Fear

The morning will be etched in my mind forever. The morning when my world—the one I had so vigilantly constructed— began to unravel..

“How’s everything going?” the pediatrician asked, peering first at the newborn in my arms and then at my face. He hadn’t seen us since Malcolm’s birth by Cesarean three days earlier, when he had declared my son “perfect.” Now, in my post-partum daze, I barely recognized this stocky man with his outdoorsman’s complexion and hair the color of sand.

“We’re doing all right,” I said, in a whisper. I didn’t want to disturb Malcolm, who seemed deep in sleep. His small chest heaved irregularly, like the flank of a dreaming dog when it’s hot on the chase. Having heard through the nurses’ grapevine that my doctor was back from his fishing trip and making morning rounds, I had brushed my hair and raised the angle of the uncomfortable motorized bed, trying to pretend it was a chaise longue and not a modern-day Marat-Sade torture machine.

“The nurses tell me you’ve been up and around quite a bit,” the doctor said.

I was proud of my swift convalescence, after forty sleepless hours of back labor that never progressed beyond the “she’s-still-two-centimeters-dilated” stage. The morning after the Cesarean, one of the nurses had catapulted me out of bed and ordered me to walk, if I wanted a successful recovery. Since then, I had made countless tummy-clutching shuffles up and down the hall, pushing Malcolm in his rolling steel crib.

“We’ve already taken a walk this morning,” I said.

“Well, don’t overdo it on the exercise,” the doctor said, wagging his index finger at me. “There’s no need to be a supermom!”

I could feel my cheeks redden at the scolding, but not being one to stick up for myself, I tried to think of something neutral, even amiable, to say in response. After all, this guy was going to be our pediatrician, probably for years. But my brain seemed empty, mindless. I had heard that this happened, that once a woman starting having babies her IQ seeped out in the breast milk.

I had an important question about something, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

Lab-coat-induced amnesia is what I called my condition. A drop of sweat rolled down my rib cage. I knew people who were phobic about heights or tunnels or snakes. For me, it was doctors. No amount of small talk or deep breathing had ever helped me over this fear of “the medicine man,” this powerful icon capable of foreseeing the future. Already, my tongue was as dry as sandpaper, my palms moist, and my underarms leaking.

My mind froze as I gazed down at Malcolm. His lips were pinched together and making a cute sucking motion in his sleep. That was it, that was my question! Breast feeding.

“We’re having a little trouble with feedings,” I said.

“What kind of trouble?” The doctor rubbed the flat part of his stethoscope against his lab coat and pulled a plastic chair close to the bed.

“He can’t seem to keep much food down.”

I waited for a comment. Instead, the doctor rummaged through the big white pocket of his coat and produced swabs, wooden tongue depressors, cellophane bags. He didn’t speak, so I kept talking

“The nurses say he’s lazy at the breast and I should flick him on his heel to wake him up.” The doctor didn’t look at me. “Or else change his diaper. He wakes up, but as soon as he starts sucking he falls asleep again. Or spits up.”

Still no response. My lower lip cracked and I could taste blood. Why was the doctor so silent? Because I was talking about breast feeding and the tricks of nurses? Did he think this was all beneath concern, or just plain idiotic?

He placed the ends of the stethoscope in his ears, gently unwrapped the cotton swaddling blanket, the way you do tissue paper in a box to find the gift inside, and placed the business end on Malcolm’s chest. At least he wasn’t the rough type. I could smell the natural oils in the man’s hair, just beneath the Old Spice or whatever cologne he wore. He listened intently, then moved the scope to another spot. Malcolm opened his eyes and looked at the man’s face. Instantly, his small brow knitted and his lips pushed out in a pout.

Apparently he didn’t like doctors either. At three days old, he was already such a pensive boy—and so quiet. My husband Bill and I had agreed that, so far anyway, having a baby was no problem. Malcolm seemed only to want to lie in his isolette or in my arms, motionless and soundless, except for the little grunting noises he made as he breathed.

The doctor moved the stethoscope several times, as though inching a checker across a tiny game board. He turned Malcolm over in my arms and listened to his back, first on the left side, then on the right.

