Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (15 page)

For the first time, I felt how nervous I was.

“Here,” said the doctor, handing me the regulation blue-print hospital gown after the nurse had left. “I need you to put this on. Then I’ll be back to help you into the bed.”

When she returned, she drew the curtain around us and lowered the bed as far down as it could go. I sat down on it and started to swing my legs up.

“Wait, wait, wait!” she protested. “No sudden movements. Let me help you get your legs up here.” She lifted my legs gingerly onto the mattress.

“OK. Slooowly, move yourself back.”

I watched her face as she examined me, trying to gauge the seriousness of my condition from her expression. She asked if I’d been feeling contractions, and I told her, truthfully and with a slight bit of relief, that I hadn’t. “Not a one,” I said.

“Well, I have some news for you,” she said. “You’re in labor.”

I was stunned. I was in the twenty-ninth week of my pregnancy, and I knew that my child was nowhere near ready to be born. It was November 3 and I wasn’t due until January 10.

“Does this mean I’ll be here for a while?”

“You’re more than a centimeter dilated, and the baby’s head is putting pressure on your cervix. If we can’t stop these contractions, you’re at risk of having this baby today. So you’re not going anywhere. I think it’s time for you to call your husband and tell him what’s going on.”

Contractions? Really, I
hadn’t
felt any. Maybe I didn’t know what a contraction was? I lay there blankly as the nurse, now in the room again, inserted a needle in the back of my hand and set up the IV drip.

“Let’s hope your little girl understands that she doesn’t have to make an appearance anytime soon,” said my doctor. “She’s still not more than a pound and a half. Meanwhile these steroids will help her lungs develop.”

I was in a state of shock, terrified that our child would not survive this crisis.

“You need to call your husband,” the doctor repeated, handing me the receiver. “What’s the number? I’ll dial it for you.”

I held the receiver to my ear as Dr. Ayers punched in Jim’s number. It was 11:30
A.M.
, and I knew that right now he would probably be arriving at the rally. At the first ring, however, he picked up, and I gave him the news.

“In labor? You’re being admitted?” He was alarmed. He hadn’t expected this. Well, neither had I.

“You OK? Just hang in there. I’m telling the driver to turn around this second, and I’ll be there right away.”

While I waited for him, my mind raced with every imaginable worry. Would our child live? We didn’t have a bassinet. Would her organs be compromised? I didn’t even know how to do breathing during labor. I hadn’t had my Lamaze classes yet. The baby’s room wasn’t ready. Would the steroids work? I’d better make sure to breathe calmly, right this very minute. If I cried, would that trigger full-blown labor? If Jim lost the election, I would feel guilty. It would be my fault. Who would she look like? If she was born now, would she have medical complications for the rest of her life? All these thoughts and more were racing through my mind.

As soon as Jim arrived in my hospital room, our doctor filled him in.

“Yes, chances are good your child will survive,” she said, “though I can’t make any promises, and no, your wife’s life is not in any danger.” No, she couldn’t say there would be no complications. No, she couldn’t say exactly what the complications would be if they did occur, aside from the lungs probably being too undeveloped for our child to breathe on her own.

Meanwhile, outside the hospital, a caravan of reporters was milling around. They’d been following Jim from his previous event to the rally and stayed on his tail all the way to the hospital. Now they knew that something was happening, although they hadn’t been given any details and weren’t being allowed into the hospital. But by the evening, throughout the tristate area of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, the newscasts were reporting that Jim had suspended his campaign to be by my side at the hospital. Just before Jim arrived, I had called my mother to tell her what was going on. She did panic, though I can’t say she didn’t have her reasons, and, as I expected, she rushed to the hospital. She would have pitched a tent in my room, but once she saw that I was comfortable and being attended to, she was willing to go back home.

