Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

by Sarah Wynn-Williams

here? “Lauren—is the baby okay?” She strolls over to perform a cursory check on the sleeping newborn. “She’s beautiful and she’s okay.” She returns to tidying. I feel so broken that I can’t even remove my feet from the stirrups they were in during the delivery. I sink into an exhausted silence. Eventually, under questioning from Tom, Lauren admits that she’s worried about the amount of blood I’m continuing to lose. She starts to weigh the towels that have been placed around me to collect the blood that continues to flow and calls for the doctor on duty. After that doctor, others arrive. My shaking evolves into convulsions. By now I know it’s serious; Lauren keeps cleaning up the blood but it’s flowing thick and fast. I feel drained and hollow, beyond exhaustion. The basics of existing—breathing, listening, and feeling—are thick, heavy, almost insurmountable tasks. The room fills with various doctors and nurses who barely acknowledge me as they plunge needles and attach me to machines. A new nurse pushes Lauren to the side when she arrives, but I manage to grab Lauren’s hand and beg her with my eyes not to leave the room. I periodically remove my oxygen mask to ask Tom and Lauren to check on the baby, who remains peacefully in the corner. Time slows down as pain expands. It radiates from my swollen belly but I can see that all of me is swelling up. The new nurse attached a blood pressure cuff to my arm when she arrived; it feels like it’s burning through my swollen skin. Ev...