30 April 1992, Thursday - Erased

It was a perfect moment. Her skin wrapped in a towel, still saturated with the warmth and scent of the bath. Her bare feet on the carpet, letting her feel how soft the world was. That was why she almost didn’t notice it.

On screen, a model bent over a baby’s cot while a mobile twirled in that unreal light that exists only in TV adverts and ice cream freezers.

A jingle announced the final news bulletin of the day. She grabbed the remote and pressed the red button, smiling at her reflection in the darkening screen. Holding the towel to her chest, she crossed to the cot she’d placed beside her bed. In the fading afternoon light, she ran her hand along the wooden edge; folded her fingers over the rail.

Something slightly ticklish rolled down her thigh. She stopped to focus on the sensation. The drop slid past her knee. Another followed, faster. She thought she hadn’t dried off properly and unfolded the towel. A dark line traced down her inner thigh, almost like a vein rising to the surface. She touched it and the vein smeared across her fingers. Red. The towel slipped from her hands as warmth flowed down both legs, and the fluffy carpet began drinking it in.

She knew she should move but only her toes curled inwards, as if to hide.

* * *

The taxi driver took one glance and set off, even before she told him where she was going. At every set of traffic lights he leaned back and looked toward her legs, assessing the risk to his seat covers. The moss-green Mercedes slid silently through the night; it was almost customary that not a single Yugoslav Gastarbeiter dared a visit back home before he had earned enough in Germany to buy one.

The driver kept licking his moustached upper lip and only spoke once, “A son, is it?”

She shook her head and, noticing the disappointment on his face, added, “I don’t know. I didn’t want to know.”

“Ah, a lottery!” He nodded and flicked at the rabbit paw hanging from the rearview mirror.

“I have a system, I always win,” he added, as they waited for the green light and he kept pressing on the accelerator to keep the engine running.

* * *

The face of the nurse at Reception loomed like a storm cloud above the surface of her sky-blue uniform, discontent chiselled into her features.

Spotting Zala, the nurse stood up and began placing various sheets of papers on the counter, as if salvaging them from water and laying them out to dry.

Zala approached the desk. “Good evening, I’ve come...”

“Fill out the forms!” The nurse furrowed her brow. “ID and health insurance card,” said the nurse and took both documents already offered to her. She tapped her finger on the counter. “The forms, please.”

Zala picked up the pen. It felt slightly sticky on her fingers. She wanted to wipe her hand against her coat but felt embarrassed. She closed her eyes for a moment, tried to compose herself, and began forming the tiny letters in the half-light.

ZALA JOVANOVI Ć , she filled out the first line.

The child moved and the fear of fainting swept over her.

She entered her date of birth, 1959, and deducted the year from the current one. There was no need, she knew how old she was, but she could never resist – it came as a reflex. From her school days, she could still recall how schoolbooks and encyclopaedias would give two dates in brackets under the names of people long dead. Perhaps it was because the dash between the dates looked like a minus sign, but she always calculated the difference. “I’m bleeding!” she said. The nurse did not look up from the screen. She was knifing away at the keyboard with her extended index finger.

Zala was unsure how loudly she had spoken, so she repeated, “I’m bleeding!”

The finger came to a halt and the head turned. The look displayed the utter boredom of an assembly line worker.

“Do you even have contractions?” she asked.

“No, at least I think I don’t.”

“You’ll know when you do.”

“But, the blood...”

The nurse sighed, her breasts sinking softly. She pushed herself back from the desk and looked over the counter.

“Make sure you don’t make a mess.”

“I used lots of towels, for the taxi...” Zala started to explain before she realised that she was being apologetic and recognised in her own voice the echo of a schoolgirl caught without her homework. She remembered the countless excuses she’d given to her father, and her shoulders stiffened.

“I came to give birth! If anything goes wrong, it will be your fault!”

