—
ONCE, RELIGION GOT tangled up in my care of a newborn. A Muslim couple came into the hospital to have their baby, and the father explained that he had to be the first person to speak to the newborn. When he told me this, I explained that I would do everything I could to honor his request, but that if there were any complications with the birth, my first priority was to make sure that the baby was saved—which required communication, and meant that silence in the delivery room was not likely or possible.
I gave the couple some privacy while they discussed this, and finally the father summoned me back. “If there are complications,” he told me, “I hope Allah would understand.”
As it turned out, his wife had a textbook delivery. Just before the baby was born, I reminded the pediatrician of the patient request, and the doctor stopped calling the arrival of the head, right shoulder, left, like a football play-by-play. The only sound in the room was the baby’s cry. I took the newborn, slippery as a minnow, and placed him in a blanket in his father’s arms. The man bent close to the tiny head of his son, and whispered to him in Arabic. Then he placed the baby into his wife’s arms, and the room exploded with noise again.
Sometime later that day, when I came in to check on my two patients, I found them asleep. The father stood over the bassinet, staring at his child as if he didn’t quite understand how this had happened. It was a look I saw often on the faces of fathers, for whom pregnancy wasn’t real until this very moment. A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever. “What a beautiful boy you have,” I said, and he swallowed. There are just some feelings, I’ve learned, for which we never invented the right words. I hesitated, then asked what had been on my mind since the delivery. “If it’s not rude of me to ask, would you tell me what you whispered to your son?”
“The adhan,” the father explained. “God is great; there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” He looked up at me and smiled. “In Islam, we want the first words a child hears to be a prayer.”
It seemed absolutely fitting, given the miracle that every baby is.
The difference between the Muslim father’s request and the request made by Turk Bauer was like the difference between day and night.
Between love and hate.
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IT’S A BUSY afternoon, so I don’t have time to talk to Corinne about the new patient she’s inherited until we are both pulling on our coats and walking to the elevator. “What was that all about?” Corinne asks.
“Marie took me off the case because I’m Black,” I tell her.
Corinne wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t sound like Marie.”
I turn to her, my hands stilling on the lapels of my coat. “So I’m a liar?”
Corinne puts her hand on my arm. “Of course not. I’m just sure there’s something else going on.”
It’s wrong to take out my frustration on Corinne, who has to deal with that awful family now. It’s wrong for me to be angry at her, when I’m really angry at Marie. Corinne, she’s always been my partner in crime, not my adversary. But I feel like I could talk till I’m blue in the face and she wouldn’t really understand what this feels like.
Maybe I should talk till I’m blue in the face. Maybe then I’d be acceptable to the Bauers.
“Whatever,” I say. “That baby means nothing to me.”
Corinne tilts her head. “You want to grab a glass of wine before we head home?”
I let my shoulders relax. “I can’t. Edison’s waiting.”
The elevator dings, and the doors open. It’s packed, because it’s end of shift. Staring back at me is a sea of blank white faces.
Normally I don’t even think about that. But suddenly, it’s all I can see.
I’m tired of being the only Black nurse on the birthing pavilion.
I’m tired of pretending that doesn’t matter.
I’m tired.
“You know what,” I say to Corinne. “I think I’m going to just take the stairs.”
—