Labor and Delivery

My interactions with patients and visitors and staff on the AIDS ward were so varied and unique that my emotions were constantly rising and falling.

Some deaths would be peaceful, even beautiful in ways, others terrible to behold. A patient would be discharged with such great relief and high hopes about the future, while another passed away the day they were admitted. Sometimes there’d be a call saying a patient had died being transported to the hospital, sometimes a call saying a patient had died the day after they got home. We knew that most often in those cases the family and friends had decided to do the unthinkable and take matters into their own hands, to do whatever was necessary to stop their loved one’s terrible suffering.

Sometimes, when patients were feeling well enough to leave the unit, we’d go out to the elevators and head upstairs. The AIDS ward was on the fifth floor and directly above, on the sixth, was Labor and Delivery.

We’d go up and watch, through the looking glass, all the new arrivals emerging from the swinging double doors. We’d see the dads and grandmas and sisters and aunties and little brothers come up to the window and look in, pointing, smiling, crying. Each baby’s eyes were closed, some wearing blue caps, some pink, some none, some with their little bird mouths open, mewling, some jerking their legs spasmodically, over and over, kick-starting their lives.

It was a relief to watch the little ones coming in, just beginning, just opening, just being, not knowing all the constructs that were waiting for them, while so many were leaving and going away on the floor below.

The Great Wheel turned, over and over, giving, giving, giving, taking, taking, taking.

The nurses on the sixth floor in Labor and Delivery helped mothers spread their legs and push, push, push, until the head appeared and the mouth opened and the shock of the first inhalation occurred, while the nurses below on the AIDS Ward tended, cleaned, hugged, wiped, emptied until the shock of the last exhalation evaporated into the final silence of the room.

We never saw the moms in Labor and Delivery giving birth, but some were there, one floor below, smiling and crying and breathing and holding and letting go, as they helped their sons and daughters return to where they’d come from.