For the first time, the nurse actually looked at her, moving her gaze from the wet, ponytail-tied hair to the dark eyes besieged by Zala’s prominent cheekbones and tight lips, ready for battle.

“You’ll be fine. Sometimes the mucus plug becomes dislodged, don’t worry,” the nurse said, switching to reassuring mode, and seated herself back at the computer.

Zala didn’t know whether it was her heart or the baby pounding inside her. She felt a pain in her side and wondered, ‘Was that a contraction?’ Her belly tensed, pulling the skin over itself, stretching it, ready to rip it apart if necessary.

Father’s name , the form demanded and, before realising, she had already drawn the first vertical line. She crossed it out until she was quite sure nobody could read it. “Excuse me, I don’t wish to give the father’s name...”

“Unknown!” The nurse did not even turn her head.

A wave of pain pushed Zala against the counter. She clutched the edge with the palms of her hands and closed her eyes. Once it had passed, she continued scribbling through the forms.

She was done, but the nurse was still battling with the computer.

“Excuse me, I’d like to get on with giving birth now!”

Her voice echoed through the large space, over the chairs welded to the floor and one another, across to the phone booth, the coffee and drinks machines, under the mostly extinguished fluorescent lamps. The only other people sitting in the waiting room were an elderly woman and her husband, a large bruise on his forehead, one hand shaking visibly. They kept their eyes to the floor, as if embarrassed by Zala’s presence. An orderly walking through the hall stopped, giving her an odd look, and continued on his way.

“If contractions are not less than five minutes apart, you are in no hurry,” the nurse said, not looking up. “I need to enter the data; without it we can’t do anything.” She frowned at the computer and handed the health card back to Zala with an air of finality. “Look, there is something wrong. You have a problem with the computer. It can’t find you! Zala Jovanovi ć , you do not exist.”

The nurse was a seer for whom things happened as she foretold. In the depths of her embitterment, a satisfaction with her own unhappiness stretched out like a contented cat.

“Are you sure you have spelt it correctly? Have you tried both with a č and a ć ?”

“I have. Both. You are not in there.”

“Everything was fine at my doctor’s. But they don’t have computers there yet; they keep their records in files.”

“Well, lucky them!” the nurse said and Zala, realising that she had once more drifted into excuses, felt a new tightening of her belly.

“I know nothing about technology! I’m about to deliver my baby!”

She meant to seize the edge of the counter but overshot, her wrist hitting the surface with a sound like a slap.

“This is my job,” the nurse said, peering at her with contempt, “making sure everything is in order. Collecting and verifying the information. If things aren’t properly sorted out here...” she tapped her finger against the counter as if it were a keyboard, “...then how can they possibly be sorted out up there?”

She pointed to the ceiling.

“Things need to be in order. We’re no longer part of Yugoslavia; this is no longer the Balkans with everyone doing whatever they feel fit. This is now independent Slovenia!”

The pain caused Zala to close her eyes. When she opened them again, she had to blink back the tears before she could once more see the nurse’s face, now glowing with hatred. She couldn’t hear the last sentences and something inside her wanted to grab hold of the nurse and fight her way past the desk to Delivery before this night was out; the child could well already be suffocating, vomiting blood and dying, and this cow here in front of her was…

She felt a forward thrust, the hardness of her belly pushing against the hardness of the wood.

She pulled herself away and staggered toward the seats. For a moment, she thought she would faint. Zala unbuttoned her raincoat and laid it out on the seat. She lifted up her dress and stared over her belly at the towels she had wrapped around herself. Hastily, she started to untie them. Her child needed her.

“What are you doing?” the nurse shouted.

Without looking at her, she replied, “Getting ready for delivery. You’ll have to deal with the flood of blood. What else can I do, when I’m not in that stupid computer of yours?”

The first towel fell to the floor and Zala worried she might also drop her child. She searched for it amidst the rags, untying the towels, her fingers catching in the knots. The first drops of blood fell onto the lino floor.

Now the nurse was yelling something into the receiver.