Barbara Fisher

Care
Without
Care
Chapter
I

A true story
by and about
a young mother
who sought
health care
for her child.
 Barbara Fisher

Care
Without
Care
Chapter I

First published by Avon Books

(a division of The Hearst Corporation)
in September, 1972

© 1972 Barbara Fisher

All rights reserved.

For information address
Ten Penny Players, Inc.
 Before pregnancy, I had no opinions about the
medical profession or hospitals. Some doctors I
liked, others I didn’t. I had been born in a hospi-
tal. I had a yearly checkup. Every once in a while
I became ill, as did my husband, and visited a GP.
I wrenched a shoulder or he cut his hand. Little
things that were patched up neatly. We paid
promptly and the doctor didn’t see us again until a
special need arose. To me doctors were craftsmen,
hired to perform a service; they were no different
from my attorney, local carpenter, veterinarian, or
garage mechanic . . . just craftsmen with special-
ized skills. Looking back now, almost two and a
half years later, I marvel at my incredible naïveté.
The doctor, the hospital system, is the enemy.
I treasure my own obstetrician-gynecologist
and our pediatrician beyond price. These two
ladies are a vanishing, almost extinct, medical
breed. They are skilled doctors (as are many I’ve
since met), but the miraculous difference is that
they are physicians who still have compassion.
Becoming pregnant was easy. So was holding
the baby for nine months. I was careful about my
weight and diet. I’ve been fat, and I wasn’t about
to make that scene again. I rested, cooked,
cleaned, worked in my studio, took assignments as
they came along, and saw the doctor at regular
intervals. Faithful to my disdain of drugs, pre-
scribed or illicit, I enrolled in the hospital’s
Lamaze natural childbirth delivery classes. My
husband, very shyly, came with me, but soon was
enthusiastically helping me exercise, pant, and
breathe.
I worried a lot. I was convinced I’d go into
delivery one night while Ernest was at work. I was
sure Barbrah (my business partner and best
friend) had secret designs on my husband and was
waiting to take over loft, livestock, and living. I
envisioned the dog mournfully howling at the door,
desperate for a walk, the cats shrieking for food,
the plants wilting, waterless, on the window
ledges. I imagined all the food in the freezer sit-
ting uncooked while Ernest starved and waited for
my return. I wrote a holograph will and sent it to
my attorney in case I didn’t return. The biggest
fear was waking the doctor in the middle of the
night, rushing to the hospital—only to discover
that it was a false alarm—and then sheepishly
returning home.
I believed in Lamaze, yet I was worried that I
wouldn’t have the concentration to get through it.
Some of the women in our class delivered early and
sent back glowing reports of success. One woman
was admitted, taken to the labor room, gave one
push, and out came the baby. Another had a
breech baby . . . the only thing that saved her from
a Caesarean delivery was Lamaze. She was awake
and able to push and help. Oh, that I would be so
cooperative.
I was so bored with being huge and having
heartburn that, when labor began, I forgot every-
thing at the prospect of quickly deflating the belly.
All you’re allowed to keep in the hospital is
your wedding ring and some small change. I don’t
know whether they’re more afraid of burglars or
one of us trying to escape from the labor area. I’m
one of those people for whom reality fixates on the
numbered dial attached to my wrist. Time fits
around coffee, The New York Times, the mail, the
typewriter, the oven, walking the dog, the drawing
board, the easel, the washing machine, the iron
and the bed. Remove my watch, take down the
wall clock, and I’m disoriented. You can’t keep
your watch in the hospital; there are no wall
clocks.
Labor was thirty-six and one-half hours of
hard work all the way. Time stuck in a 5:00 A.M.
