Dos Corazones
By Richard HellesenA maternity ward. Cheryl, a woman in her early to mid 30s, has just given birth to her first child. She has a nightmare and her hospital roommate wakes her. Her roommate is very sweet and supportive, but doesn't speak English. Cheryl speaks only a little bit of Spanish. She talks to Ana about her nightmare, and then starts to describe the pain she's feeling as a result of the discrepancies between what she expected pregnancy and childbirth to be like, and her actual experience.
CHERYL
I, um... I'm sorry. I was just... listening to the rain, and... Dreams, you know?... Water... (Tired and somewhat mystified.) I was... swimming. In some sort of lake - I was way out there. Like I was going to swin across it or something. And I got so tired of kicking... my legs just got heavier and heavier, and I started to sink. The water just kept... rising up over me. And I tried to fight it, but the harder I tried the faster I went down. And I just... went down.
And then I remembered... that the human body floats. Right? If you just let go, it floats. So I just... let everything go. And sure enough, I went straight up like a cork - and when I popped out, I just breathed and breathed, and... looked up at the sky, and breathed... Finally I decided that I would just drift back to the shore. Only there wasn't any shore. I looked around, and there wasn't any land at all. I thought, My God, I'm going to be floating here forever. And nobody knows where I am. (Tears up.) Nobody knows.
It's all such a lie. Everything they tell you, everything they say is going to happen to you. It's just - this is the answer to the question, right? One of the questions. "How much weight have you gained?" Four hundred pounds - go away. "Was it planned?" None of your damn business. And "When are you due?" When when when. My God, there it is, just staring at you!... And then it's next week, and then it's this week, and then it's tomorrow... and then it's today... And then it's yesterday, and then it's last week, and then... it happens. And it's such a lie.
I can't remember why I wanted a baby. Part of me... for my mother, maybe. So there's one less thing she can hang over me. And... for my husband. To have... something more between us. More... love... And Nate was incredible. He really was - the whole pregnancy. We took those classes. We'd do these pretend delivery room scenes, and he was totally in charge! "No monitors." "We're not gonna have drugs." "Get that I.V. away from her!" I felt so safe. And then this morning... he didn't say a word all the way to the hospital. We get here, inside of fifteen minutes they've got me on a monitor and an I.V., they've ordered the drugs - and... And you know what he does? He leaves. My labor takes off, and he goes to the bathroom! I couldn't believe it!
Oh, and then? When he finally comes back? All this crap from the childbirth books finally kicks in. "Honey! I'm so proud of you! Thank you for working so hard!" He's watchin the contractions. "Look, honey! Here it comes! There's the head! Can you feel it?!" CAN I FEEL IT? I can feel this head the way I have NEVER felt a head in my LIFE! And then it's over. And I hold out my hand for him... and I look up to see his face. What depth of love that I've never seen before will I see in his eyes? And you know what? I don't know. Because he's across the room looking through the video camera which he's holding about six inches over the baby. "Isn't this great? God, this is so great!" (Tearing up again.) He never even looked at me. I felt like I was laying there for an hour. Until the doctor finally wandered over and said, "Hey, let's stitch you up, huh?" Yes. Let's.
I wanted her. I wanted her so much - and then, everybody else had her. She was stressed, during the delivery - they took her down to the ICU for a while... I never even got to touch her. I was so afraid... what if she was dead, or...? But when they brought her back later... I didn't want to touch her... I wanted them to take her away. Something in me... I wanted her to be dead. How can I be her mother? I can't even hold her! I want her so much... Here. I want her here. (Her womb.) I want her inside, where she's safe... and... she's mine... and I can hold her with my whole body, all the time - not out where they can take her away... I want her on the inside, and Nate and me on the outside... and nothing would change. But she's gone... And he's... And I'm... And you don't understand a thing I'm saying do you?
Order Dos Corazones by Richard Hellesen, published in the anthology The Best Ten-Minute Plays for Two Actors: 2004 from Amazon.
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