Six months of deliberate silence turned out to be a skill I already had, and I had built it in that marriage without noticing, and I have needed to be honest about that in a room with a professional since.
The physical part was worse than the deceit. I carried twins to thirty-five weeks in a state of permanent low-grade readiness, with a go-bag in the boot of a car that was in my own name — the one thing I had quietly moved in the August — and a copy of everything in a safe deposit box at a credit union eleven miles away.
I had a blood pressure problem from about week thirty. It was managed and it was fine. I have never once been told it was connected to anything and I have never once fully believed that.
The complaint to the state licensing board was drafted in the September and sat in Beatrix Nwankwo's drawer, finished, unfiled, for eleven weeks.
I went to their Thanksgiving. I let Adelaide put her hand on my stomach. I said thank you for the crib.
And on the day I went into labour, at eleven weeks and four days before I expected to, Beatrix Nwankwo was on the first page of my hospital notes as the person to call.
PART 4 — THIRTY-SIX HOURS
Here is why I signed, and it is three things.
The first is that you cannot do what they were trying to do at a bedside.
A parent in this state cannot contract away custody of a three-day-old in a leather folder. Relinquishment of parental rights is a court process with a statutory waiting period, specific formalities, and — for a child that age — protections that exist precisely because women are asked to sign things three days after surgery.
That instrument was worth nothing the moment it was drafted. Beatrix had told me in the September exactly what such a document would look like if it ever appeared, because she had seen it before.
The second is that the waiver on page nine could not do what they wanted either.
You cannot privately contract away somebody's ability to report a regulated trust account to the body that regulates it. And in any case you cannot waive a complaint that has already been prepared, by an attorney, on the instructions of a former employee, and which was going to be filed whether I signed anything or not.