groove, neither day nor night, but gray scrim
tacked to the labor-room window. Every once in a
while, a brusque female intern would come by to
probe my bottom and bark, “Only two fingers,
you’ve got a long way to go.”
Like some venerable tomato, I hung on the
vine long after the season was over. Other women
were rolled in and out, moaning and wailing. It
was hard enough concentrating on my panting and
belly rubbing without having the screamers in
adjacent beds and rooms. My doctor came by to
check on me once and felt badly about a suffering
sixteen year old who had been planted near me.
“Help her,” she said to me.
 Part of the mystique and success of the
Lamaze method is all the psyching you do on your-
self during your study and classroom preparation.
I will feel discomfort, you say, positively, but not
pain. I will breathe and pant and belly rub and
relax and rely on my husband to time the contrac-
tions so I can rest in between. And, of course, he’s
as well primed and psyched as you, and it works.
It worked for me, anyway, and those of my friends
who tried it.
It is virtually impossible to instill faith, reason,
hope, and practical exercises into the head and
lungs of an unmarried sixteen-year-old child in
pain. When she remembered to do what I said, it
worked. We were in different stages of labor, how-
ever; our contractions were timed differently and I
couldn’t coordinate what I was doing to her con-
tractions and thereby bolster her along.
Mercifully, she delivered long before I was even
fully dilated and was removed.
Somewhere in the eighteenth hour, my doctor
decided I should go to sleep and rest. Since I was
Lamaze, and had no medication, she ordered tea
for me. She sent Ernest and Barbrah home and
went somewhere to sleep herself. I was in a room
alone. No husband, no friendly doctor, just the
brusque intern, a postmenopausal maiden night
nurse, and I.
The doctor had told me to stop the exercises.
Poor fool, I did as I was told. For the first time in
all those hours I began to hurt. Self-pity and tears
came rolling in. I became angry at my husband for
leaving me alone with harridans and was infuriat-
ed by the lack of a telephone. All my life I’ve had
a telephone. And now I was trapped in a grayed-
out room waiting for iron maiden to check me
every once in a while. She was very arch about the
lack of labor progression. “You came too early,”
she carped. “Serves you right. You came too
early.” Brusque intern came by to probe and prod.
She needed her nails clipped. If she had been prop-
erly plumbed, I would have kicked her in the groin.
Vicious by nature, I had reached the end of my
patience. I wanted out.
Despite my doctor’s dictum, supposedly inspir-
ing me to rest, I began my exercises again and felt
instant relief. I felt so alone, but not for long.
There was suddenly an intense banging on the
locked labor-area corridor door. Why they locked
the labor area was unfathomable. All sweaty and
heaving with bursting bellies, none of us would
have inspired rape or kidnapping. I heard much
cursing and many imprecations to the attorney
general. “Let me in! Let me in! Open up in there!”
the familiar adenoidal Brooklyn voice brought
smiles to my bitten lips. Barbrah had called the
hospital to see whether or not I had progressed
from labor; they said I wasn’t registered. She
asked to speak to my doctor; they said the doctor
hadn’t checked into the hospital.
Barbrah understands the way of the hospital.
When in doubt, Barbrah attacks. She and Ernie
bolted a crosstown bus, ignored the hospital
guards, and went right up to the labor area.
Barbrah has, in the six years I’ve known her,
threatened to sue everyone from my mother to
God. She has yet to start suit, but she manages to
construct a very sound case for taking whatever
disturbs her to an attorney and then to court. I
enjoy writing a good play; Barbrah loves living one.
Together we’re lethal. We egg each other on to
