On
my sixteenth birthday, just after I had blown out the candles on a fairy cake,
my mother told me that I was born dead.
“I’m
so happy that you made it,” she said
.
I
pulled the fork out of my mouth.
“What?”
“Oh,”
she said. “I guess we never told you. If not for aunt Kirah you wouldn’t even
have made it through your first day.”
Aunt
Kirah. Nurse Kirah.
My
mother’s contractions started in her lunch break, two months early. She was at
the hospital twenty minutes later and another hour after that she pushed my
head out of her body.
Like
most babies, I didn’t breathe. The doctor gave me a light slap, like for all
babies. Another light slap, like for some babies. Then a stronger slap.
At
that point my mother started screaming. A thick stream of blood ran out of her
lower body. The doctor handed me over to a young nurse who tried another slap
and then quickly passed me on to a 24 year old nurse. Nurse Kirah.
Kirah
wrapped her mouth around mine and blew air into my nose. She used two of her
fingers to quickly massage my chest. She paused, blew another gust of air into
my lungs and kept massaging. Over and over again.
My
mother stopped screaming. They managed to stop her bleeding too.
They
told nurse Kirah to stop the cpr. They said it was hopeless. The doctor tried
to pull her hand away from my small and still chest. When that didn’t succeed
he declared me dead.
Two
days after my sixteenth birthday I met Kirah again. To me she had always been
aunt Kirah, never nurse Kirah.
“The
world just disappeared,” she said. “It was like there was only you and me and
my whole life seemed to have led to that moment.”
She
took a bite of the fairy cake and smiled.
“It’s
strange, but I don’t even remember moving my fingers or giving you
mouth-to-mouth. I just wanted to save you and in that moment nothing else
mattered, not even my own life. I just knew you would live.”
“Even
when everyone told you to stop?”
Kirah
nodded.
“Even
then. I knew that you would live and I would have done anything just to make
you take that first breath.”
“Thank
you.”
“It’s
okay. I’m happy that I did. Make sure you bring good to the world.”
Three
days after my sixteenth birthday I announced to my parents that I would become
a nurse. By the time I turned seventeen they had convinced me to become a
doctor instead.
Studying
medicine was the most difficult time of my life – or at least the most
difficult time that I remember.
Before
I gave them a tour of the grounds my parents had never even entered a lecture
hall. They had supported me in school, but university was different and when my
trouble with deadlines and stacks of learn-this-by-heart sheets started they
didn’t know how to help.
Aunt
Kirah did know. She came and showed me the best books. She taught me mnemonics
for the most important bones and muscles. She even taught me how to take proper
notes and where to sit in the lecture hall – not in the first two or three rows
so you don’t get picked on, but in the first third of the hall.
“The
ones in the back,” Kirah said, “Are either shy or don’t want to listen. As a
doctor you shouldn’t be shy and as a smart girl you should want to listen. It’s
not cool to sit in the back. It’s the seats of those that want to chat and
gossip or sleep. It’s the seats of those that want to fail and it’s not cool to
fail.”
I
would be lying if I said my grades were great. But I never failed an exam and
my grades were high enough that, when my first placement went well, they
allowed me to join the neonatology specialisation. It felt like the right thing
to do, the right thing to give back.
When
I graduated I had three parents to watch my hat fly. There were my parents, of
course, and aunt Kirah sat to the left of my mom with a big smile on her face.
Kirah
also helped me get my first job – in her hospital. In the hospital in which I
was born dead.
She
showed me the way around and introduced me to the other nurses. Aunt Kirah told
me how to learn the most and how to handle those wrinkly, small and fragile
humans with care, but she also scolded me with her soft voice whenever I
handled a newborn too roughly or made decisions that she thought were not
ideal.
Just
for one year I had that pleasure. I wish I would have thanked her more often.
The
doctor’s life is hard. You have to be calm and compassionate to your patients
all day. That life doesn’t allow you to take rest and think of yourself. But
most of all it doesn’t give you time to sit back and see all the other people
in your life that would need your compassion.
I
knew that her husband had died long ago, but aunt Kirah never wore a sad face.
I also heard the rumors but with my thoughts on the patients I quickly
discarded those words from my mental stack.
“Unhappy.”
“Miscarried.”
“Lonely.”
“Can’t
have children.”
“Always
just at work.”
I
always asked her how she was and she always said she was fine. A whole year and
I didn’t listen.
She
was standing behind me while I was giving advice to a soon-to-be mother. I felt
her hand on my shoulder and then she pulled it away.
“…
and we even offer a water birth, if …”
The
patient turned white.
“Oh
my god,” the patient said. “Oh my god.”
A
“What?” left my mouth but before she could answer I heard the heavy thud behind
me.
Aunt
Kirah’s arms and legs were twitching, then cramped. Her lower jaw was pulled
down and her eyes turned inside.
Seizure.
We
gave her muscle relaxants but her mouth never closed again.
Kirah
was in that bed for a week. There were so many flowers that even the second
table didn’t suffice.
There
were always people in her room, holding her hand and saying kind words. Only
when I said that I was a doctor and needed privacy, then they would leave and I
would sit down and cry with my head on her chest.
When
she fell her head had hit the floor. An aneurysm. Brain dead.
I
hadn’t paid attention to that hand on my shoulder; to that hand pulling on my
coat.
After
a week her doctor made the decision to pull the plug.
“Please
don’t,” I said.
He
looked at her face.
“I’m
sorry,” he said. “But you know she’s dead already.”
That
afternoon my parents came. Kirah’s sister and her two nephews too.
One
after the other a slow procession of nurses and doctors went through the room
to squeeze her hand or kiss her forehead.
All
except my parents and her sister and nephews left. I was the one that pulled
the plug.
There
is no sound like that steady, long beep. No sound where you hope so much that
it would sound different.
A
week later I emptied her locker. Another nurse, one around Kirah’s age, came
into the room while I was folding a blue sweater.
The
nurse looked around the room, then quickly approached me. She held a file
towards me. It had Kirah’s name on it and a patient number.
“We
shouldn’t give this out,” she said. “But I think you might want it.”
“Why?”
“You
will see.”
That
night, with the basket of Kirah’s possessions on a chair and a glass of sour
white wine on the table, I opened that file.
There
were not many pages of the first years. Just her profile and insurance data. A
few standard tests.
I
felt a stone in my stomach when I saw the pregnancy test. Positive.
There
were several more lab results. An admission sheet. One word was scribbed in red
letters at the top of the page.
“Miscarriage.”
My
training took over. I looked through the data on the page and didn’t find a
cause. For nearly half an hour I read through the sheet and the lab results
stapled to the yellow cardboard. All results seemed fine. She had been admitted
in the afternoon with pain and bleeding, but there didn’t seem to be a cause.
There
was an operation report too. They removed her uterus.
I
sank the file on the table and felt tears roll down my cheeks.
I
had never listened. I had never wondered why she was alone.
That’s
why she had always cared for me so much. She had saved me. She had given life
to me. I had been her replacement child.
I
took the glass and raised it.
“I
would have done anything just to make you take that first breath,” she had
said.
“Thank
you,” I whispered.
It
was in that moment, when my eyes were somewhere on the ceiling and the cold of
the glass touched my lips.
The
page had turned back to the page with the red letters at the top.
My
eyes moved back to the page. I looked at the large scribbled word with the
capital M. My eyes moved down the page. Then I saw the date.
My
birthday.
