The first thing she registered when she came to was the smell. The distinctive antiseptic odor typical in hospitals everywhere in the world. The lights were low, the temperature moderate. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was.
In her hospital room. She was groggy and felt drugged. Everything was foggy and seemed muted, surreal, slower. It took almost superhuman effort for her to turn her head and look at the window. It was dark out. It had been light when she’d arrived.
Maya fumbled around until she found the call button. She pressed it after a few tries – her hands felt like someone else’s and seemed to lack the dexterity to operate the gizmo.
It was all she could do to keep her eyes open.
A nurse entered a few minutes later and moved to the side of the bed.
“Take it easy, now. You’ve been through a lot,” she said with a look of concern on her face. She looked at the monitor and adjusted the sensor on Maya’s finger, then turned the volume on the box down a little.
“I am taking it easy. I’m awake now. I want to see my baby. My daughter. Hannah.”
The nurse’s eyes darted to the side and she stepped away from the bed, suddenly all hurried efficiency.
“All right, then. Let me call the doctor. He’ll be in shortly,” she promised, offering a timid smile. The nurse patted her hand and eyed the IV before hurrying off, leaving Maya to the altered state that was a kind of chemical purgatory. She listened as the nurse’s footsteps echoed down the hallway outside of the door, then went back to drowsing uneasily, drifting in and out of consciousness.
She didn’t know how much time had elapsed when the doctor entered and approached the bed.
She looked up at him, her eyes struggling to stay focused. His face was impassive.
“I want to see my daughter, Doctor.”
“I can appreciate how you would.” He hesitated. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this…”
“What? What isn’t easy to say?” Her eyes got larger, and her vital signs spiked, her pulse and blood pressure increasing by twenty percent in seconds. She fought against the fog, forcing herself to clarity.
“You need to calm down. This isn’t good.” He picked up the phone on the side table and dialed an extension. “Nurse? This is Doctor Barsal. I’m in room eleven. Can you come here, please?”
Ten seconds later, a nurse stuck her head in.
The doctor moved to the door, and they had a hasty discussion before she left the room.
“What’s happened, Doctor?” Maya blinked, straining to shed the drug haze.
“I have bad news, I’m afraid,” he began. Her vitals continued to climb. He stopped talking as he watched the monitor.
“Bad news? What kind of bad news?”
He wouldn’t look at her.
The drugs made it so hard to concentrate. The doctor wasn’t making any sense. He had bad news. What bad news? Was her baby sick? Had she been injured during the procedure?
The nurse returned and quietly slipped the doctor a syringe. He moved to the IV and closed off the drip, then injected the contents into her line.
“This is just a sedative. It will help you relax. It’s for your own good.”
She felt instantly dreamier. Maybe he was right. It was good to relax. And he was helping her to do so…
Her vital signs normalized almost immediately as her heart and breathing slowed.
“That’s better. Now, as I was saying. I have some bad news. Your baby…there was a complication caused by the umbilical cord wrapping around her neck. I’m afraid we didn’t get to her in time. She…didn’t make it. We did everything we could, but it was too late. I’m so sorry…”
The walls seemed to close in as she listened to the impossible words. Her baby didn’t make it? That was crazy talk. What did that even mean, didn’t make it? Of course the baby made it. She didn’t understand.
Maya shook her head. “No. I don’t understand.”
The doctor frowned and took her limp hand in a caring gesture.
“I know it’s a shock. I’m so sorry. But your baby was pronounced dead half an hour after the attempted delivery. I signed the death certificate myself. We did everything possible, but sometimes…” He shrugged and frowned again. “Sometimes nature beats us no matter how hard we try. It’s one of the great frustrations of medicine. We can only do so much, and then it’s out of our hands.”
The words struck her like hammer blows, each one causing more damage than the last.
Her baby was dead.
Her daughter, Hannah, dead.
Maya’s tortured scream was audible all the way to the elevators at the end of the wing.