heights of insanity. We’re often in opposition. But
we hop along doing what we have to and get what
we want. At that moment, Barbrah wanted in.
The night nurse was terrified by the mounting
decibels. “Who’s that?” she asked. “Who’s yelling
down there?” I loved every minute of it, the power
of having allies. Many women enter Lamaze class-
es because of the beauty of birth. For me there was
no beauty, only hard work. However, most hospi-
tals that I know of don’t allow your husband into
the labor area unless they’ve been to the Lamaze
classes. If you’ve got a good working partnership
going with your husband, you need him in the
labor room. I was so relieved that he was back.
Barbrah kept on yelling until iron maiden
opened the door. Barbrah first affirmed my pres-
ence. She then began yelling for my doctor, who
had been asleep in the next room all the time.
At that point she had been weighing whether
or not to do a Caesarean. She felt that something
was wrong and that I was being taxed needlessly.
Luckily, I began to feel the need to push. The
intern checked again and said I wasn’t fully dilat-
ed. I said I’m pushing anyway, and how could she
stop me? It didn’t hurt, so I knew I was doing the
right thing. It was a great relief. Things were
finally happening.
I am told that my performance in that room
was the talk of the hospital. Of course. Stage
fright I might have, but when the curtain is up, I’m
all ham. It was Lamaze right up until the end,
when the doctor felt I needed just a little some-
thing to relax me. I’ve never used any drug and
I’m pretty much allergic to alcohol. Whatever she
gave me caused a most peculiar sensation. My
body was on the table. The doctor gave me instruc-
tions . . . when to push, when to bear down . . . but
my head was way above the table, very giddy and
high looking down. Whatever she injected worked
without putting me out. I am, however, notorious
for falling asleep instantly when prone and, after
the final push, with nothing more to do, I zonked
out for a few minutes as soon as I delivered.
 I knew something was wrong. It was too quiet.
I didn’t hear the baby cry. There was much whis-
pering and movement from the far area of the room
where they clean, weigh, and do whatever is done
after the baby arrives.
I kept asking the nurse what was wrong, but
she never answered. She was a very sweet girl and
her eyes were glazed over. I knew something had
happened, but they wheeled me out and down to
my room before I could see or hear anything. One
of the ladies (I never did learn all their names) who
was neither nurse nor maid came to swab me
down. It felt good to be clean. These ladies were
the backbone of the hospital. Warm and human,
they speak to, not through you. They answer ques-
tions. Although the nurses treated me as though I
had committed some grievous social error, one of
the ladies told me that the doctor was downstairs
with my husband and would arrive shortly.
She did. She’s very direct and honest and told
me straight out that the baby wasn’t expected to
live. He had a bad heart, weak lungs, had miscel-
laneous physical deformities, and the mentality of
a vegetable. His back was strong. It was hard to
assimilate, almost anticlimactic after the long
labor, and a peculiar ending to a perfectly normal
pregnancy.
Ernest came upstairs. We were very brave to
each other. Neither of us carries on much in pub-
lic, in even the happiest of moments, and we
weren’t about to crumble in a hospital. My moth-
er, though, will never lose her Russian origins.
She was very upset and it took Barbrah, Ernest,
the doctor, and me to calm her down. It suddenly
changed from being a problem shared by my hus-
band and I to an extension of her own bad luck.
Another blow against her life, my fault for marry-
ing and becoming pregnant. Now, looking back at
it, I realize that it’s much harder being a grand-
mother than a parent. Things are easier when
you’re young.