My sense of being comfortable was really only skin deep. Actually, I was in a state of terror, deeply concerned about the well-being of our child. For more than a dozen hours, I’d been on meds that were supposed to stop my labor, but they weren’t working. My labor was progressing. And if the contractions caused my water to break, then the baby would have to be delivered. No other choice was possible. The only prudent course was to prepare for my delivery, a delivery Dr. Ayers and my medical team believed would take place within hours. “We haven’t been able to halt the labor as yet,” Dr. Ayers explained to Jim and me. “You need to be in a place equipped with the staff and technology to deal with a premature birth.”

Late that night, perhaps at 1:00 or 2:00
A.M.
, I was transported by ambulance to St. Peter’s University Hospital, less than a mile away, with Jim riding along in the ambulance with me. St. Peter’s had a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and, at the time, the medical center I’d been admitted to did not.

In the meantime, I had now become conscious of feeling what must have been contractions, though they felt less like pain than like pressure—as if my whole abdomen were a fist, clenching every few minutes and then unclenching again. But this was still nothing like what I understood labor contractions to be. As the ambulance drove between one hospital and another, I gripped Jim’s hand, registering every bump in the road as if it were a ten on the Richter scale, each one enough to explode me into labor. I was petrified.

Once at St. Peter’s, I was admitted to Labor and Delivery. I spent the entire night awake. Every few minutes, someone was coming into the room. A doctor, a nurse. An aide. Jim stayed with me all night, sitting on the chair beside my bed. He was exhausted from the campaign and slipped in and out of sleep. His jacket was flung over the back of his chair; the top buttons of his shirt were unbuttoned; his belt, which he’d taken off to give himself more breathing room, was at his feet; and his feet were resting on his shoes.

My vision was blurred from the medications, but still I could see how sapped he was. I was too anxious to get any sleep myself. Besides, with all the traffic continuing to stream in and out, I couldn’t really settle down. Instead, throughout the night, I would ask each of them what was happening to me. Was I still in labor? Had the labor stopped? Was the baby all right? Would she stay in there where she belonged?

“We’re doing everything we can,” said my doctor. She didn’t go home that night at all. Just before dawn, she stopped in yet again. “How am I doing?” I asked, probably for the twentieth time.

This time, she smiled. “I’ve been monitoring your contractions from the nurses’ station, and I think we’re finally making some progress here. The meds have slowed your labor down. With any luck, we’ll be able to stop it. At least, it’s looking that way.”

Sometime during the night, Jim’s press secretary had prepared a statement for the media, and in the morning the state of my unpredictable uterus and the child I was carrying were fodder for all the local morning news programs. Had this happened to me six months earlier, I would have told only my parents and maybe half a dozen very close friends. Jim wasn’t even governor yet, but the most private details of my life and body were now being broadcast to everyone in the state of New Jersey and beyond.

Throughout the morning, the hospital handled a flurry of media inquiries. Reporters were camped outside the hospital, and nurses told us they were trying to get through by phone. No one did. My vision was so blurred that I couldn’t even watch television. My second day at St. Peter’s was Monday, November 5, the day before the election, but also my thirty-fifth birthday. The hospital staff made me a beautiful chocolate cake. It was a very special touch. Jim and my parents, as well as the staff, helped me celebrate the day. In effect, he’d ended his campaign on Saturday, the moment he’d headed for the hospital rather than the rally. Except for going home to shower and change his clothing, he’d stayed with me since then.

By now, I had accepted that I was not going to be standing by Jim’s side when he won the election (neither I nor anyone else had any doubt that he would win), but at least I wanted to be able to vote for him. Happily, the campaign staff arranged for me to get an absentee ballot so I could do just that.

10. ELECTION DAY

A LANDSLIDE! JIM HAD
won by a landslide! This was the first moment of the rest of our lives, and I was ecstatic. And yet while I was grateful to be in a safe place, relieved to be in the care of the tribe of doctors and nurses who were getting my baby and me through this crisis, I was saddened to be flat on my back in a hospital bed. With all my heart, I wanted to be standing on my own two feet, in a hotel ballroom next to Jim, as confetti and balloons rained down on us. But it wasn’t to be. And so, for the second time, I wasn’t by Jim’s side as the election results were called.

