The officer from the county jail looks like Captain America. He steps out of the room so I can help my patient out of her dirty clothes and into a gown, but he leaves the door half open. I try to close it and he pushes back. I’m not worried, I say. I know you’re not but it’s my job to keep you safe. I can’t tell if this offends me more because it is patronizing or because it is untrue. He’s the one that chained her to the bed. Amnesty international, the UN Committee Against Torture, the ACLU, the American Medical Association, US law, Oregon law, laws in 40 other states plus DC, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, the American Bar Association, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, even ICE condemn the use of shackles in pregnancy as a violation of human rights. But nothing changes on the frontline, so America and I keep having this conversation. He asks me if a painful withdrawal isn’t just the consequence of her choices. I say Her whole life has been the consequence of someone else’s choices. I want to add No one should be punished who has escaped a warzone, who has walked through the desert, who comes to and finds herself pregnant because we don’t like what they had to do to survive. The women you shackle to hospital beds, even while they labor, even after their c-sections, numb from the ribs down, are trying to get off fentanyl, they are trying to imagine a life where they are free to take their babies to the library when it’s raining. America, you wanna know what I’m scared of? Men who grin at me wolfishly while their girlfriends weep in labor, anti-abortion activists who mail death threats to my hospital, systems of oppression that pin down the powerless to sell the lie that getting by is the same as getting free but that would be preaching and against all odds, we’re closer to a heart to heart than either of us planned, so I skip to the end, say I want to help her get free. Then he gets the call we’ve been waiting for. He digs for his keys and the Tupperware for his leg chain, tells me my wish has come true, she’s been released. This is usually how it happens, the county doesn’t want the hospital bill. She shimmies back into her hot pink dress, tells me thank you asks if she can take the cheesecake with her. I tell her we’ll be here when she needs us. Her fingers flicker to her belly. I’ll get by, she says.
Rae McMinn Kaigler (she/her) is a 4th generation Oregonian, labor and delivery nurse, mother and emerging poet living in Portland. If you can find her, you will likely do so wandering the trails, mountains, or rivers of the Pacific Northwest.
