Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

Nadya had pled guilty. Because she couldn’t afford a fine, she was given a thirty-day jail sentence deferred-which, as Alex was explaining to her now, meant that she wouldn’t have to go for a year. “If you go to jail,” she said, as they stood outside the ladies’ room in the courthouse, “your boys are going to suffer greatly. I know you felt desperate, but there’s always another option. A church. Or a Salvation Army.”

Nadya wiped her eyes. “I couldn’t get to the church or the Salvation Army. I haven’t got a car.”

Right. It was why Alex had brought her to court in the first place.

Alex steeled herself against sympathy as Nadya ducked into the bathroom. Her job had been to get Nadya a good deal, which she had, considering this was the woman’s second shoplifting offense. The first one had been at a drugstore; she’d pinched some Children’s Tylenol.

She thought of her own baby, the one who had her lying upside down on an ironing board and sticking torturous little daggers against her pinky toes every night, in the hopes that it would change position. What sort of disadvantage would it be to come into this world backward?

When ten minutes had passed and Nadya had not come out of the bathroom, Alex knocked on the door. “Nadya?” She found her client in front of the sinks, sobbing. “Nadya, what’s wrong?”

Her client ducked her head, mortified. “I just got my period, and I can’t afford a tampon.”

Alex reached for her purse, rummaging for a quarter to feed to the dispenser on the wall. But as the cardboard tube rolled out of the machine, something inside her snapped, and she understood that although this case had been settled, it wasn’t over yet. “Meet me out front,” she ordered. “I’m getting the car.”

She drove Nadya to Wal-Mart-the scene of her crime-and tossed three supersized Tampax boxes into a cart. “What else do you need?”

“Underwear,” Nadya whispered. “That was my last pair.”

Alex wheeled up and down the aisles, buying T-shirts and socks and panties and pajamas for Nadya; pants and coats and hats and gloves for her boys; boxes of Goldfish crackers and saltines and canned soup and pasta and Devil Dogs. Desperate, she did what she had to do at that moment, although it was exactly what the public defender’s office counseled their lawyers not to; but she was entirely rational and aware that she had never done this for a client and never would do it again. She spent eight hundred dollars in the very store that had pressed charges against Nadya, because it was easier to fix what was wrong than to picture her own child arriving into a world Alex herself could sometimes not stomach.

The catharsis ended the moment Alex handed the cashier her credit card and heard Logan Rourke’s voice in her mind. Bleeding heart, he’d called her.

Well. He should know.

He’d been the first to rip it to pieces.

All right, Alex thought calmly. This is what it’s like to die.

Another contraction ripped through her, bullets strafing metal.

Two weeks ago, at her thirty-seven-week visit, Alex and Lacy had talked about pain medication. What are your feelings about it? Lacy had asked, and Alex had made a joke: I think it should be imported from Canada. She’d told Lacy she didn’t plan to use pain medication, that she wanted a natural childbirth, that it couldn’t possibly hurt that much.

It did.

She thought back to all those birthing classes Lacy had forced her to take-the ones where she’d been partnered with Lacy, because everyone else had a husband or boyfriend assisting them. They’d shown pictures of women in labor, women with their rubbery faces and gritted teeth, women making prehistoric noises. Alex had scoffed at this. They are showing the worst-case scenarios, she’d told herself. Different people have different tolerance for pain.

The next contraction twisted down her spine like a cobra, wrapped itself around her belly, and sank its fangs. Alex fell hard on her knees on the kitchen floor.

In her classes, she’d learned that prelabor could go on for twelve hours or more.

By then, if she wasn’t dead, she’d shoot herself.

When Lacy had been a midwife in training, she’d spent months walking around with a little centimeter ruler, measuring. Now, after years on the job, she could eyeball a coffee cup and know that it was nine centimeters across, that the orange beside the phone at the nurses’ station was an eight. She withdrew her fingers from between Alex’s legs and snapped off the latex glove. “You’re two centimeters,” she said, and Alex burst into tears.

“Only two? I can’t do this,” Alex panted, twisting her spine to get away from the pain. She had tried to hide the discomfort behind the mask of competence that she usually wore, only to realize that in her hurry, she must have left it behind somewhere.

“I know you’re disappointed,” Lacy said. “But here’s the thing-you’re doing fine. We know that when people are fine at two centimeters they will be fine at eight, too. Let’s take it one contraction at a time.”

Labor was hard for everyone, Lacy knew, but especially hard for the women who had expectations and lists and plans, because it was never the way you thought it would be. In order to labor well, you had to let your body take over, instead of your mind. You revealed yourself, even the parts you had forgotten about. For someone like Alex, who was so used to being in control, this could be devastating. Success would come only at the expense of losing her cool, at the risk of turning into someone she did not want to be.

Lacy helped Alex off the bed and guided her toward the whirlpool room. She dimmed the lights, flicked on the instrumental music, and untied Alex’s robe. Alex was past the point of modesty; at this moment, Lacy figured she’d disrobe in front of an entire male prison population if it meant the contractions would stop.

“In you go,” Lacy said, letting Alex lean on her as she sank into the whirlpool. There was a Pavlovian response to warm water; sometimes just stepping into the tub could bring down a person’s heart rate.

“Lacy,” Alex gasped, “you have to promise…”

“Promise what?”

“You won’t tell her. The baby.”

Lacy reached for Alex’s hand. “Tell her what?”

Alex closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the lip of the tub. “That at first I didn’t want her.”

Before she could even answer, Lacy watched tension grip Alex. “Breathe through this one,” she said. Blow the pain away from you, blow it between your hands, picture it as the color red. Come up on your hands and knees. Pour yourself inward, like sand in an hourglass. Go to the beach, Alex. Lie on the sand and see how warm the sun is.

Lie to yourself until it’s true.

When you’re hurting deeply, you go inward. Lacy had seen this a thousand times. Endorphins kick in-the body’s natural morphine-and carry you somewhere far away, where the pain can’t find you. Once, a client who’d been abused had dissociated so massively that Lacy was worried she would not be able to reach her again and bring her back in time to push. She had wound up singing to the woman in Spanish, a lullaby.

For three hours now, Alex had regained her composure, thanks to the anesthesiologist who’d given her an epidural. She’d slept for a while; she’d played hearts with Lacy. But now the baby had dropped, and she was starting to bear down. “Why is it hurting again?” she asked, her voice escalating.

“That’s how an epidural works. If we dose it up, you can’t push.”

“I can’t have a baby,” Alex blurted out. “I’m not ready.”

“Well,” Lacy said. “Maybe we ought to talk about that.”

“What was I thinking? Logan was right; I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m not a mother, I’m a lawyer. I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t have a dog…I don’t even have a houseplant I haven’t killed. I’m not even sure how to put on a diaper.”