Chapter 2 - Six days postpartum
I was readmitted for eleven hours.
Not because I was dying.
Because postpartum fainting deserves more than:
Drink some water.
My blood pressure was low when paramedics arrived.
Heart rate high.
Blood tests showed significant anemia, somewhat worse than discharge but not catastrophic.
I was dehydrated.
Exhausted.
I had not eaten properly.
No evidence of new major hemorrhage.
No pulmonary embolism symptoms.
No postpartum infection.
No stroke.
No dramatic hidden diagnosis.
Dr. Miriam Cole, my obstetrician, looked at Daniel and said:
“Her body is recovering from blood loss and delivery. She needs nutrition, hydration, medication, rest, and follow-up. She does not need to be preparing a banquet.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“I know.”
She looked at him.
“Do you?”
He deserved that.
Daniel had gone back to work that morning.
Not because his company demanded it.
Because his mother told him:
“I’ll take care of Clara.”
I had asked him not to leave me alone with Margaret.
He thought I meant:
She annoys me.
Not:
I am afraid of what she is trying to do.
That distinction became another thing he would have to live with.
Then Dr. Cole asked everyone except me to leave.
“Clara, did anyone physically hurt you?”
“No.”
“Prevent you from calling for help?”
I hesitated.
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“My mother-in-law kept taking my phone.”
“Why?”
“She said the baby needed quiet and I kept ‘calling people to complain.’”
“Did you ask for it back?”
“Yes.”
“Did she give it back?”
“Eventually.”
“Could you leave?”
“I could barely walk.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I looked at her.
“She stood in front of the door once.”
There.
“Did she threaten you?”
“She said if I called Daniel again, she would make sure he understood I couldn’t handle motherhood.”
Dr. Cole wrote.
Then:
“Has this happened before?”
“Not like today.”
“What has happened?”
I told her.
Margaret had arrived the morning after we came home.
She brought groceries.
A suitcase.
Three folders.
She told Daniel:
“I’m staying for a week.”
Neither of us invited her to stay.
Daniel tried to say:
“Mom, we’re fine.”
She replied:
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Then she remained.
At first she did useful things.
Laundry.
Bottle sterilizing.
A pharmacy run.
Then the postpartum care service stopped coming.
Daniel had hired a private postpartum nurse/doula agency for eight daytime shifts.
Two workers had already visited.
Excellent.
Quiet.
Professional.
On day three, no one came.
Margaret told me:
“Daniel canceled it. He realized it was ridiculous.”
I believed her.
On day four, my sister Ava tried to visit.
Margaret told her I was sleeping.
I was not.
I later learned Ava waited outside for twenty minutes.
On day five, Margaret began taking photographs.
Kitchen.
Laundry basket.
Baby bottles.
Me asleep on the sofa.
Once, I woke and saw her holding her phone toward me.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Then she smiled.
“You look overwhelmed.”
That sentence frightened me enough that I called Eleanor Price.
The number Daniel dialed after Margaret left.
Eleanor was an attorney.
Not mine originally.
My late father-in-law’s.
May you like
The person who had administered the Hale Descendants Trust for sixteen years.
And the woman Margaret had spent the last month trying to remove.
