(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
In Cambridge it is eleven in the morning, already lunch time in the hospital, Patty, a nurse with a diamond engagement ring and a fringe of reddish hair beneath her cap, brought a tray holding warm apple juice, Jell-O, ice cream and cold baked chicken. Ashima would not have touched chicken, even if permitted. The nurse advised her to consume only the Jell-O and apple juice. Americans eat their chicken in its skin, but Ashima desists the chicken with skin ; she had found a butcher on Prospect Street who pull it off for her.
Patty came again to fluff the pillows and tidy the bed, followed by Dr.Ashley who put a stethoscope on her belly, "no need to worry," he chirped, "every thing is looking perfectly normal and we are expecting a normal delivery, Mrs.Ganguli." But nothing felt normal to Ashima, for the past eighteen months, ever since she had arrived in Cambridge, nothing she had felt normal at all.
It was not the pain, which she knew, somehow she would survive, but its consequence : motherhood in a foreign land, the dull queasy mornings in bed, the sleepless nights.
"How about a little walk ? It might do you good," Patty asked when she came to clear the lunch tray.
"Yes, all right," Ashima said. Patty helped her out of bed, tucked her feet one by one into slippers, draped a second nightgown around her shoulders
"Just think," Patty said as Ashima struggled to stand up. "In a day or two you'll be half the size." The nurse helped Ashima to step out of the room, into the hallway. After a few feet Ashima stopped, her legs trembling as another wave of pain surged through her body. She shook her head, her eyes with tears. "I cannot."
"You can. Squeeze my hand, squeeze as tight as you like," said the nurse.
After a minute they continued on towards the nurses' station. "Hoping for a boy or girl ?" Patty asked
"As long as there are ten finger and ten toe," Ashima replied. For these anatomical details, these particular signs of life, were the ones she had the most difficulty picturing when she imagined the baby in her arms.
Patty smiled, a little too widely, and suddenly Ashima realized her error, knew she should have said "fingers" and "toes." This error pained her almost as much as her last contraction, for English had been her subject.
The Baby, a boy was born at five past five in the morning. He measured twenty inches long weighed seven pounds nine ounces.
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