"It's a girl!" the doctor announced. Her eyes filled with tears. She didn't want a girl. How could she protect a girl if she couldn't protect herself? How could she raise a strong woman who could make her own choices when she let everyone make her choices?
"She's beautiful!" the nurses exclaimed while one cleaned the baby up and another began pushing on her stomach.
Tears flowed freely as she stared into the ceiling struggling to comprehend what she was feeling. She should be feeling nothing but love and devotion to this new life she created. While she was in counseling they told her that she would grow to love her baby, regardless of how she came to be but throughout her pregnancy she couldn't help but hope that something would alleviate the responsibility of making the decision to have the child. A friend of a friend knew a doctor upstate that could take care of the situation, but she also heard horror stories about women left to bleed to death in warehouses and kitchen floors and didn't want that to be her fate. Now she had an actual living human being to answer to.
The nurses chattered on, oblivious to her internal struggle.
"She's six pounds seven ounces nineteen inches long! Look at all of that hair!" She wanted to cover her ears and scream at them to shut up. They brought the baby to her.
"Take a look at your daughter." She looked away terrified she would have to look at the face of her attacker.
"Well don't you want to hold her?" The nurse held the baby closer to her. The child was quiet now and she finally dared to peek at her.
A tiny part of her hoped to see only her own family features in her baby. Her own mother loved taking baby pictures of her and attributing all of her facial features to some member of the family. She had her father's eyes and grandmother's ears. But this baby's features were foreign; thick dark hair, swollen cheeks, and a rounded nose.
"Well?" The nurse persisted.
"Just put her in the bassinet." She said quietly.
Word got around quickly about the mother who didn't want her own baby. She wasn't sure what she was going to do but she knew she couldn't take this baby home with her. She was in denial about being pregnant up until she could no longer hide the huge bulge that had become her stomach. She went out and bought a fake wedding band just to stop the endless questions about the baby's father. After the incident, she took a job in the library in the government documents. Nobody wanted the job because it was in the basement, isolated from the rest of the students but it was perfect for her. It gave her time away from everyone she didn't have to answer questions or ignore people's nosey stares.
Now she wanted nothing more than to be alone and these nurses didn't seem to understand that. Everyone had questions and knew exactly what she should do. An adoption agency even showed up and spoke to her about giving her baby to a good Christian home where she could be loved by new parents with a fresh start, not surrounded by the shame of being born to an unwed mother. She thanked the lady and took her information and then threw her card into the trash. Her baby could grow up not knowing her birth mother, but she wouldn't ever be able to stop wondering about how the kid turned out.
One nurse finally made her snap. The petite blonde woman had a high-pitched southern drawl and wandered in the morning after she gave birth. She looked at the sleeping baby and whispered "Oooh she's so precious! Babies are really just a miracle aren't they? Little Angels sent down from the Lord to brighten our lives."
"Or reminders of the worst night of your life," She was exhausted and tired of lying about how she came to be pregnant.
The nurse took the baby and began to change her diaper while she spoke.
"I know, honey, I heard. But you still wanna be a good Mama don't you?" She lowered her voice. "Sometimes these colored girls would say that their babies daddies were rich white men who'd had their way with them. Could you believe that; a white man forcing himself on a colored girl? They should be ashamed of themselves for telling such lies! If anything they were looking to seduce those men…"
Something inside her snapped. "Get out!" she barked.
She had her fill of ignorant comments since the night she was raped. She couldn't stop people from saying them to her, but she definitely didn't want them saying things around the baby.
"Well what's wrong?" the nurse looked confused.
"Put the baby down and get out!" she screamed. The infant began to cry.
The blonde nurse hurried out of the room. A minute later another nurse came in to attend to the now screaming baby.
Serena sat back and stared at the ceiling again trying to ignore the baby's cries. Thankfully, the nurse came with a bottle and began to feed the baby.
The new nurse was quiet for a while.
"I know they're really promoting this formula stuff these days, but breast milk has been around for centuries and has proven to be cheaper and healthier for the baby."
