I WAS a young man then—full of information and tenderness. It was her first baby. She lived just around the corner from her present abode, one room over a small general store kept by an old man.
It was a difficult forceps delivery and I lost the child, to my disgust; though without nurse, anesthetist, or even enough hot water in the place, I shouldn’t have been overmuch blamed. I must have been fairly able not to have done worse. But I won a friend and I found another—to admire, a sort of love for the woman.
She was slightly older than her husband, a heavy-looking Italian boy. Both were short. A peasant woman who could scarcely talk a word of English, being recently come from the other side, a woman of great simplicity of character—docility, patience, with a fine direct look in her grey eyes. And courageous. Devoted to her instincts and convictions and to me.
Sometimes she’d cry out at her husband, as I got to know her later, with some high pitched animalistic sound when he would say something to her in Italian that I couldn’t understand and I knew that she was holding out for me.
Usually though, she said very little, looking me straight in the eye with a smile, her voice pleasant and candid though I could scarcely understand her few broken words. Her sentences were seldom more than three or four words long. She always acted as though I must naturally know what was in her mind and her smile with a shrug always won me.
Apart from the second child, born a year after the first, during the absence of the family from town for a short time, I had delivered Angelina of all her children. This one would make my eighth attendance on her, her ninth labor.
Three A.M., June the 10th, I noticed the calendar as I flashed on the light in my office to pick up my satchel, the same, by the way, my uncle had given me when I graduated from Medical School. One gets not to deliver women at home nowadays. The hospital is the place for it. The equipment is far better.
Smiling, I picked up the relic from where I had tossed it two or three years before under a table in my small laboratory hoping never to have to use it again. In it I found a brand new hypodermic syringe with the manufacturer’s name still shiny with black enamel on the barrel. Also a pair of curved scissors I had been looking for for the last three years, thinking someone had stolen them.
I dusted off the top of the Lysol bottle when I took it from the shelf and quickly checking on the rest of my necessities, I went off, without a coat or necktie, wearing the same shirt I had had on during the day preceding, soiled but—better so.
It was a beautiful June night. The lighted clock in the tower over the factory said 3:20. The clock in the facade of the Trust Company across the track said it also. Paralleling the railroad I recognized the squat figure of the husband returning home ahead of me—whistling as he walked. I put my hand out of the car in sign of recognition and kept on, rounding the final triangular block a little way ahead to bring my car in to the right in front of the woman’s house for parking.
The husband came up as I was trying to decide which of the two steep cobbled entry-ways to take. Got you up early, he said.
Where ya been? his sister said to him when we had got into the house from the rear.
I went down to the police to telephone, he said, that’s the surest way.
I told you to go next door, you dope. What did you go away down there for? Leaving me here alone.
Aw, I didn’t want to wake nobody up.
I got two calls, I broke in.
Yes, he went away and left me alone. I got scared so I waked him up anyway to call you.
The kitchen where we stood was lighted by a somewhat damaged Welsbach mantel gaslight. Everything was quiet. The husband took off his cap and sat along the wall. I put my satchel on the tubs and began to take things out.
There was just one sterile umbilical tie left, two, really, in the same envelope, as always, for possible twins, but that detail aside, everything was ample and in order. I complimented myself. Even the Argyrol was there, in tablet form, insuring the full potency of a fresh solution. Nothing so satisfying as a kit of any sort prepared and in order even when picked up in an emergency after an interval of years.
I selected out two artery clamps and two scissors. One thing, there’d be no need of sutures afterward in this case.
You want hot water?
Not yet, I said. Might as well take my shirt off, though. Which I did, throwing it on a kitchen chair and donning the usual light rubber apron.
I’m sorry we ain’t got no light in there. The electricity is turned off. Do you think you can see with a candle?
Sure. Why not? But it was very dark in the room where the woman lay on a low double bed. A three-year-old boy was asleep on the sheet beside her. She wore an abbreviated nightgown, to her hips. Her short thick legs had, as I knew, bunches of large varicose veins about them like vines. Everything was clean and in order. The sister-in-law held the candle. Few words were spoken.
I made the examination and found the head high but the cervix fully dilated. Oh yeah. It often happens in women who have had many children; pendulous abdomen, lack of muscular power resulting in a slight misdirection of the forces of labor and the thing may go on for days.
When I finished, Angelina got up and sat on the edge of the bed. I went back to the kitchen, the candle following me, leaving the room dark again.
Do you need it any more? the sister-in-law said, I’ll put it out.
Then the husband spoke up, Ain’t you got but that one candle?
No, said the sister.
Why didn’t you get some at the store when you woke him up; use your head.
The woman had the candle in a holder on the cold coal range. She leaned over to blow it out but misdirecting her aim, she had to blow three times to do it. Three or four times.
What’s the matter? said her brother, getting weak? Old age counts, eh Doc? he said and got up finally to go out.
We could hear an engineer signaling outside in the still night—with short quick blasts of his whistle—very staccato—not, I suppose, to make any greater disturbance than necessary with people sleeping all about.
Later on the freights began to roar past shaking the whole house.
She doesn’t seem to be having many strong pains, I said to my companion in the kitchen, for there wasn’t a sound from the labor room and hadn’t been for the past half hour.
She don’t want to make no noise and wake the kids.
How old is the oldest now? I asked.
He’s sixteen. The girl would have been eighteen this year. You know the first one you took from her.
Where are they all?
