Florence Adler Swims Forever(15)

Fannie thought she noticed the purposeful nurse dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “I thought I might borrow a stamp. Is there any news—”

The women looked at each other, stricken.

“—about the Dionne babies?”

Fannie watched as the women’s faces rearranged themselves right in front of her.

“Yes! Yes!” said Mary, “The babies are all still alive! It’s a miracle!”

Bette steered her into a rattan chair that sat opposite the sofa, “Here,” she said, sliding a stack of magazines, a copy of the Atlantic City Press, and the ashtray farther down the coffee table. “Put your feet up at least.”

“Cigarette?” asked the purposeful nurse, holding out a pack of Chesterfields.

“Yes, please,” said Fannie, reaching forward to retrieve one.

Mary passed her a lighter. Fannie hadn’t had a cigarette in more than two weeks, and how long had it been before that? Maybe the Newman party? She took a long draw. There was something about the cigarette that made the evening feel festive, like the women who sat across from Fannie might be friends and not hospital staff paid to change her linens and bring her meals.

“What’s the latest on the babies?” Fannie asked, eyeing the paper.

Mary picked it up and rearranged it, handing the folded pages to Fannie. There, at the top of page twenty-one, was the headline TWO OF THE QUINTUPLETS ARE NOT SO WELL. The paper had devoted nearly two full columns to the five girls, born a little more than a week ago—two full months early—in Ontario, Canada.

Fannie couldn’t let go of the story. According to the paper, in all of human history, only thirty cases of quintuplet births had ever been recorded. In not a single case had all the children lived. That these babies had managed to stay alive for more than a week was remarkable.

“Edith says it sounds like Marie’s not doing so well,” said Bette.

Fannie made note of the fact that Edith must be the name of the purposeful nurse. Then she asked, “Marie’s the really tiny one?”

“Yes,” said Edith.

“I love all their names—don’t you?” said Mary.

Bette shook her head agreeably. “They’re so French.”

Fannie scanned the article. “It doesn’t seem like the doctor’s very optimistic.”

The women clucked, and Fannie pressed her mouth into a frown of concern. The truth was that there was a small part of her—a tiny part of her really—that hoped something would go wrong with the quints. That one woman, who already had five children at home, should give birth to not one infant but five, and that they all might survive, made Fannie sick with jealousy.

The Dionne children had spent their first five days of life in a basket of blankets and hot-water bottles, positioned close to the stove. They were fed a mixture of breast milk, corn syrup, water, and rum, and when, on the fifth day, they had not yet died, they were moved to a donated incubator, not unlike the one in which Hyram had spent the final days of his life.

It wasn’t as if Fannie were the first woman to ever lose a child. She knew that. If forced, she could probably list the names of a half-dozen women who had lost a baby in childbirth or shortly thereafter. There was Mildred Greenberg, whose husband drove for Adler’s and Alice Cohen, who played bridge with Rachel Stern. Ethyl Kauffman and Gladys Rivkin. All of them got dressed each day, cooked and cleaned, shopped, and eventually had more babies. Fannie had run into Gladys in the lobby of the Warner Theatre, on a night when she and Isaac had gone to the pictures to see I’m No Angel. Fannie hadn’t been able to pay attention to the film because she had spent so much time studying the back of Gladys’s head, wondering how she managed to laugh at anything.

“I keep telling Dr. Rosenthal we should get a couple of those new incubators up here on the ward,” said Edith.

Bette gave her a look but Edith didn’t appear to notice. “It’s ridiculous that a Boardwalk amusement has more success saving babies than a modern hospital.”

“Fannie’s baby spent some time at Couney’s incubator exhibition last summer,” said Bette. “Isn’t that right, Fannie?”

Fannie nodded, perhaps too vigorously. “We moved him from the hospital to Couney’s because we had hoped it would give him a better chance.”

Edith leaned forward. “And did it?”

“No—”

Edith seemed disappointed, not necessarily because Fannie had lost her son but because the outcome undermined her argument that incubators were the future of medicine. She sank heavily into the sofa, leaned her head back as she took a long drag of her cigarette, and exhaled toward the ceiling.

A baby began to cry across the hall.

“I’ve got it,” said Bette, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Fannie, you care to join me or are you on your way back to bed?”

“Me?” Fannie asked, unsure if she had heard Bette correctly.

“Yes, you. Do you want to come feed a baby?”

“I’d love to,” she said, putting down the paper and reaching across the table to extinguish her own cigarette in the now-crowded ashtray. She supposed the stamp could wait. She stood, said good night to Mary and Edith, and followed Bette across the hall, where more than a dozen bassinets lined both sides of the nursery. About half of them were filled with newborn babies. In the far corner, near the window, one infant had worked its arms free from its bunting and was squawking at the ceiling, all red in the face.