(from Losing Malcolm by Carol Henderson)
"Dog Woman"
Dr. Patty Romph looked at me and smiled. Her eyes
remindedme of a Labrador retriever's—sad, with puffy, down-turning brows. As she came towards me, I could smell the
out-of-doors on her, a loamy and slightly salty odor. I realized that, for the first time in my life, I hadn't breathed any fresh air for three whole days.
She held out a large, red, chapped hand, one that had
obviously worked a spade, hauled rocks, and pulled weeds.
"Sorry it took me so long to get here. I came as fast as I
could."
She was a tall, almost gawky woman, with long wavy brown
hair flecked with gray; some of it had been pulled back,
sloppily, into a barrette. She wore no make up. I guessed
she was in her mid-forties. Under her buttoned lab coat, I
could see corduroy pants, and she was wearing muddy
lace-up leather boots with rubber bottoms, like the kind
advertised in the L.L. Bean catalog.
"One of my dogs got caught in a trap this morning," she
explained. That was why she was muddy—and late.
"May I?" she asked, reaching for Malcolm. She gathered him
into her arms, as though he were rare Chinese porcelain,
and laid him carefully in his isolette. She swept her hair
back and hunched over him, her stethoscope searching his
tiny chest for clues.
There had been absolutely no reason to suspect anything
would be wrong with my baby. At twenty-nine I was robust,
with sinewy muscles. I had recently quit dancing, but my
ten-year career as a modern dancer had kept my body trim
and flexible. Always a tomboy, I still relished an
impromptu game of touch football and a good climbing tree.
People said my stride was like my father's, and he had
been a track star in college. I had inherited my dad's
iron constitution. He never got sick; neither did I. I had
the boundless energy of an adolescent dog. Bill was
healthy too. He suffered from occasional headaches, but
they were never so severe that a few crushed aspirin in
water wouldn't cure them.
Dr. Romph turned Malcolm onto his stomach and listened to
his back. She shook her head slightly and held back a
moment before she spoke. "I'm afraid Malcolm's a very sick
baby," she said finally, straightening up and slipping her
stethoscope into her lab-coat pocket. She picked him up
and held him in her arms. "I can't tell from listening
what's wrong with his heart, but it's definitely not
pumping efficiently." She looked down at him with a
tender, almost forlorn expression. "We need to get him on
some medications right away and try to stabilize him, see
how he responds. And we'll have to transfer him to a
bigger hospital. Today."
I couldn't speak.
She handed Malcolm back to me and sat down in a chair next
to my bed. How different she was from the last doctor,
from any doctor I had ever encountered.
"I know this is very hard for you," she said. "And I'm so
sorry."
I felt the corners of my mouth pull down, and a lump, like
a pressing thumb, in my throat. But no tears came.
She asked if there was heart disease in my family or
Bill's. Normally, I wouldn't even consider illness and my
family in the same breath. We were healthy people. On my
side, they seemed almost to disapprove of illness,
scorning infirmities as though they were moral weaknesses
or signs of a lack of will. Being ill was like being fat
or lazy, a condition one should be able to control.
Illnesses happened to other people in other familiesÑnot
to industrious, sturdy types like us. I shook my head.
"Do you remember being sick any time during your
pregnancy?"
"No." I said. "Wait. I think I had some kind of the flu
early on."
"Really? How early?"
"I'm not sure right now." My head was throbbing and I felt
panicky.
Dr. Romph pressed my arm gently. She told me she had to
make a few phone calls but that she'd be right back. "Will
you be all right while I'm gone?"
I nodded. Before leaving the room, she gently pushed the
box of tissues on my tray table closer to me.
"Try not to think about it," my mother had always advised
me, whenever something unpleasant threatened to happen or,
God forbid, did happen. We were the prototypical American
family of the 50s and early 60s: we didn't discuss scary
and painful feelings in our household. Denial was our
modus operandi.
And I did try hard not to think about bad things. But any
scary TV movie, glimpsed surreptitiously at my friend
Tracey's house, could disturb my sleep patterns for months
with horrific bad dreams that haunted my waking hours. No
one suspected my torment because I had learned to keep it
to myself. Unspoken, my fears thrived.
Being a dancer and an athlete, I knew and trusted my
body—on the outside. But I worried constantly about its
hidden, intracellular workings and about the possibility
of illness or grief or death bursting into my life. Now,
all my dread fulfilled, how was I supposed to think about
anything other than the fact that my beautiful pale son,
lying there in my arms, was critically ill?
