Parents On the Line
I rattle the door handle. The rusty old knob won’t budge. I take a deep breath, collect myself and rattle it again, as if willing the door unlocked will undo my carelessness. Defiantly, the knob holds tight. I peer in through the glass paned door, across the landing where I park my bike, to the main door of my apartment. It hangs wide open, mocking me. “Great,” I sigh. I’ve locked myself outside on the second story porch and my roommate is not home.
I only planned to sit outside for a few minutes. After a long day at clinical I came out to the porch to enjoy a snack and soak in the setting sunshine from this glorious first day of spring. I hadn’t even changed out of my scrubs. I needed to decompress first. That morning, I’d had a patient on the labor and delivery floor who really rattled me and I couldn’t get her out of my mind. My captivity on the porch was at least a diversion.
I text my roommate to inquire when he thinks he might be home. But I’m not panicked. It’s such a beautiful day. The late afternoon light twinkles through the leaves of a large oak tree in the front yard. Everything is quiet except a warm breeze that flicks and rustles branches as it moves down the street. I settle into a folding chair and decide to catch up on some phone calls while I wait for rescue.
“Well hello!” my mother answers brightly. The way she always does, as if she is pleasantly surprised that I would think to call, even though we speak several times a week. She is out shopping with her partner, George. They are looking for odds and ends for their new townhouse and she updates me on all the latest construction news and plans for the move.
“And how are you doing?” she asks simply. I pause and let out a big sigh. She’d said the magic words, words that when uttered by a mother give you permission to say exactly how rotten you feel. So I tell her…
Today in clinical a nurse came to find me. “I hear you speak some Spanish, would you mind helping out with a patient?” “Of course not,” I reply. As a nursing student you jump at any opportunity to be helpful. (Bonus points for getting to practice Spanish). I follow the nurse down the hall and around the corner, a bit giddy with my assignment, until she pushes open the patient’s door and I hear a scream.
The young Hispanic woman lying in the bed is having a miscarriage. She is in terrible pain. The nurse explains that the woman is at 16 weeks gestation but the baby is not viable and it is coming right now. She asks me to ask the mother about her pain and tell it will be ok. I’m so nervous I can barely remember the word “dolor”. The doctor is nowhere to be found and the woman is really hurting.
“You may want to turn away,” the nurse states, “This is not going to be pleasant.” I imagine myself pathetically huddled in the corner. “I’m fine,” I say, “I can handle it,” without any idea of what “it” is. The nurse stops and looks at me for a second. “Ok then, hold her hand.” It doesn’t seem right; I’m a stranger who just walked in the door. But the woman clasps my hand back gratefully, and I know my touch conveys more support than any words.
The young mother moans loudly and shifts in the bed several more times. Then she closes her eyes and is quiet. She does not acknowledge the fetus and placenta lying wet in the blood tinged bed, and I am relieved. Not only because my vocabulary fails me but because any description would be too crude. “It’s over,” I repeat in Spanish. ”It’s finished. It’s complete,” unsure of which translation mostly gently yet clearly communicates that the baby has been lost.
“Oh dear,” my mother sighs, and it’s in the weight of her breath, more than the words, that I can hear her understanding. We are quiet for a minute. I wipe at my wet eyes and let the sadness turn into frustration. “Well I’m an idiot because now I’m locked out on my balcony!” I explain my predicament all the while eyeing my surroundings. I am determined not to spend all night out here. There must be a way out of this.
“Mom, I think that if I climb out on the slanted roof next to the porch I might be able to wedge one of the living room windows open and get inside. There is a power line attached to the house near there but it’s probably not live, right?
“Well why don’t you go for it!” she says enthusiastically. “If the phone goes dead while we’re talking, I’ll know you’ve fallen and call 911.”
I’m not sure about the feasibility of her “rescue plan”, considering that she lives in Colorado and I’m in Connecticut, but I like her support. It’s actually one of the best things about my mom. While other parents say, “no, no that’s too dangerous,” my mother cheers me on, often having more confidence in me than I have in myself.
So with her blessing, I tuck the phone under my chin, climb over the porch railing onto the roof and make my way carefully to the window. I’m going to have to pry the screen off the frame to get to the window. I fumble though my scrub pockets for a suitable implement. Patient notes, two quarters, a pen and a handful of alcohol wipes. Oh sure, NOW I have alcohol wipes. I can never find them in clinical but trapped on my roof it’s like the loaves and the fishes… I settle for my trusty BIC. As I wedge it back and forth in the frame trying to get just the right angle to dislodge a spring, I resume my account of the day.
I tell my mom all about the baby’s dad. How he fell into the nurses arms crying like a child after the baby passed. And how we took him into a separate room to view the little body before it was taken away. As the father and I stood next to the plastic bassinet, the nurse unwrapped the fetus. She pulled on his arms and legs and I translated, “Here are his five fingers and five toes… You can even tell it’s a boy.” The nurse pointed to a small nub between the babies legs and we all laughed quietly, nervously.
I wondered if we were making things worse, by showing this man the son he would never take home. “His eyes aren’t fully developed,” we went on, “but you can see them here.” She pointed to the head. To me the fetus looked completely alien. But as I watched the father shyly but intently looking on, I realized he was seeing his child, the child he had been loving and re-organizing his life for these last 16 weeks.
I’m not working on the window anymore. I’m just sitting on the roof lost in my story. As the sun begins to dip behind the houses across the street, I notice a few students ambling their way home from class…
Hey, wait a minute. Doesn’t anyone think it’s weird that I’m up here in scrubs trying to break into this house? I know nursing is the most trusted profession and all but wouldn’t you think someone might say something to me? My heart lightens as my mom and I joke about the stellar neighborhood watch on Mansfield Street.
With renewed purpose, I get back to work on the window. I can see what I need to do and in minutes the screen is off. Using the pen as a lever, I manage to inch up the bottom pane. With one last heave, the job is done. I dive headfirst through the window and flip onto my back like a high jumper, landing with a soft bounce on the living room couch. I am elated. Empowered. Lady MacGyver. This is the best I’ve felt all day. I cheer into the phone, “I’m in!!!”
“Great. Does this mean George and I can go into Home Depot now?” I laugh. I hadn’t realized that my mom had put the last 45 minutes of her life on hold to talk me through my predicament. She, and poor George, had been standing patiently in a parking lot waiting for my safe entry while I was playing Mission Impossible on the roof. “Yes, of course!“ I hang up the phone smiling. And for the second time today, I am overwhelmed by a parent’s love.
About Meredith
Meredith Quinn Tuttle is in the first year of our Family Nurse Practitioner Program. She graduated with Honors in 2002 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology from Trinity College, and received a Master’s of Public Health in International Health Promotion from George Washington University in 2006. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including induction into Phi Beta Kappa, and has extensive experience as a health educator, health research fellow, and community outreach coordinator.