What is the What

A glass window separates the post-partum recovery ward from the brightly lit pink tones of the nursery.  There tens of newborns wrapped tight not unlike burritos in miniature bleached pastel-striped white cotton blankets lie necessarily still in clear plastic basinets arranged in impeccably spaced rows.

Communication through a physical barrier has its challenges.  From the ward side, fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, cousins and friends peer at the babies as if limited third persona narrators in their own made for reality stories.  Look at how pink she is.  Does she really like him?  Mom, when can I hold the baby?  How to get noticed by a baby without credible history of family existence means a communal dance of sorts.  Small children jump up and down so as to get a momentary glimpse of the tiny blurs just above the blue windowsill trim.  Tall men go to squat, heads perched forwards as if tall chickens.  Women lean their foreheads onto the glass as if suddenly overcome by arm paralysis, their breath and tears fogging the glass. They coo, caw, cackle, gurgle, click and chortle.  They laugh, pray, exhort, exclaim and whisper.

The babies are oblivious to most out of plastic crib events.  Not withstanding their focal lengths terminate at 11 inches or they are without functional neck control, most are in shock having just emerged from nine months of pitch darkness, from wet to dry, from murky warm to variable temperature, from gurgling bowel sounds to non-insulated voices and startling beeps.  For the first time in their lives, defined by hours, they experience what could be described as the vagaries of human pain.  Pain of separation.  Pain of immobilization.  Pain of needle pricks for being too small, too big, too jittery, too sleepy, too early.  A not small subset of males have had their foreskins removed for reasons that would never pass baby judicial muster.  So there is a lot of crying in the nursery and the crying like a social media virus spreads.

The ward side hears none of this.  The thick glass window impedes, reflects, absorbs but does not transmit the cacophony of high-pitched cries and immature sobs.  From the outside, the newborns are peaceful guppies, opening and closing their mouths instinctively for oxygen and food.  They are crying baby tigers, floundering doph-lings, blind but bigger than butter-stick baby panda bears.  Their picturesque innocence within the creation spectacle overwhelms the sensibilities of these hierarchical higher-ups, who watch this silent movie with a mixture of optimism and joy.

In room 1012A of the maternity ward, Jasmine Tang lies on an industrial strength hospital bed with thick mattress resembling a large rendition of Hong Kong-style breakfast toast atop a perfectly forged block-steel frame.  This being a hospital in urban New York, Ms. Tang is one of a majority of patient-mothers from China, Russia, Yemen, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, or Venezuela. Jasmine speaks Spanish and Cantonese but not English.  A childhood in Caracas never taught her that.  Adulthood in Caracas taught her that giving birth in a place not plagued by daily riots was the most loving act she could pursue for her baby.  At Jasmine’s first and last prenatal checkup at Caracas Public Hospital eight months ago, a soldier wielding a Soviet SVT-40 rife greeted Ms. Tang at the entrance.  Then she went by a series of moaning patients in the dark hallways leading to the consultation wing.  Then there was the small, musty examination room without running water or soap.  Then the diaphoretic unapologetic doctor who apologized to Jasmine that the vaccines and drugs he would prescribe would have to be purchased on the black market.

Life under Chavez had been chaotic but an improvement.  Life under President Maduro had meant a 21st century existence without regular supply of gas, electricity, water, and food.  Jasmine’s grandmother lived in Brooklyn.  It took five months and four straight weeks standing in the cordons winding around the American embassy, but a U.S. K1-visitor’s visa had arrived a full 2 weeks and three days before Jasmine’s due date. By the time Jasmine landed in New York City, it wasn’t the diversity of people, street layout or abundance of food that surprised her.  Caracas was once similar.  It was the dirty hot of the New York City subway that made her gasp.  Caracas public transportation system even in its current political economic context was in better condition.  At least the pooling water and scurrying rats at the 56th Avenue stop made Jasmine think this.  Or the few times the trains at Atlantic Avenue had arrived, opened their doors, and simply stopped.

