When the pain subsided, I looked down at the puddle on the floor.
“I’ve wet myself,” I said to Marty and hid my face in embarrassment.
In the doorway of her office, Miss Oldenburg stood, frowning at the mess I’d made in the foyer.
“Your water broke.”
I turned a clueless face toward her.
“You’re in labor,” she said in an exasperated tone. “Go up and pack your bag. I have to get you to the hospital.”
“Miss Oldenburg, Julie’s mother has died,” Marty said, her face pale as she put an arm around my waist.
Oldenburg blinked. “Her mother . . . Julie, your mother is dead? I can’t believe it! No one has contacted me. When were you notified?”
Seeing that I was unable to answer her, Marty held out the newspaper.
“She had to read it in the obituaries. Her mom died Sunday.”
Oldenburg’s face reflected disbelief. “But she was a young woman.” She clucked her tongue and studied me. “The shock of it has thrown you into labor. When is your due date?”
“Not till the thirteenth,” I managed to say.
“Just get her packed,” Oldenburg said to Marty.
That was it. Not a word that she was sorry to hear about Mama. I struggled to get adequate breath as Marty and I made our cumbersome way up the stairs. I clung to the railing and pulled myself from step to step.
“I could pack for you,” Marty offered.
“No. I want to do it, if I can get up there.”
The one thing I knew about having a baby was that I’d have to take off all my clothes and put on a hospital gown. My money bag containing the hundred-dollar bill had to be kept safe while not in my bra.
I searched inside the suitcase for a place to hide it. What I needed—a secret compartment—didn’t exist in my hand-me-down bag. Then I thought of the pocket in the blue and white suit-dress I’d worn when I first came to the home.
The other girls, having heard the news, were gathering around my bed in the dorm room. Without privacy, there was no alternative but to unpin the bag from my bra in front of them. With a knowing smile, Marty moved to block their view.
She carried the suitcase as we made our way back downstairs where she begged to ride with us to the hospital. Miss Oldenburg flatly refused.
As we backed out of the driveway and into the street, another pain struck me.
“Don’t carry on so,” Oldenburg said through her teeth. “You’ll make me wreck the car.”
“Sorry.” I wiped my sweaty forehead with the back of my hand. “I didn’t know it would hurt so.”
She chuckled. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“So reassuring,” I said under my breath.
Oldenburg slammed on the brakes, pitching me forward. I threw my hands out to keep my chest from hitting the dashboard.
“One more sarcastic word and you can get out and walk the rest of the way.”
I knew she wouldn’t put me out, and I knew why. Kay had confirmed for us that adoptive parents paid a high price to get a baby. Some of that money must be part of Oldenburg’s salary. She might even own an interest in the business. Pregnant girls, like me, were valuable to Oldenburg. She wouldn’t dare put me out on the street.
When we pulled up to the emergency entrance of the hospital, she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
I turned shocked eyes on her. “Aren’t you going in with me?”
“I never go in with a girl. My jurisdiction ends right here. You’re on your own.”
My throat swelled. “Miss Oldenburg, my mother just died and my half-sister didn’t bother to let me know. I had to read it in the newspaper.”
“I sympathize with you. I lost my mother at a young age too. It’s tough to take. I know you want someone to hold your hand through this ordeal, but there isn’t anybody. You should have thought of that when you decided to have premarital sex.”
“Oh, please. Haven’t you lectured me enough about that?”
A pain hit me. I doubled over, moaning.
“You’d better go on in. Give them your name and tell them someone called ahead to let them know you were in labor. I need to get going.”
I shook with anger. “If you can spare one more minute, I’ll get my suitcase out of the backseat.”
I slammed the car door and hauled the bag up the walkway. When I reached the emergency room, I looked back toward the car. She was still sitting there, watching me. At least she had the decency to wait until I got inside.
A nurse wasted no time getting me into a wheelchair and up to the maternity floor. She wheeled me into a labor room and, handing me a hospital gown, told me to undress.
“It ties in the back,” she said, picking up my suitcase.
“Where are you going with that?” I asked, my voice too shrill.
“It’ll be here in this closet until you deliver and we put you in a room. No one will bother it.”
I was under such duress about Mama’s death and the labor pains that I didn’t fully grasp what was happening. No one at the home had told us what to expect during the birth process. I was shocked when the nurse proceeded to shave me “down there” and give me an enema. The humiliating procedures completed, she flicked the light switch and started out of the labor room.
“Wait!”
“Yes?” She stuck her head back inside the room.
“Please, don’t leave me here in the dark. I’m scared.”
She looked surprised. “You want the lights on? I thought you’d try to sleep.”
“Who could sleep? Leave them on and the door open. Somebody needs to tell me what is going on.”
“You’re having a baby.”
“No kidding!”
I wanted to be stoic in front of her, but hard as I fought, the tears kept coming. When she saw them, her expression softened.
“You’re in the first stages of labor. It’ll be a while.”
“How . . . how long, do you think?” I asked through a hiccupping sob.
“Hard to tell.” She glanced at the chart. “It’s your first, I see. It could take anywhere from eight to twelve hours. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit. You’re not the only gal in labor here, you know.”