I recalled how my OB-GYN had monitored Malcolm’s heart when it was still hidden under layers of my own flesh. I had heard it too, a steady, fast, whooshing, like a wild bird’s pulse. I couldn’t hold my son in my arms then, or look at his full cheeks, or stroke his strawberry blond hair, but on some primordial level I already knew him. I savored his hiccups and kicks and the calm in my womb when he rested. I sensed that he listened to me when I talked and sang to him. Now that he was on the outside, I still felt we were tethered by a sturdy cord, like the umbilical, only now it was invisible.

“Your baby has a heart murmur,” the doctor said, pulling the tips of the stethoscope out of his ears and, for the first time, looking me in the eye. He took Malcolm out of my arms, wrapped him in his blanket, and lay him on his side in his rolling crib, as though he were damaged goods, not to be handled.

“He needs to be seen by a specialist immediately. I’ve got to try to catch the cardiologist before she leaves home.”

And he vanished.

I motored myself upward in the bed, picked up the phone receiver on the tray table, and dialed home—my own heartbeat thundering in my ear.

After several rings Bill picked up. “Malcolm has a heart murmur,” I said. My throat was as stiff as taffy. I could barely push the words out. “A specialist is coming.”

“I’ll be right there,” Bill said after a pause and hung up. I put the receiver down and stared at the phone. It was unlike him to be so abrupt. Usually, when I was upset, I could count on Bill for something soothing like, “Don’t worry, honey, I’m sure it’s nothing serious,” and almost immediately, I would feel the beginning of relief. He hadn’t done that this time.

I looked out the window. The sunny dawn had been blotted out by one of those swiftly unfurling coastal fogs common to this part of New England, turning my hospital view from dappled Impressionism into a solid gray rectangle. There was a buzzing in the electric clock on the opposite wall and I wondered how I could have spent so many fitful hours in this room without hearing it until now. I watched the second hand progress around the circle of numbers. For nine long months, I had marked the passage of time—checking off days, weeks,trimesters, and seasons on my calendar. When the doctor had finally held up the blood-streaked bundle of folded arms and legs, and declared my son perfect, I felt unutterably relieved. My baby might have looked like the bag of innards you pull out of a raw chicken, but he was okay! Not only okay, he was perfect. And his eyes—little azure almonds—were open! The breathless waiting and worrying was over.

But now? I wanted to smash that noisy clock. The counting, it dawned on me, would never stop. I would count the time between feedings and wet diapers, the hours of sleep I wasn’t getting, steps taken, words spoken, teeth lost, and finally the days until my child left home. A mother, I realized, counted until she died.

“Dr. Romph will be here as soon as she can make it,” the pediatrician said, reappearing in my room the way rabbits do from magicians’ hats. He peered at Malcolm in his isolette. “I was lucky to reach her.”

He glanced at me and then away, as though wondering if he should say something more

“The color on this baby is definitely off,” he said, and crossed his arms at the chest, reminding me of Mr. Clean. I shrugged, not knowing what he was talking about.

“Usually,” he added, “when I tell mothers their babies have heart murmurs, they cry.” He fixed his eyes on a spot of wall above my head.

Dry-eyed, I stared at his face. Having always been one to expect bad newsÑthe worst newsÑI now refused to believe I was hearing it. This couldn’t be happening; there must be some mistake.

“It’s most unusual for a new mother not to cry,” he went on, still focusing on the blank space beyond me.

Was this his idea of a bedside manner? How dare he say something was wrong with my baby and then top it off by implying I was somehow an inadequate mother for not crying in front of him. Was it supermom-ish of me not to weep? I wanted to scream at him to go away and never come back, but being at heart an obliging (or at least suggestible) patient, I felt tears spring to my eyes.

“That’s better,” the doctor said, as though he were talking to a little girl who had finally stopped poking at her peas and taken a bite. The doctor lingered for a moment and then dematerialized.

Once he was gone, my tears came in a flood.

