Dead Wrong by William Kienzle

Author:William Kienzle [William Kienzle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781449423728
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC
Published: 2012-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R

17

EVERYTHING SEEMED SO WHITE: the walls, the cabinets, the towels, the fixtures, and, most of all, the ceiling. She had nothing to do but look at the ceiling while hurting all the time and tensing for the next incredibly painful contraction.

Every so often the nurse would come in to take her blood pressure and check for dilation. The nurse was pleasant enough, but she gave the impression of having done this too many times. She seemed untouched by Maureen’s wondrous and frightening new experience.

Back in Chicago, just a couple of days ago, Ethel had tried to prepare Maureen for the delivery that was imminent. The information and advice was helpful and appreciated but nothing could convey this reality.

For one, Ethel had not adequately described the pain. Maybe birthing had been relatively easy for her. Maybe she’d forgotten the special pain of a firstborn. Maybe there just weren’t words to do the job.

For quite some time now, Maureen had been second-guessing the decisions she’d made.

One of those decisions was to enter the hospital on her own. Both Oona and Eileen had argued long and hard against that. They wanted to be with her. But Maureen refused. Her only explanation was that having her sisters—or anyone, for that matter—with her did not fit into her plans.

So, against her sisters’ strong opposition, Maureen had come to the hospital directly from the train that had brought her from Chicago.

She had been alone.

Alone when she rode in the cab to the hospital. For once, she’d wished for a talkative driver. It might have proven a distraction from the inevitability of her destination. But, just her luck, the driver kept his eyes on the road and his own counsel as the meter ticked away.

Alone when she checked into the hospital. She hadn’t been a hospital patient since a childhood appendectomy. This process was new to her but routine to the clerk, who, like Joe Friday of “Dragnet,” got just the facts, in just about the same disinterested, mechanical manner as the fictional police officer had used.

From the registration desk, Maureen was taken to her room, which she would share for the moment with another maternity patient. This woman had just lost her baby through complications during delivery. All this, Maureen learned by just one question. After that, it was clear the woman did not want to discuss her private tragedy further. She was merely waiting for the process of discharge. So, once again, at a time when Maureen wanted to talk to someone, especially one who had been through the actual event, she was, instead, very much alone.

This business of loneliness had dogged her footsteps for the past six months. And that time had taken its toll.

In the beginning it had been self-inflicted; she had freely removed herself from her relatives and friends to endure exile in a city of strangers. Now it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It seemed that everywhere she turned for companionship, she found only walls of isolation and silence.

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