Read Online Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood by Drew Magary - Free Book Online

and doctors can be about everything. An exploding heart is no more interesting to them than a bad sandwich. It’s not like on TV, where doctors run EVERYWHERE, their asses tightly clenched and their faces grim with the determination to save lives, no matter the cost. In a real hospital, everyone just plods along. A patient is an item on a to-do list. If a patient is stable enough to be left unattended for twenty straight hours, then they can be left unattended for twenty straight hours. There’s no constant sense of urgency.
    Of course, doctors and nurses have to be this way. They can’t be emotionally attached to every patient. They can’t be screaming out for defibrillators every waking second. They’d end up doing their jobs poorly. I understood all that while we were in that room, and yet it was little comfort when my wife’s blood pressure was dipping down to corpse levels and the nurse was acting like the fucking cable box was on the fritz.
    She administered new meds through the IV and my wife shot back to life. Then the nurse left us to process what had just happened.
    “Was I dying?” my wife asked me.
    “The nurse never really made it clear.”
    “Because that felt . . . bad.”
    “You didn’t look happy about it.”
    “Somebody needs to come take this goddamn baby out. I’m dying of thirst.” When you’re in labor, you can’t eat. You can only suck on ice chips instead of drinking straight fluids. And ice chips are terrible—tiny little nuggets formed from what tastes like old dishwater. It’s like chewing on a handful of frozen teeth. Refilling the ice chip cup every half hour was the only useful task I could perform for her.
    A few hours later, the nurse came in and said the Cervidil had to be applied a second time. My wife nearly passed out hearing the news.
    Sixteen hours after arriving at the hospital, she was finally ready to be induced. The anesthesiologist came by to administer the epidural and my wife greeted him as a liberator. Soon after, the ob-gyn came into our room for the delivery, followed close behind by my father-in-law, who had popped in for a visit.
    The doctor looked over my wife. “Okay, so I think we’re about ready to—”
    “Excuse me, Doctor,” said my father-in-law. “Are you Dr. Kleinbaum of the Rockville Kleinbaums?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “I think that your daughter is our neighbor at the beach!” My father-in-law is a wonderful man who hates waking up before 1:00 P.M. and loves having extended conversations with absolute strangers.
    “Really?” asked the doctor.
    “Yes! I think they live in the townhome right next door.”
    “Is that right?”
    “How is she? We don’t get down there much because we usually have to rent out the house during the summer. You know, they’re making all kinds of noise about building on the lot next door—”
    “HEY!” my wife shouted, pointing at her belly. “Pregnant woman here!”
    My father-in-law took umbrage. “We’re just having a nice conversation,
Schatz
.”
    “Will you get out of here already?”
    “All right, all right.”
    He looked at me and laughed. “Good luck, Drew.” Then he sauntered out of the room, as casual as if he had just gone shopping for groceries.
    Finally, after hours of waiting for my wife to ripen, she was ready to push. The nurse took one of her legs and I hoisted the other. We pulled her legs back like she was a turkey waiting to be trussed as a second nurse sat sentry over the precious dilated cervix. She began pushing sometime around midnight. After a few hours of trying to pop the baby out, the thing had barely moved an inch. My wife looked exhausted. Defeated. She was looking for the doctor to finally walk back into the room (they don’t have to be there for all of the pushing; doctors are just closers) so that she could end the charade of trying to have the child naturally. At this point, she wanted sleep and a cold ginger ale more than she wanted a second child. The doctor came