On the Maternity Ward

Security wasn’t allowed in the hospital rooms, but the hallways of the maternity ward were all on camera. Claire’s job was to monitor, keep the hospital safe. She’d been watching one mother in particular. The woman had a premature birth—Claire watched the incubator rushed down the hall to the infant ICU, the tiniest newborn inside, tubes everywhere. Now she watched the mother walk up and down the hall, several times a day, wheeling her IV pole with her. Up and down, back and forth from her room to the NICU. Even through the grainy footage, Claire could tell she was a small woman. Her hospital gown came nearly to her ankles.

Last April, Claire had been rushed to the hospital. Heavy bleeding. Her husband, away on business, stayed on the phone with her, his voice pressed against her ear, hot on her cheek. Her nose filled with the thick hospital smell of plastic packaging and cleaning supplies. She curled up on the bed, her knees to her chest. The nurse forgot to bring her a blanket. When the doctor entered the room, she knew. She knew before he even said a word. It was the slope of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the squint of his eyes. This wasn’t her first time.

In her office, Claire watched the woman make her way back to the NICU. She leaned on her IV pole, taking small breaks. The way she held her stomach— Claire had seen enough women with C-sections to recognize the tender way the woman bent slightly at the waist. An emergency, premature C-section. Shouldn’t she be in a wheelchair? All the other new mothers were pushed by husbands or wives, aunts or friends. But this woman—nobody seemed to notice her. She walked the hospital alone.

A stockpile of pregnancy tests crowded the back of Claire’s linen closet. I don’t know, one gynecologist said. Keep trying, said another, putting a hand on Claire’s shoulder. I think, her husband said softly one night, his chopsticks suspended above his carton of Chinese take-out, their favorite place, maybe we should look into adopting.

Claire’s job was to watch the cameras. She only had to leave her office if she received a call. But she wanted to change out of her starchy, stiff uniform. She wanted to put on clothes soft as a hospital gown. She wanted to go down the maternity ward, on the other side of the cameras. She would walk along the halls, see the babies leaving the hospital, peer into rooms where the fathers slept on chairs and the mothers’ arms draped inside the newborn’s cots. She would find the woman, walking alone through the halls. Claire would find her a wheelchair. She would bring the woman her hospital meals, and wheel her down to see her infant. She would take her small hands and hold them between both of her own, comfort her. Like a mother might do, for a child.