I was clinging to him when C showed up, carrying our bags. He was very sheepish. I remembered that my dress was all bloody—it seemed cruel of the nurses to send me on this walk with a bloody dress and cruel of Jimmy to invite C to come see me this way. Then a contraction hit, before we’d all exchanged two words, and I suddenly didn’t care about any of it—where I was or who I was with. What the hell do either of those men matter? C’s sheepishness disgusted me. I vomited up soup dumplings at the edge of the East Meadow. I was unable to crouch down because of the pain, and I ended up covered in it.

C left, no doubt horrified. Jimmy carried our bags in one hand, and supported me with his other arm. Painted in blood and vomit, they finally admitted me.

It was a relief to be in the hospital bed for the first hour or so—a welcome change from everywhere else I’d been that evening. Then the back labor started. Pain layered on top of pain. Dr. Leland said I was progressing nicely; I’d already dilated two more centimeters. He wanted me to try to wait and see if I needed the epidural. I felt then that the hospital was staffed by a series of clowns. I told him he was crazy, and had better order the epidural as quickly as possible.

I started screaming a lot of mad things when he left—about going back out to the park to have my baby alone since no one was helping. Jimmy tried to tell me they knew what they were doing, but I said I’d like to spend hours cutting open his body so he could see what it was like. Resultantly, everyone left me alone for some time. I was in so much pain on the bed that I tried to stand up, but ended up sort of stumbling down to the floor and passing out.

No one came in. I woke up and my vision slowly came back to me. I was sort of on my side, but I worried I’d crushed the baby. I called the nurse, who helped me back into bed and said the baby was fine. I was shaking very badly at this point; when they finally brought the epidural in, they had trouble getting me to hold still for long enough to administer it.

As it turns out epidurals don’t do a thing for back labor. My legs were icy cool, totally numb, and my belly too, but my back didn’t stop throbbing, not for a minute, which seemed erroneous since that’s where they put the damn thing in. I kept telling them something was wrong, that it wasn’t strong enough, but they just said that was as good as it was going to get.