I put Malcolm down on the bed beside me and reached for my
journal. Although "diary" hadn't been on the Lamaze
teacher's list of items to take to the hospital (along
with toothbrush, nightie, etc.), I had brought mine with
me. I took it almost everywhere, even sometimes to movies
so I could scribble down good dialogue, in the dark. Early
on, I had learned that just to record a slice of my life—a
snatch of overheard conversation, a fear, a dream—created
a helpful distance between me and my immediate experience.
Once an image had been written down, it didn't wield quite
so much power over me.
I turned to the first blank page of my journal and wrote,
"'I'm afraid Malcolm's a very sick baby," Dr. Romph
said."I stared at the page. Before writing more, I
realized, I would have to locate an earlier entry.
Thumbing through the dog-eared pages, I found what I was
looking for—a conversation with my first OB-GYN, Dr.
Harper, in New York, hastily scrawled while I was supposed
to be getting dressed after the exam:
"One last thing!" He's leaving the room. It is now or
never.
"Yes?"
"I was sick in the first few weeks."
"Morning sickness?"
"No. I think I had the flu or something."
"Your symptoms?"
"I was achy and had chills and bad swollen glands."
"Any fever?"
"Yeah."
"How high?"
"It got up there. Once it was 103."
"Did you take anything?"
"No, but I soaked in tepid baths . . ."
"Don't worry," he says. "Lots of women catch colds during
pregnancy and deliver healthy babies. You're healthy and
strong. I'm sure you'll do just fine." And then he's gone...
I'm giddy with relief and proud of myself for telling him
about the high fever. For once, I didn't downplay my
concern, make light of a situation I secretly took most
seriously. The trouble is, I'm afraid of facts. If they
aren't delivered in just the right way, I can put my own
twisted spin on them, skew them to ignite my paranoia.
The buzzing clock roared in my ears. I wondered what Dr.
Romph was saying now to the people at Rhode Island
Hospital. I didn't want to think about it. I turned back
several pages and read more journal entries:
Dream: In my seventh month, I give birth prematurely to a
golden retriever or maybe it's an Irish setter. The dog,
named Dawn, is amazingly smart. When she's one day old,
she already knows commands, like sit, lie down, roll over.
She's big, almost full-grown, in only a few weeks. I feel
guilty for wishing she were a baby and not a dog.
Do other pregnant women have such idiotic dreams?
Dream: Twelve little boys have been sliced down the middle
of their chests. A man arrives who can mend the dead
infants. We are struggling against a horrific queen who
rules the land, but she is taking her daily swim in the
dark lake now so we must make sure the man works fast to
cure the little boys, before she returns.
Was it possible these dreams had been trying to tell me
something was wrong with my child? Dr. Romph came back
into the room. I closed my diary, slid it under the
covers, and picked Malcolm up again. He felt like a damp
rag doll, except that he was breathing very quickly.
I told her about the flu and my talk with Dr. Harper. She
told me she too thought warm baths were curative. I
marveled at this—a doctor saying she believed in something
as folksy as soaking in lukewarm water. My mother, who
swore by the healing powers of witch hazel, Epsom salts,
Vitamin C, and spirits of ammonia, would love this woman.
Dr. Romph asked me where I lived and somehow our new
puppy, Molly, came up in the conversation. She seemed
interested in everything about my dog, even wanting to
know the colors of the other pups in the litter and how we
had house-broken Molly.
"I have Samoyeds," she said. "And they keep me busy."
She had a soft, almost muted voice. Maybe it was her
hushed quality that made me think she had a melancholic
streak. I sensed that she didn't have children, that her
dogs were her children. I wondered if she was married, but
didn't ask.
Bill walked in with his mother, straight from the railroad
station. They both looked pale and slit-lipped.
As Dr. Romph introduced herself, Bill's shoulders relaxed
a notch and his jaw bones loosened their clamp on his
teeth. I could see her quiet manner reassured him. She
stood back while Bill's mom, Nancy, admired Malcolm.
"He looks just like Bill did as a baby," she said, her
voice tentative. I could tell my mother-in-law was
shocked. Clearly, this wasn't the joyous meeting she had
so eagerly anticipated.
Malcolm would need to ride in an ambulance to Rhode Island
Hospital. They would start him on an IV and medicines
before he left. At the hospital there were places where we
could sleep. Patty Romph removed my cesarean stitches, so
we wouldn't have to think about them later, and arranged
to have me discharged—immediately.
How could I have complained, earlier in the morning, about
the dismal hospital bed? Now I wanted nothing more than to
stay in it, with my baby in my arms.
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