“Can I go back to my room now?” I ask.
“You’ll stay here overnight. Maybe longer.”
“But if I am fine by tomorrow, may I go back to my room?”
The other nurse in the room laughs. “You should take advantage of having a little peace and quiet in the maternity ward. You’re the only one here right now. It will be like having your own room. The kitchen brings you your meals. And you really should rest.”
“I just want to go back to my room.”
Dr. Melson frowns at me. “That’s my decision to make, not yours. But if you’re recovering nicely by tomorrow, I might allow it.” He turns to the nurse. “Take her to the ward.”
It is past suppertime when I am escorted on shaking legs to a ward down the hall, a room with four beds in it, all empty. The nurse gives me a package of sanitary pads and tells me I’ll bleed for several days and not to worry—heavy bleeding is normal.
“And don’t express any milk from your breasts,” she says. “You’ll be tempted to, but don’t. You’ll just make it worse. When the milk starts to come in, I’ll give you some warm compresses for the pain.”
The nurse leaves me, and I study my breasts under my hospital gown after she is gone, anxious for my milk to appear. Amaryllis will need it.
Dinner is brought to me on a cart, and I devour the meat loaf and whipped potatoes on my plate.
I am beyond exhausted, but sleep eludes me. The nursery is somewhere close, I am sure of it. Amaryllis isn’t far. I finally fall asleep gazing at yellow feathery wisps that float on my mind at the sound of an infant’s tender cry. Somewhere here on the second floor, Amaryllis is crying for me. My breasts ache to nourish her.
In the morning, I awake from fitful sleep that has been interrupted by after-birth pains, soreness in my breasts, the lingering echoes of Amaryllis’s cries, and dreams of escaping. One of the delivery room nurses from the day before brings me breakfast and asks how I slept.
“Fine,” I say. “Can I go back to my room now?”
The nurse gives me a mildly quizzical look. “Dr. Melson won’t be by until the afternoon.”
“But I’m fine! I just want to go back to my room.”
The nurse gazes at me for a moment and then says she’ll check. But an hour later, it isn’t Dr. Melson who comes to my room, butDr. Townsend. He does not congratulate me on having given birth to a beautiful baby. “I hear you’d like to go back up to the third floor,” he says.
I tamp down alarm that I’ve tipped him off that I’m up to something. “It’s hard for me to be on this floor. I can hear the baby crying and I’d rather not.”
He studies me carefully before answering. “I suppose I can understand that. I hear you forgot yesterday what the plans are for the baby.” His gaze is penetrating.
“I didn’t forget,” I said, holding that gaze. “Dr. Melson wasn’t being clear.”
Several seconds tick by before he continues.
“If you are allowed back to your own room, you’ll still be on a minimal schedule,” Dr. Townsend says. “You will not be returning to your job at the kitchen for a week or two, and you should stay off the stairs between floors.”
“I understand.”
“All right,” he says. “I’ll have Dr. Melson come in to make sure the postpartum bleeding is under control, and if he sees no problems, you can go back to your room this afternoon.”
“Thank you, Dr. Townsend,” I say.
“You’re welcome.” He turns to leave the room.
He has only been gone a few seconds when I rise to go to the lavatory in the hall to change my pad and use the toilet. I stop just short of the entrance to the hallway when I hear the nurse and Dr. Townsend talking, obviously about me.
“I’m sure you know best, Doctor, but I don’t see the point in her returning to her own room when she’s only going to have to come back here in two days,” the nurse is saying.
“The procedure will go better if she’s had a few days to recover from the birth in a room where she feels comfortable. It’s not as if it’s difficult to bring her back down.” The doctor starts to walk away.
I clamp a hand over my mouth and back away from the doorway, my stitches pulling and stinging. I turn to the wall so that Dr. Townsend won’t see me if he comes in my direction, but the doctor’s footsteps lead him to the door out of the hospital ward. It is only after the outer door clicks shut and he is gone that I let out the stifled gasp.
There is only one reason to bring me back to the hospital ward. They are going to cut into me, change what is inside so that I can never have any more children.
