, tar-like substance being wiped from his bottom. His testicles were engorged. A nurse told her that was normal. She continued to be sick while they closed her stomach back up, turning her head every few seconds to vomit bile or gag. The nurse who had been holding the bag had stepped away to help with the baby, so Brynn heaved and retched into the air like a sick dog.
She couldn’t hold him, not for almost half an hour. She was still shaking from the epidural. The baby cries started to hurt her head. She wanted to cover her ears, but she could barely lift her arms. She was desperate for water. She was thirstier than she’d ever been in her entire life. But when she asked for water, she was told she’d have to wait. We don’t want you to get sick again, they said.
These first few moments with the baby are the most important. It’s when you’ll bond. This is the golden hour. The what? The golden hour. The first hour of your baby’s life. It’s the most important time for you to bond with your child. To have skin-to-skin contact, for your child to imprint on you, and you on him. The bond you make right now is the bond you’ll have for life.
It seemed like a lot of pressure to put on a mother who had just endured a trauma and could barely hold the cup of ice chips they had finally given her. She didn’t want to hold the baby. She wanted to go to sleep.
Someone took the cup of ice chips from her and handed her the baby. I’m not ready, she started to say, but no one heard. She held the baby in her arms like a glass vase. The backs of her knees were sweaty and itchy. She wanted to scratch them, but she couldn’t do anything with the baby in her arms. It was so small, so fragile. It was not cozy and soft, it was an uncomfortable nest of bones, an angry creature who seemed to be offended by the arms of the person who had just housed him inside their own body for almost a year.
When they wheeled Brynn back up, Ross was still there, just as before. Except now, they had a baby. Now, it was the three of them. Everything had changed in an instant.
Upon the advice of the nurses, Ross removed his shirt. A nurse took the baby from Brynn’s arms and gave him to Ross. He stared at the baby with something in his eyes she had seen before: true love, true adoration, true devotion. She’d seen him look at her that way before.
“He’s amazing!” Ross said to her. “He’s perfect!” He was crying.
Brynn had heard that sometimes fathers struggled with the lack of attention on them after the birth of a baby. Suddenly, all the love from their partner went to the baby, and not to them. But Brynn felt that way herself. Why was this baby getting all the praise, when all it had to do was show up? She was the one who had done all the work. She was the one who had just experienced the most terrifying moment of her life. She was the one in pain. She was the one who was bleeding. And she was the one whose life would be changed the most by this. She was the one who had to now say goodbye to who she was. She’d left that person on the operating table. Did Ross not see that? Did Ross not see that she was the one who needed to be looked at the way he was looking at the baby?
“And you’re amazing, honey,” he said, like an afterthought. He didn’t look up from the baby. That baby had become his whole world.
The next few days in the hospital only solidified Brynn’s feelings of isolation. The priority of everyone around her was getting the baby to breastfeed. Brynn sat in bed, propped up by pillows, while the nurses hovered over her, adjusting her breasts, squeezing her nipples, demonstrating different feeding positions. Nothing seemed to work. Nothing felt comfortable or sustainable. The baby latched on, but with a weak grasp, not enough for Brynn to feel like he was really connecting to her and filling up. Try the football hold, like this, one nurse said. Brynn stuffed the baby onto her forearm as if she were a waitress with an extra tray, and he tried to clamp onto her nipple from the side. Hold him more horizontal, like that, another nurse said, and Brynn readjusted again. Lie on your side with him next to you, another suggested. Just make sure you don’t fall asleep like that, of course.
Later, a nurse showed Brynn how to massage her breasts to avoid mastitis. Already, her breasts had turned into giant iron lumps, completely unfamiliar to her, as though someone had sewn boulders into her body while she was in surgery. Brynn asked about bottle feeding, but the nurses shook their heads. “Breastfeeding will work for you if you keep trying,” they said.
Brynn wanted to sleep. She was so tired. But someone came into the room every hour or so to check the baby’s vitals, to help her breastfeed, to poke and prod. The hospital policy was to keep the baby in the room with the mother twenty-four hours a day. There was no nursery option. This was for optimal bonding, they’d said. The brief moments when Brynn could sleep were narrated by the noises of the hospital—the swishing of the privacy curtain opening and closing, the beeping of machines, the cries and moans of other mothers in other rooms, the urgent pounding of sneakers in the hallways. Ross slept soundly on the couch by the window, with an eye pillow that a nurse had provided him wrapped around his head. He remained asleep even when a nurse came in and turned the lights on. He just stayed asleep.
Her body ached. Her insides had been taken out and put back in, but that wasn’t what hurt. Her body hurt from exhaustion. Her bones needed sleep. Her skin needed sleep. Her heart needed sleep. Every cell in her body was begging her to shut down. Could it be possible, she wondered, to fall asleep, in the deepest sleep imaginable, and wake up in another life? A life where things had happened as planned. Where she was actually happy to have become a mother. Where she was anywhere else besides this cold room with a baby she didn’t know and an oblivious, sleeping husband. Somewhere where someone could hold her hand, look her in the eyes, and say You just did something incredible. I’m proud of you. Somewhere where that was said before anything at all was said to the baby.
She told the nurses how much her body hurt. They gave her Tylenol and stool softeners. She couldn’t eat anything until she released a big fart, they said.
“What?” Ross blurted when he heard this. He had woken up for the hospital breakfast.
“The body has a lot of trapped gas after the surgery,” the nurse said, unfazed. “You need to release it before ingesting anything.” Everything about the recovery process was designed to humiliate her, Brynn felt. Every private part of herself was no longer hers. It now belonged to the baby, and was therefore open to the hospital to investigate, to manipulate, to use for experiments. The fact that she herself had just endured surgery was irrelevant. It was no longer about her. Or maybe it never was.
When she felt ready to walk around and move, she could only circle the floor of her room, like a fish in a tank.
“Can’t go out into the hallways,” the nurse instructed. “Covid rules.”
Brynn gingerly stepped around the room, her insides feeling like a lava lamp, squishy and out of place, ready to collapse at any moment. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. She looked for a window; there wasn’t one. In the mirror was a stranger—a washed-out woman, bloated but empty, silent but screaming. She splashed her face with water. Even the way the water washed down her skin felt new and different. She’d transformed into someone she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
Back in the room, Ross was watching TV. Naked and Afraid. A woman battling severe bug bites was trying to keep a fire going despite the impending jungle rain.
I don’t want to be here, the woman said, hanging her head in her hands, crunching her gnawed body into a ball. I just don’t think I can handle it. I want to go home.
Brynn had looked at the hospital bag she’d packed for herself, realizing how stupid and unnecessary it all was. It was stuffed with brand-new items she’d put on her registry—a cashmere bathrobe, a floral-print nursing wrap, a bamboo-cotton onesie with matching hat for the baby, organic nipple cream, a travel sound machine. Items that she’d imagined herself wearing and using back when she thought she knew what having a baby would be like. Back when she thought she would be ready. The bag sat on the floor by the bed, untouched.
She’d give anything, she had thought in that moment, to trade places with the woman in the jungle. To hear nothing but the sound of rain and the static of other creatures not reliant on her, to be able to hear her own breath, her own heartbeat, simply existing within the world.