I wanted to go home. I saw no point in remain-

ing the full three days. The doctor promised that
if I seemed to be mending properly, I would only
have to stay one more day. At that point, I still
hadn’t seen the baby. I felt relieved at not being
pregnant. It also felt strange not having anything
to show after all those months and the long labor.
But beyond that, I didn’t feel much at all, except
futile, since I had expected to have all sorts of
mother things to do after delivery. My suitcase
was full of birth announcements and nursing bras.
What do you do when all the mothers are
brought their infants and you are empty-handed?
The lounge was off limits. They were shampooing
the carpets. The phone was out of order until that
evening, and how often can you use the bathroom?
In that hospital you stay put unless your child
is actually dead. Hangers-on don’t rate. If your
child is dead then you’re transferred to a private
room or to one with another bereaved parent.
Otherwise you remain where placed, a problem to
staff and patients alike.
No one knows what to say to you. And there’s
no place to be private. I really just wanted to go
home. When I was able to see the baby through
the window and his incubator, I thought he was
very ugly . . . all pinched and squashed and his
hands waved angrily in the air as he squalled. Not
at all the ideal child.
There is a leveling of social rank in a hospital.
Everything is labeled mother, father, child, doctor,
nurse, technician. You are no longer writer, house-
wife, butcher, clubwoman.
You are all suddenly alike and have much to
say to each other. Yet the differences remain. The
Oriental ladies drink hot water, just hot water,
straight. The ladies from Williamsburg all have
hatboxes full of wigs. They shave their heads, so
that they will be attractive only to their husbands.
But the wigs—fantastically coiffed, in several
shades, formal, sporty, bouffant, long, short, red,
brown, black, each in its plastic container—remain
by their bedsides. These ladies look wonderful at
all times because of their super collection. And
their mothers all arrive with huge baskets and
thermos jugs filled with special food. The mothers,
too, covering their splendid wigs with simple
scarves. They are jolly, happy people and I like
them.
 They put a whiner next to me. Such moans.
Four hours of labor, then plop, out he came, but
you would have thought she had suffered agonies.
She never shut up. For twenty-four hours she
whined and yammered to whomever would listen.
It was her third child and she could have spawned
a hundred-pounder from the description of her tor-
ment. When her husband arrived she went at him,
eagerly describing every twinge that he, he alone,
had caused. And she ate (complaining about the
food) but did she eat, through every visit from the
doctor, nurse, husband, in-laws, cousins, and
snacks in between. But she was a thin lady.
There were people everywhere. It was the
noisiest of places. People bringing trays, taking
trays, sweeping floors, washing sinks, shlepping
babies, taking babies, changing beds, changing
people, bringing medication, jabbing, prattling,
cackling. Sound all the time.
All the mothers were expected to go to the
movies and learn how to take care of their infants.
People kept asking whether or not I was going to
see the second showing. It reached the point
where I finally said, “No my child isn’t expected to
live.” And they were shocked into silence. Lovely
silence.
My doctor arrived that afternoon and said that
the baby was holding his own. They had cleared
his lungs several times and he was breathing more
naturally. She had asked the hospital pediatrician
to visit him and then speak to me. She said that
the pediatrician was a wonderful woman and that
I should trust her. She also said I could leave in
the morning. She was, I think, more upset than
Ernest and I. She had been my doctor for a long
time and my sister’s as well. She had also had
problems in her own family, and empathized with
ours. In a way, I felt that I had let her down, and
that bothered me.
I kept expecting to hear that the baby had
died. I figured that I’d borne an angel and that he
was ready to meet whomever you meet when your
soul is sprung.
Barbrah phoned our attorney, Jim, who is also
our minister, and he arrived to baptize the baby. I
had to choose a name. He looked like a fish sprite,
and I didn’t think he belonged in our world. I felt
that originally he had come from Atlantis, but that
wasn’t euphonic enough. I called him Athelantis.
Jim was allowed in the room with the infants
and stuck his hands into the incubator (are clergy-
men cleaner than the rest of us?) in order to per-
form all the rites. Ernest was proud as could be at
having his child baptized. Ernest is a very terrific
sort of man. Athelantis was his son, and he was
beautiful. And whether he was here with us, or
elsewhere, we had produced a lovely boy. Ernest
beamed and Barbrah and I didn’t look at each
other or we would have cried.
I had had it with being strong. I knew that I
had to be home, surrounded by calmness and
familiar things, and no one feeling sorry for me.
That afternoon, I was told that the pediatrician
would be visiting me. I was lying in bed, “resting,”
when she arrived. She seemed incredibly old to
me, dressed completely in black, and stooped over,
hobbling on two canes. I could hardly understand
her European accent and, not wishing anyone to
hear our talk, my voice was pitched low. She could
hardly hear me because of her hearing problem. It
was not the most auspicious of meetings. She con-
firmed what my doctor had said and told me that it
would be best to leave the baby in the hospital,
either to die or be institutionalized later.
Ernest and Barbrah came to collect me the
next morning. We took a last look at the baby and
were gone.

(To be continued)