And she was gone.
I had mistakenly supposed that someone would be in the room with me, constantly monitoring my progress. Frightened, I lay there, tense and waiting for the next pain to strike. When it didn’t come right away, I relaxed enough to check out my surroundings.
Two sinks were directly behind me. The bed I was on was equipped with leather straps and wheels to raise it up and down. A round mirror hung above me. I supposed it was there to allow me to see what the doctor did, if he ever came to do anything.
The next pain caught me unprepared. I managed to moan instead of crying out, even though it was sharper than the first ones. For the next hour, the pains came every fifteen minutes or so, according to my wrist watch, which I’d kept on.
The door was barely open, but I could hear footsteps and voices as they passed by in the corridor, and occasionally a scream.
At one point, I eased myself off the bed and crept to the door to look out. A doctor came striding along the hall, followed by a man wearing khaki slacks and a navy shirt and wringing his hands. As they strode into the room across the hall from mine, I caught a glimpse of a nurse standing beside the bed and holding the hand of another woman in labor.
“Your husband is here, Mrs. Robins,” the doctor said. “How are we doing?”
A moment later, another nurse came toward me from down the hall, her white, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiled floor.
“Get back inside and shut the door,” she ordered.
“Are women with husbands the only ones who get the attention around here?” I asked, holding my stomach with both hands.
She gave me a condescending smile. “You’re one of the girls from the home for unwed mothers, aren’t you?”
Shame flushed through me. My face grew hot.
“I thought so,” she continued, apparently judging from my scarlet cheeks that she was correct. “We’ll get to you soon enough.”
Clutching her clipboard to her chest, she steered me none too gently back inside my room to the bed.
“Now stay there. If they catch you out of your room, they’ll strap your legs down, and you won’t be able to get up. They’ll do that anyway for delivery.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“The interns and doctors.”
“I need some medicine for the pain. Can’t you give me something?”
“We give twilight sleep, but I don’t know if you qualify for it.” She lifted the top sheet of paper on her clipboard and studied it. “Julie Morgan, aren’t you? I see you haven’t signed off on the adoption papers yet. May I ask why not?”
“I’m not sure about giving my baby up,” I said, skimming my fingers over my bulging tummy.
“Then what, pray tell, are you doing in a home? Didn’t you go there to hide the fact that you are pregnant out of wedlock?”
“Yes, but I—” Another pain struck me, this one much harder than previous ones. “Oh God,” I cried out. “Please make it stop. I can’t bear it!”
“Don’t yell like that. You’ll scare the other mothers to death. You’ll get twilight sleep, if and when you sign the papers.”
“I don’t have them with me. I left them back at the home,” I said.
“The social worker from the adoption agency should be here any minute. She’ll have a set of documents with her. Sign them, and you’ll get something for pain.”
Two hours later, the social worker peeked into my room, catching me in the clutches of a terrible pain.
“Help me, please,” I cried out. “Please make them give me something for this pain.”
“You haven’t signed the papers turning the baby over for adoption,” she said with a toss of her head.
I dug my fingernails into my thighs.
“You surely can’t expect me to do that now.”
“You won’t get out of this hospital until you do,” she said, “and certainly you won’t get anything for the pain. Now, don’t you think signing would be the reasonable course of action? I can hold the papers so you can do it without even sitting up.”
“If I do, I surrender my baby permanently, don’t I?”
“That’s correct.”
“What if I change my mind?”
She shook her head and sighed. “Miss Morgan, there is no changing of your mind in a situation like this. Think what it would do to the adoptive parents, who’ve spent their hard-earned money to get a baby. Think how devastated they must be that they can’t have a child of their own. If you took your baby away from them, it would . . . I don’t know, but I imagine it could very well break their hearts. I realize that for some of you girls it is difficult to give up your babies, however, if you sign now, we will allow you to hold it before we take it away.”
“The baby is not an ‘it,’” I said. “My son has a name. It’s Nicholas, and I’ll thank you to call him that.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! It could very well be a girl.”
“It’s a boy and . . . I . . .” Pain seared through me. “I want my mama!” I cried out. “Oh God, help me.”
The woman looked at me with cold eyes.
“I’ll leave the pen and papers here on the night table. I’ll stop by again to collect them before I leave. If you’re smart, you’ll sign and salvage what you can of your life.”
After she left, no one came in to check on me for over an hour. Finally, a young intern appeared.
“Doing fine,” he said, lowering the sheet. “It shouldn’t be too much longer now.”
“Please, give me that twilight sleep the nurse was talking about. Knock me out, in the name of God. I can’t bear this pain.”
“No can do, honey. Not till you sign off on the kid.”
Hours later, when the sun was backlighting the leaf pattern on the closed chintz curtains, I was still alone and no one had checked on me since he left. My body shifted into another mode that set off a need to push. The pains were now only about three minutes apart and had increased in intensity to the point that I thought I would surely die. An excruciatingly hard one hit. Gritting my teeth, I pushed so hard the veins strained in my neck.
The next moment, the baby was in the bed.