In there, with a nod of the head toward the other room of the apartment, such as it was, the first floor of an old two-story house, the whole thing perhaps twenty-five feet each way.
I sat in a straight chair by the kitchen table, my right arm, bare to the shoulder, resting on the worn oil cloth.
She says she wants an enema, said the woman. O.K. But I don’t know how to give it to her. She ain’t got a bed-pan or nothing. I don’t want to get the bed all wet.
Has she had a movement today?
Yeah, but she thinks an enema will help her.
Well, have you got a bag?
Yeah, she says there’s one here somewhere.
Get it. She’s got a chamber pot here, hasn’t she?
Sure.
So the woman got the equipment, a blue rubber douche bag, the rubber of it feeling rather stiff to the touch. She laid it on the stove in its open box and looked at it holding her hands out helplessly. I’m afraid, she said.
All right, you hold the candle. Mix up a little warm soapy water. We’ll need some vaseline.
The woman called out to us where to find it, having overheard our conversation.
Lift up, till I put these newspapers under you, said my assistant. I don’t want to wet the bed.
That’s nothing, Angelina answered smiling. But she raised her buttocks high so we could fix her.
Returning ten minutes later to my chair, I saw the woman taking the pot out through the kitchen and upstairs to empty it. I crossed my legs, crossed my bare arms in my lap also and let my head fall forward. I must have slept, for when I opened my eyes again, both my legs and my arms were somewhat numb. I felt deliciously relaxed though somewhat bewildered. I must have snored, waking myself with a start. Everything was quiet as before. The peace of the room was unchanged. Delicious.
I heard the woman and her attendant making some slight sounds in the next room and went in to her.
Examining her, I found things unchanged. It was about half past four. What to do? Do you mind if I give you the needle? I asked her gently. We’d been through this many times before. She shrugged her shoulders as much as to say, It’s up to you. So I gave her a few minims of pituitrin to intensify the strength of the pains. I was cautious since the practice is not without danger. It is possible to get a ruptured uterus where the muscle has been stretched by many pregnancies if one does not know what one is doing. Then I returned to the kitchen to wait once more.
This time I took out the obstetric gown I had brought with me, it was in a roll as it had come from the satchel, and covering it with my shirt to make a better surface and a little more bulk, I placed it at the edge of the table and leaning forward, laid my face sidewise upon it, my arms resting on the table before me, my nose and mouth at the table edge between my arms. I could breathe freely. It was a pleasant position and as I lay there content, I thought as I often do of what painting it was in which I had seen men sleeping that way.
Then I fell asleep and, in my half sleep began to argue with myself—or some imaginary power—of science and humanity. Our exaggerated ways will have to pull in their horns, I said. We’ve learned from one teacher and neglected another. Now that I’m older, I’m finding the older school.
The pituitary extract and other simple devices represent science. Science, I dreamed, has crowded the stage more than is necessary. The process of selection will simplify the application. It touches us too crudely now, all newness is over-complex. I couldn’t tell whether I was asleep or awake.
But without science, without pituitrin, I’d be here till noon or maybe—what? Some others wouldn’t wait so long but rush her now. A carefully guarded shot of pituitrin—ought to save her at least much exhaustion—if not more. But I don’t want to have anything happen to her.
Now when I lifted my head, there was beginning to be a little light outside. The woman was quiet. No progress. This time I increased the dose of pituitrin. She had stronger pains but without effect.
Maybe I’d better give you a still larger dose, I said. She made no demur. Well, let me see if I can help you first. I sat on the edge of the bed while the sister-in-law held the candle again glancing at the window where the daylight was growing. With my left hand steering the child’s head, I used my ungloved right hand outside on her bare abdomen to press upon the fundus. The woman and I then got to work. Her two hands grabbed me at first a little timidly about the right wrist and forearm. Go ahead, I said. Pull hard. I welcomed the feel of her hands and the strong pull. It quieted me in the way the whole house had quieted me all night.
This woman in her present condition would have seemed repulsive to me ten years ago—now, poor soul, I see her to be as clean as a cow that calves. The flesh of my arm lay against the flesh of her knee gratefully. It was I who was being comforted and soothed.
Finally the head began to move. I wasn’t sorry, thinking perhaps I’d have to do something radical before long. We kept at it till the head was born and I could leave her for a moment to put on my other glove. It was almost light now. What time is it? I asked the other woman. Six o’clock, she said.
Just after I had tied the cord, cut it and lifted the baby, a girl, to hand it to the woman, I saw the mother clutch herself suddenly between her thighs and give a cry. I was startled.
The other woman turned with a flash and shouted, Get out of here, you damned kids! I’ll slap your damned face for you. And the door through which a head had peered was pulled closed. The three-year-old on the bed beside the mother stirred when the baby cried at first shrilly but had not wakened.
Oh yes, the drops in the baby’s eyes. No need. She’s as clean as a beast. How do I know? Medical discipline says every case must have drops in the eyes. No chance of gonorrhoea though here—but—Do it.
I heard her husband come into the kitchen now so we gave him the afterbirth in a newspaper to bury. Keep them damned kids out of here, his sister told him. Lock that door. Of course, there was no lock on it.
How do you feel now? I asked the mother after everything had been cleaned up. All right, she said with the peculiar turn of her head and smile by which I knew her.
How many is that? I asked the other woman. Five boys and three girls, she said. I’ve forgotten how to fix a baby, she went on. What shall I do? Put a little boric acid powder on the belly button to help dry it up?