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"Hello, I'm Renee Lindley, your nurse. Are you having contractions?" Lindley asked this in Labor and Delivery room 8. The patient said she was, and Lindley explained to her about getting pain medication through an epidural or a narcotic in the IV. She explained the problems meconium —bodily waste from the baby—can cause if the baby inhales it. "When the baby is born, it might breathe"—she gasped quickly, imitating the baby's instinctivefirstbreath—"so we need to prevent that. When we say don't push, that's so we can suction the meconium. Otherwise, it can get sick or cost his life. You'll be uncomfortable, but do that if you don't do anything else. For the well-being of your child, understand? Consider the epidural. Don't worry about people saying you'll be paralyzed . Those who said it, they're not paralyzed. All my patients, they're not paralyzed." An LPN brought in the suction tube. The patient's sister said, "That's what's gon' get out that stuff?" "Yes, when we deliver the baby." "You're going to deliver the baby?" the patient said, eyeing Lindley. "No, a doctor will come." Lindley walked to the nurse's station and told Cleo, the other nurse, "Tell 'em don't call me unless my patient is delivering. Honey, let me heat my coffee." She walked to the break room, where she heated her McDonald's coffee in the microwave and recalled epidural stories. "One chick said it would leave her paralyzed. Two friends had it and told her that. I said, 'Your friends are paralyzed?' 'No, but that's what they say.' 'Can they walk?' 'Yes.' Then they are not paralyzed.' I said, 'Anybody SEES)SfiOfii©SJ? 184 Damn Stupid Guy that wants you to lay up and hurt, I wouldn't call them friends. You need some new friends.' I tell my son, 'Be quiet. You're passing on ignorance.'" She munched on a Danish and said, "One lady said she didn't want it because she had it before and she slept until the nurse woke her up and said it was time to push it out. I asked what was wrong with that. She said it put her to sleep, so maybe you'll put something in there. I said she fell asleep because she felt good. This lady at my other job went Exorcist on me. She had this doctor who, for religious reasons, doesn't like to give epidurals. He gives pain medicine only. She asked for an epidural, and I told her her doctor didn't allow it. A few hours later, I'm rubbing her back, and she starts waving her arms." Lindley lowered her voice to a deep guttural." 'I want an epidural. You tell that religious maniac I don't give a fuck what he thinks. I'm paying for this.' I got that doctor, and she said to him, 'I am hurting. I want an epidural, and I want it now!'" He said, 'OK.'" She imitated the doctor with a meek little peep. Lindley continued, "I try to get a big suction to get big pieces of meconium. Sometimes the pieces can be this big." She broke off little chunks of her pastry, pointed at them, then ate them. "And with that epidural, she won't be feeling that pain and want to push so much." Lindley said she had gone from Grady nursing student to Grady employee . "I had always said I would go back to school and be a newborn nurse practitioner, so I decided to work a little of it and see. At first I went to the ICU nursery, but I got tired of sick and dying babies. I went to term nursery, postpartum, and back to term nursery, then labor and delivery. It was never my intention to stay at Grady. But I like what I do, so I stayed and stayed." She grew up in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and attended a Catholic high school in nearby Chatawa, Mississippi, "a small town large enough to have a Confederate graveyard." She added, "Nuns are good con artists. The graveyard was off campus, so it was considered a 'privilege' to go clean it. If you got too many demerits, you lost the privilege of cleaning the Confederate graveyard. All the bad things I didn't have any business doing—smoking, cussing—I learned in Catholic school. When I went from Louisiana to...

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