Serena didn't answer and continued to stare at the ceiling. She felt her breasts growing heavy throughout her pregnancy, but breast-feeding would establish a connection with the baby. When she reported her rape, the cops were little to no help and tried to blame her for what happened. "What were you wearing? Have you been sleeping around? Could this be a misunderstanding?" Being pregnant to them was further proof that the sex was consensual, and breast-feeding would mean she accepted the baby like it never happened.
"You're afraid that if you keep her, you're saying that what happened to you was okay?"
Serena looked at the nurse.
"And the cops think that you only reported the rape because you knew you were pregnant out of wedlock and needed an excuse?"
Tears stung the back of her eyes as she remembered the humiliating follow up visit with the cops. They had a report of a similar incident at another school but dropped the lead when they found out she was pregnant and the second woman "wasn't the type that usually said 'no'".
The nurse set the baby back in the bassinet and moved closer to Serena.
"You hoped that looking at her would make all of pain go away. That your love for her would be strong enough to erase your hatred of him and what he did to you."
The tears fell freely and Serena finally spoke. "She doesn't even look like me. I'm going to be looking into his face for the rest of my life."
The nurse hugged her. "Honey you're never going to forget what happened. You're going to have good days and bad days. And this baby, your daughter, is a part of him. But she's also a part of you. You didn't have a choice about how she came to be, but you can make a decision about what kind of life she's going to have."
"How can I protect her? I couldn't even protect myself! I don't want her to have to grow up living in fear like I do. If I keep her, a part of me will always hate her."
"If you can learn to stop hating yourself then you won't have to worry about that."
The nurse hugged her again and left her alone with her thoughts. Serena looked at the sleeping baby girl. Giving her to nice family was the best option. Hopefully, a family that lived out in the country in a small town away from the violence of the city would take her. She would have a mother and father who would love her and teach her to be strong. She would never know how she came to be in the world, only that she was loved. She would never have to wonder or worry about anything. It was the least she could do for her daughter…her daughter. She rolled that thought over in her head. My daughter. No matter what she did, she would never be able to forget that she had a daughter.
Serena reached into the bassinet to pick up the sleeping baby. The baby fussed a bit, but eventually settled into her mother's arms. Could she give this baby a nice life? Would she learn to love her daughter? Serena touched the soft dark hair and the baby slowly opened her eyes. Serena stared into the familiar brown eyes of her baby. She had her eyes.
Her last day in the hospital she got about fifty lectures on how to care for the baby. She got a schedule as to when she was to come back for follow up appointments and a social worker came by to talk about public assistance for single mothers. The only thing she had to do was finish the birth certificate. She filled in the last name, but she was unsure of what to name her daughter.
"You don't have to fill it out now, you can come back later and register her. We've got all of her footprints and everything else ready." The doctor told her.
Serena didn't want to leave hospital without naming her baby but they advised that she leave before it began to snow.
"There was a nurse that was here the morning after she was born. I'd like to say goodbye to her and thank her."
"I'm not sure who you're talking about." The doctor said as he signed more papers.
"She was older, tall and had dark hair…she was very nice to me. I'd like to really thank her and I haven't seen her since."
"Oh yeah you must be talking about Nurse Jackson. She went home for the holidays but I'll tell her you said 'thanks'."
"Nurse Jackson. Thank you. She was extremely helpful." Serena looked down at her baby girl who opened her big brown eyes to look back at her mother. Serena stared at her and thought about their life together. She had so much to do in the weeks to come.
"Yeah, Olivia is one of our best nurses. Our patients love her…"
"Olivia?" Serena asked.
"Yeah, Nurse Jackson. Her first name is Olivia…Okay Miss Benson, your discharge papers are ready to go. We'll wheel you out and call a cab. Have a great holiday."
Serena took one last look at the birth certificate, which read "Baby Benson". She crossed out "Baby" and wrote Olivia. Olivia Benson. She looked down at her baby. "Hi, Olivia. We're going to have a busy day."