Since Malcolm’s birth, my body had sprung leaks everywhere. First the mucous plug had plopped out, followed by a rush of amniotic fluid and loose bowels. Then came a sudden full-bodied sweat, the kind that breaks out all over you in the sauna. Next, my breasts had dribbled a yellowish pre-milk liquid. Now, my lip was bleeding, and my nose and eyes were flowing. Even during labor, when they had given me petocin to speed me up, and each contraction had been an escalating bolt of searing pain, I hadn’t lost control like this. Other women on the ward had bellowed and moaned, but I had been stoical. Now I felt murderously hormonal, like a vengeful goddess from Greek mythology.

There was something familiar about this scene. Had it happened before, in a dream? Hadn’t I been dreading this moment all my life? I had always known it would come, always felt that a major catastrophe was stalking me, waiting to erupt. Was that why I feared doctors so much? Eventually, one of them was going to wallop me with a fateful blow. And this guy just had.

Someone else popped in the door. It was Bill, dressed in paint-speckled work pants and a torn T-shirt. He sat down on the bed and draped his slim arms around me, the pull of his body yanking at my fresh abdominal wound. He reeked of turpentine.

“Sorry I didn’t clean myself up properly,” he said. “I was painting the kitchen. But I wanted to get right over here.”

My breaths came in hard, ragged stabs.

“I just saw the doctor in the hall,” he said, his voice as comforting as a cup of hot tea with honey. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

There it was, my husband’s eternal calm and optimism—two qualities I lacked the genes for.

Bill reached over and picked up Malcolm. A thin layer of sweat had appeared above his tiny lips. His breathing seemed faster and more labored. His baby cheeks, brushed with pink at birth, had faded to the color of skim milk.

We sat like stones, waiting. I stared at the clock, hoping the doctor would arrive before Bill had to leave to meet his mother’s train. She was on her way up from New York City to see her new grandson.

“If the doctor comes while I’m gone, try to find out exactly what’s wrong,” Bill said. “Write it down.”

We both knew I was the worst person for this task. Even when I went in fortified with a list of questions and asked every one of them, I would promptly forget the doctor’s replies. To combat my selective memory lapses, I had begun recreating the conversations in my journal, which worked well enough on my monthly visits to the OB-GYN, the only time in my life I’d seen a doctor for anything more serious than poison ivy.

Bill wiped my face with a damp washcloth, smoothed back my hair for me, and left for the train station.

Waiting, I listened to the shrieking clock. The walls and window began to vibrate, like a Van Gogh painting. I could barely breathe. The nurses were whispering out in the hall, but no one came in. So much for the jocundity of the past days. Now they were avoiding me. Who would dare make jokes anymore about Malcolm’s being “a lazy little man at the breast?” He wasn’t lazy, he was sick! And they hadn’t even noticed.

The ringing phone startled me. For days people had been calling to congratulate us on Malcolm’s birth. We had told everyone we were disappointed about the cesarean. “But hey, we had a healthy baby boy!” What would I say now? I glared at the phone, willing it to stop. Finally it stopped, then started again. I picked up the receiver. It was Bill, calling to tell me his mother’s train would be an hour late. I would have to face the cardiologist alone.

Fear swirled through my guts, like the wet colors in a child’s finger-painting. What exactly was a cardiologist anyway? I had always made a point of knowing as little as possible about medicine and doctors, figuring that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. I couldn’t comprehend those girls from high school who had volunteered as candy stripers in the hospital, delivering mail and reading magazines to sick people. The idea spooked me. Until I signed in to deliver Malcolm, I had not spent a night in a hospital. Nor had I been exposed to illness in others, my parents having carefully shielded me from the health problems of friends and family members.

Growing up, I had been the child with the run-away imagination, the emotional kid. Certain adults told me I exaggerated everything, made mountains out of molehills, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. “You’re always getting yourself into a fret over nothing,” Auntie Em told her. “Why don’t you go find yourself a place where there isn’t any trouble!”

I knew exactly how Dorothy felt.

Now, as I looked down at Malcolm, I thought I could see my son shriveling before my eyes. I didn’t care who called me a Cassandra. Malcolm was turning into a wizened old man, on his way to death.

And I was terrified of him.

“Fear”