I Can See The Eiffel Tower From My Hospital Window

I hike up my surgery gown, step on to the foot stool by the window, and rise to my tippy toes. 
Yes, there it is. 

Not the usual vantage point to see the icon of La Ville Lumiere, The City of Light, but - I can see it.

We had slept only one night in our Paris flat when I started bleeding, my pregnant body articulating the panic I did not say out loud: would I hold this child? All plans for his Christmas arrival melted as I slumped, blacking out, in our tiny water closet.

Now alone in the hospital, autumn air billows the sheer curtains like the unknown pulsing inside. We hope to keep our infant son in utero even for just one more day. 

I call my doula, birth coach, sister in San Diego.

"Hey! . . .I saw a search light sweeping the sky . . .I just knew it was the Eiffel Tower, and guess what -- it is!!! . . ."

"What-are-you-doing?! GET BACK IN BED!"

Even oceans apart, she is still care-taking, still making me laugh.

I am lonely of course. Bed rest, month long hospital stay—irrelevant of location—is not something you plan on. In Paris one expects a thousand splendors, not this. Thoughts of my Grandmother, Vera Young Dick, comfort me. She and her husband were volunteer missionaries in the 1950's; she carried a child in New Zealand and became bed-ridden too. Did anyone visit her?

A French friend from graduate school days brings me a CD from Cameroon and my husband delivers a player with the right kind of plug. A new nurse breezes in and I lean over to turn down the tribal choral music that soothes me—

"No! si vous plait! C'est my country - Cameroon!" she says, "I never imagined I would hear this at my work!" 

She performs the daily routine: steroid shots for my infants' lungs, fresh bedding pulled tight on the mattress while I lie humbly, horizontal. She cleans my body. I've never needed another in this way. I feel transparent and stark but I open myself to her ritual of service; she does for me what I can not do.

Expatriates flock to the private American Hospital of Paris for USA trained surgeons, dentists, and doctors. Turban, jewel, sari clad, multilingual people gather in the lobby café, nursing themselves with tiny cups of espresso. My American OB Dr. Jocelyn McGinnis is a saint, she administers to her patients daily; even on Thanksgiving she takes time to visit me. It's a quiet, empty day, comes and goes with out regard. I write down my blessings.

Without my prompting, Dr. McGinnis moves me out of the maternity ward. I am relieved by her awareness—I don't have to hear babies crying, mothers coddling while I face the uncertain. She concedes for me to begin French lessons and brings me paperbacks in English for entertainment. McGinnis takes care of herself too: she plays tennis every week, attends mass, and though aptly proficient in French, still studies with a tutor. Mothering, professional responsibilities and the absence of her Foreign Officer husband does not keep her from doing things to make her smile. Without a drop of martyrdom or self-aggrandizement, Dr.McGinnis is a breath of fresh air. She shares with me parenting blips – how her teenage daughter loves to dance, how she no longer wants to walk with Mom on the same side of the street, and how her daughter is now so franÇais she expects her cheese course after every meal.

I remove a picture from my journal and hang it on my wall. Torn from the National Geographic, it's  women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, celebrating—joy spilling out over their old broken teeth. One woman is doubled over, laughing hysterically, her arm holding her middle as she reels. Looking at them gives me courage; they choose hope: face paint on their cheeks and noses, tree leaves tucked into their colorful dresses, and they dance.

*               *              *

I feel a change in my body. I lie quietly in the encroaching dusk, the moving light on the walls seems to personify the now unstoppable thrust forward into the inevitable I feel - I know it's time to try, time for my son to come. I roll over, and press the red nurse’s button. Staff streams in, overhead lights are flicked on, and I call my husband while my body is prepared for surgery. Divine nurses who cared for and laughed with me these weeks – Horia, Elisabeth, Joelle – wish me luck. It feels like a party I forgot was coming. I pull out the only thing I can offer in thanks—Lindt chocolate. Their optimism lingers like fallen confetti as I am whisked into a metallic, blockaded ward.

"Promise me my husband won't see me cut in half," I petition as we speed past masked faces, I want to be whole in his memory, not just anatomy. Yes, Dr. McGinnis assures me, he won't see that; and in the next breath I hear her covertly tell my husband not to look up at the reflection in the overhead lamp. Yeah right, I think, and realize I am shivering but not cold.

*            *        *

My husband cradles my head, my own arms stretching out on jelly padded rests, and we pray together. The whispers at the end of the table cease, Dr. McGinnis announces a change. 


I hear my son cry out. 


His sound pours joy into me. 
Finally – I know he is with us. 
Alive. 
Faith, steroid, built lungs breathing. 

We leave surgery, I reach out to my sons closed incubator door, and I am wheeled away. I know he will be taken to another hospital, but nothing prepares me for the chasm I feel because of his absence. Loss strikes at the relief I felt only moments before.

Now it's a new survival game: me in the American Hospital, infant son in another across Paris—me pumping breast milk with my husband transporting it on the metro as if it were our life savings. I yearn for my son's health to improve enough for him to come to me. I scribble verse about losing patience like it's a wallet, inquiring if others have seen my elusive but essential, patience pet.

I begin to heal; permission is granted for my husband to take me to my baby—see if he will begin suckling. It is arranged; time designated, but instead, a phone call. My husband absolutely can not come.

I sit, dressed, for the first time in weeks, on the edge of my hospital bed.

I call the front desk.

"Oui, un taxi, si vous plait."

A hospital staff member arrives with a wheel chair. Once downstairs I meet the lobby attendants with a grin-free Bonsoir ; I dread bureaucratic questions now. We escape out the automated revolving door and the staff member assists me into the taxi. Voila! The taxi driver and I zip past street openings and I see it for a moment – lights on the Eiffel Tower sparkling.

The public hospital has no wheelchairs for use when I arrive. I bend over to alleviate the sharp stabs in my abdomen and walk with scooting steps to an elevator. The doors sputter open to a dilapidated nursery and I am taken to my child. 


I hold my son—new yet familiar. He sucks, he drinks. I know he will be stable. I adjust the oxygen mask on his face, press my lips to his forehead, and watch my tears drip down his wisps of hair. 
Finally, I unwrap his IV-needled hand that grips my index finger.

Days pass and I become strong enough to shower independently. Elisabeth stands outside of the open glass door, assists me out of the stall, and locks her gaze with mine. She tells me today is the day—my son will be coming to me. She leaves, and I kneel on the bathroom floor, wrapped in her tidings, awash with gratitude.

I wait, ready for this second arrival of my son. For the first time in my life I feel completely prepared for a consequential life event. I hear a soft knock at the door, and Ana, an emergency medical driver, enters bearing my son in a huge bundle of fleece and silver reflective blankets. She is so proud to be making such a delivery; our joy is palpable. 
He is mine. He is safe. We are together.

*             *            *

When I return to Paris, yes I visit my favorite places, but always first to the hospital to see if there's a woman there, seemingly alone, trying to swaddle hope.

I want to tell her we are built by the indelible splendor of gracious people and moments. Meekness, empathy—amassed while lying where she lays—now substantiate me. I want to ask if she might believe suffering can weld strength, if perhaps riveting angst may in time, be a gift. No, I never imagined I'd experience such a gamut when I lived in Paris, bore a child in Paris. But more surprisingly, I did not expect to emerge with a clearer view of myself, and stand, after everything, more complete. I want to say to her my experience is not merely for my benefit, but for others too—maybe for her.

*         *         *

Instead, I simply sit beside her, and listen. I hold her hand when she wants to get out of bed, and sometimes I can point out to her, if she stands on her tippy toes, the Eiffel Tower is right outside her hospital window.