Chalk it up to pregnancy, stress, relief, and joy, but soon I was unable to control my emotions at all. I burst into tears. In moments, my friend Mona, who was keeping me company, was crying along with me. She turned to me, clutching her damp tissue: “Congratulations, First Lady!” I was glued to the television as Jim gave his victory speech from the ballroom podium of the Hilton in New Brunswick. My vision was blurred, but these were such familiar faces that I could still tell who was who. Up there on the stage with Jim were my mom and dad; Ronnie and Jack; Jim’s sisters, Sharon and Caroline; Caroline’s husband, Mark; and Jim’s Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Herb.

I was thrilled that my parents were onstage with him to celebrate the culmination of many years of hard work and perseverance. My mother had wanted to stay with me in the hospital so I wouldn’t be alone, but I really wanted her to enjoy Jim’s victory party. She insisted that she stay. I insisted that she not. I was happy that I had won that battle and very happy to see her enjoying the limelight.

Jim thanked everyone—and me especially. “Dina, I love you,” he said, his voice trembling, blowing a kiss into the television camera. Jim thanked me for my support, for my love, and for working so hard along with him on the campaign. That launched a new flow of tears. I knew I was doing the right thing being in the hospital, but I really wanted to be on that stage.

Mona stayed with me for the next hour or two as we watched additional news coverage. Jim had coattails, it turned out, and his victory was credited with helping elect other Democrats on the ticket. It was the first time in at least a dozen years that the Democrats had controlled the governor’s office and the legislature.

“I’ll just stick around until Jim comes in,” Mona said. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

I didn’t protest. After midnight, Jim swept into the room, the sudden energy he brought with him palpable. He leaned down to kiss me and gave me as much of a hug as he could without dislodging or getting tangled in either my IV or my fetal monitor.

“You did it!” I exclaimed.

“
We
did it,” he corrected. Then I dissolved again in tears. I knew it was true. We had done it as a team.

“Why are you crying?” he said. He understood, but he was hoping to ease me into a calmer frame of mind.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Great, but I wish you’d been there.”

“Well, that makes two of us. Or three.”

“Dina’s had quite a day,” said my friend, congratulating him—calling him “Governor”—and saying good-bye to me.

As she left, I noticed that she had to make her way past two rather large men in suits who were standing in the doorway.

“Who are they?” I asked, though I thought I already knew.

“State troopers.” They’d been at the hotel all day in anticipation of Jim’s victory, and they took on their new assignment as his bodyguards at the moment he finished his victory speech. The troopers were members of the Executive Protection Unit (EPU) and by law were assigned not only to the governor but to his immediate family, including me, as well as to each member of the cabinet. Jim and I talked for a while—he was especially pleased by how happy his father was—and then I told him it was time to call it a night. He was exhausted, and so was I.

“I’ll be back early tomorrow morning,” he said. “I have to start working on a transition team, and I’m going to have a couple of staffers meet me here.”

Even from my hospital bed, I could feel Jim’s ascension to power. The next morning, I received dozens of floral arrangements, and the hospital staff set aside a room adjacent to mine to house them. The staff also had another cake for me, this time celebrating Jim’s victory. It was shaped like the state of New Jersey, and it said, “Congratulations to New Jersey’s First Lady.” Someone cut me a slice of Essex County, where I’d grown up and worked. I enjoyed it down to the last crumb.

In addition to the celebrity treatment, there was now heightened security. The moment Schundler conceded the election and Jim claimed victory, the hospital posted one of its own security guards outside my door. From that moment on, my room was guarded twenty-four hours a day.

When Jim arrived at the hospital the next morning, we found that they had made not one but two adjoining rooms available. At least, I was told they were adjoining. I wasn’t allowed up out of bed to see for myself. One was the room for the flowers. The nurses brought me each of the cards, and if they thought the floral arrangement was particularly spectacular, they would carry it to the doorway for a three-second appearance before whisking it into what we now referred to as “the flower room.” There were so many that I encouraged doctors and nurses to take what they wanted for themselves and to disperse the rest among the other patients.