Read Online Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood by Drew Magary - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Drew Magary
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back in, examined the crown of the baby’s head, and offered my wife two options.
“Okay, so this baby isn’t coming out,” he told her. “And I see his heart rate dropping. So we can keep at this pushing for a bit, or we can—”
That was all the opening she needed. “CAESARIAN!”
“Are you sure?”
“Please. Just get this thing out.”
They handed me a set of surgical scrubs, which I put on with glee because I love pretending to be a doctor. Then the nurse told me I had to gather up all of our stuff because we weren’t coming back to the room. I looked around. There was a lot of shit. I didn’t want to move. I hate moving. This was our home now.
“Can’t I just leave it here for a second?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” the nurse said.
“Well, where do I put it? Is there, like, a bus station locker somewhere?”
“They’ll have a place for you to put your things in the recovery room.”
I threw all of our belongings into six different hospital-issued garbage bags and then huffed alongside my wife like a homeless person as they rolled her gurney roughly ten feet to the OR. I was expecting a much longer walk, a walk long enough for me to make some kind of rousing speech about the beauty of this moment to a woman who was half-conscious. Instead, the OR was right there, which makes perfect sense from a medical standpoint, though not from a dramatic one. The recovery room nurse told me to place my bags on a nearby chair, and I begged her reassurance that no one would come and steal my wallet while my wife was being slashed open.
They put a shower cap on my wife’s head and drew a curtain across the top of her stomach. The nurse told me not to go past the curtain, and I obeyed the hell out of her. A team of doctors gathered at her feet and the sounds began. I could hear gooshing and gurgling and all kinds of horrible noises. Not being able to look beyond the curtain only made things worse because it allowed my imagination to roam free, with scythes and ice cream scoops digging into my wife’s body.
“Do you have the baby?” I asked the doctor.
“Not yet. Sometimes, once the incision is opened, they hide.”
And I thought,
Where is there to hide?
It’s not like a uterus has a supply closet. I looked down at my wife and she was fighting to stay awake so that she could witness the birth.
“I’m gonna be sick,” she told me. The nurse handed me one of those plastic hospital basins shaped like a kidney bean to place near her mouth and she drooled bile into it. She began crying, the tears pooling along the bottom ridge of her glasses’ lenses.
“This is so awful, Drew.”
“You’re doing great. It’s all gonna be over soon.”
“It’s horrible. I can feel them reaching in.”
“It’ll all be over soon and we’ll have a beautiful son and you won’t remember any of this. Not the waiting. Not the Cervidil. Not the monitors. Not even this hospital. Please, just hang on.”
“I love you.”
“I love you so much, just please hang on. I swear to you it’ll be okay.”
Dr. Kleinbaum yanked the baby out and held him over the curtain, like this was some kind of puppet show.
“You did it!” I screamed to my wife. “You fucking did it!”
She gave the baby a kiss. “I’m going to pass out now.”
“By all means.”
And pass out she did. Once the baby pops out, you assume that’s the end of it, that they stitch Mommy up in five seconds and you go about your merry way. But in reality, a C-section is major surgery, which means layers upon layers of dermis and subcutaneous tissue must be repaired, the stitches made only after the placenta and the amniotic fluid have been removed. My wife slept in relative peace while I sat there, watching the silhouettes move ominously to and fro on the other side of the curtain and hearing the awful sounds of a medical vacuum sucking up the afterbirth.
“Are you guys almost done?” I asked.
“Not quite,” said the doctor. “We have to
“Okay, so this baby isn’t coming out,” he told her. “And I see his heart rate dropping. So we can keep at this pushing for a bit, or we can—”
That was all the opening she needed. “CAESARIAN!”
“Are you sure?”
“Please. Just get this thing out.”
They handed me a set of surgical scrubs, which I put on with glee because I love pretending to be a doctor. Then the nurse told me I had to gather up all of our stuff because we weren’t coming back to the room. I looked around. There was a lot of shit. I didn’t want to move. I hate moving. This was our home now.
“Can’t I just leave it here for a second?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” the nurse said.
“Well, where do I put it? Is there, like, a bus station locker somewhere?”
“They’ll have a place for you to put your things in the recovery room.”
I threw all of our belongings into six different hospital-issued garbage bags and then huffed alongside my wife like a homeless person as they rolled her gurney roughly ten feet to the OR. I was expecting a much longer walk, a walk long enough for me to make some kind of rousing speech about the beauty of this moment to a woman who was half-conscious. Instead, the OR was right there, which makes perfect sense from a medical standpoint, though not from a dramatic one. The recovery room nurse told me to place my bags on a nearby chair, and I begged her reassurance that no one would come and steal my wallet while my wife was being slashed open.
They put a shower cap on my wife’s head and drew a curtain across the top of her stomach. The nurse told me not to go past the curtain, and I obeyed the hell out of her. A team of doctors gathered at her feet and the sounds began. I could hear gooshing and gurgling and all kinds of horrible noises. Not being able to look beyond the curtain only made things worse because it allowed my imagination to roam free, with scythes and ice cream scoops digging into my wife’s body.
“Do you have the baby?” I asked the doctor.
“Not yet. Sometimes, once the incision is opened, they hide.”
And I thought,
Where is there to hide?
It’s not like a uterus has a supply closet. I looked down at my wife and she was fighting to stay awake so that she could witness the birth.
“I’m gonna be sick,” she told me. The nurse handed me one of those plastic hospital basins shaped like a kidney bean to place near her mouth and she drooled bile into it. She began crying, the tears pooling along the bottom ridge of her glasses’ lenses.
“This is so awful, Drew.”
“You’re doing great. It’s all gonna be over soon.”
“It’s horrible. I can feel them reaching in.”
“It’ll all be over soon and we’ll have a beautiful son and you won’t remember any of this. Not the waiting. Not the Cervidil. Not the monitors. Not even this hospital. Please, just hang on.”
“I love you.”
“I love you so much, just please hang on. I swear to you it’ll be okay.”
Dr. Kleinbaum yanked the baby out and held him over the curtain, like this was some kind of puppet show.
“You did it!” I screamed to my wife. “You fucking did it!”
She gave the baby a kiss. “I’m going to pass out now.”
“By all means.”
And pass out she did. Once the baby pops out, you assume that’s the end of it, that they stitch Mommy up in five seconds and you go about your merry way. But in reality, a C-section is major surgery, which means layers upon layers of dermis and subcutaneous tissue must be repaired, the stitches made only after the placenta and the amniotic fluid have been removed. My wife slept in relative peace while I sat there, watching the silhouettes move ominously to and fro on the other side of the curtain and hearing the awful sounds of a medical vacuum sucking up the afterbirth.
“Are you guys almost done?” I asked.
“Not quite,” said the doctor. “We have to
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