Jasmine looks more tired and tormented than normal for a mother who has just given birth.  She has ostensibly given birth to a beautiful healthy girl, but she has yet to see her.  That was three hours ago, but multiple presses of the red button on the remote control attached to her bed by a thick gray cable not dissimilar to a dusty umbilical cord had yet to produce a pink bundle.  She would have suspected the remote control was out of order but the apparatus seemed to send episodes of Family Feud and Wedding Dress to the TV hanging from the ceiling across the room without a hitch.  It was the Spanish-speaking cleaning woman who reminded Jasmine about the existence of her baby.  The medical team had come by and asked the cleaning woman, who had been changing the linen and dumping the garbage, if she didn’t mind translating to Jasmine that the C-section had gone well.   The passive voice of C-section gone well—la cesárea fue bien—did not elude Jasmine.  She had majored in linguistics. Jasmine felt a mixture of embarrassment and resentment that her pushing 12 hours from a medical point of view didn’t figure so much in the result of her C-section—the baby— as the cause—as if she had done something wrong, as if her pelvis had been misshapen for failure long ago.  The passivity of it all manifested in a baby literally being pulled out of Jasmine like in a horror film.  A surgical drape blocked her view of the gore but there might as well have been peepholes.  She could still feel the sick rubbery release of skin, the pinpoint shocks of the cautery knife, the manipulation of her bludgeoned appendages, and someone reaching inside her elbow-deep.  She could still smell the sick scent of burning flesh, the iron of oozing blood, the soy-milk like aroma of amniotic fluid and the shit at her nadir when she felt she had completely lost control.

From the beginning, the medical staff seemed resigned to keep Jasmine out of her birth plan. Jasmine had nodded during the hospital intake process in the negative as to whether she spoke English and it was as if she had declared to the world that she was mute.  Suddenly, everyone from the clerk to the volunteer to the three nurses to the PA to the doctor to the OB-GYN residents and medical students stopped communicating with Jasmine.  It didn’t matter whether an individual was bringing a menu, arranging pillows, compiling forms, attaching or inserting probes or examining Jasmine’s perineum or breasts.  Jasmine had miraculously transformed into a potted plant, a pre-teen mother, a patient from the county prison, an Venezualan in-valid.

Jasmine’s predicament took a turn for the dangerous when her birthing trajectory veered.  She could only pick out pieces of an obviously important conversation as if she were looking down at it.

Attending:  “Ms. Tang …. pushing …. 12 hours….. stress ….. baby.  We say … longer then …. understand?”

Translation:  We like our mothers to deliver in 12 hours and if they don’t, we do something about it.

3rd year resident:  “Ms. Tang, I’m ... obstetric service…. You …. pushing for hours…. worried when baby … 18 hour...?”

Translation:  At 18 hours of rupture, there is a risk of infection to your baby.  We will give you antibiotics to mitigate this risk

1st year resident:  “Ms. Tang, … check ….normal … baby’s head”

Translation:  I’ve never done this before, but I am going to stick my fingers in your vagina to see if your baby’s head has descended.

Nurse #1: “Just measuring …. feel squeeze… Please …still!”

Translation:  My dear, I am just going to do some routine vital sign measurements.  Everything will be okay.

Nurse #2:  “…baby’s father…anybody…phone.”

Translation:  I don’t think its right that you come to the U.S. to give birth.  You have to earn the right to U.S. citizenship.

2nd year resident:  “Hi Ms. Tang…baby danger….not wait…paper signature… here…no here. Yes…sign….”

Translation:   It is 5pm and I have dinner plans for 7pm.  You probably could deliver naturally but you might not and the longer the baby is inside, the greater the risk to the baby and incidentally to me. I recommend we do a C-section but it’s your decision.

And then Jasmine was scooting her body onto a cold sharp gurney.  And then there was the clamor of voices as she was rolled down an impossibly long hall.  And then she was lying naked in the surgery room feet down arms stretched to the conformation of a cross.  And then her chest down to her thigh were being painted with sponges sopped with iodine. Jasmine prayed both for her and her baby.  To her the layering of drapes onto her body was foreboding.  When the anesthesia mask finally went on, Jasmine felt both relief and guilt.  She was giving up to power in humble supplication but she was scared not only for her baby but -- was this not okay?-- for herself.