Dr. Patrick

Dr. Patrick is the narrator’s physician during pregnancy and childbirth, a recurring medical presence whose care helps turn a frightening pregnancy into a sequence of clinical decisions. She assesses the narrator’s health, directs her to the hospital when warning signs appear, and attends her around labor and delivery. She also recommends a sex therapist, linking the narrator to treatment for a condition that has obstructed the couple’s efforts to consummate their marriage. Through these encounters, Dr. Patrick becomes a point of contact between the narrator’s private distress and forms of professional care that can name a problem and offer a course of action.

Role in the narrator’s care

The narrator encounters Dr. Patrick amid a wider history of anxiety and unexplained physical symptoms. At one point, after numerous tests, X-rays, and CAT scans, the narrator’s doctor offers her Xanax and identifies anxiety as the reason for the medication. The account does not establish by name that this doctor is Dr. Patrick, so the episode belongs to the medical context surrounding the narrator rather than securely to Dr. Patrick’s record. Likewise, a rash and a later hospital diagnosis of orbital shingles are handled by other clinicians. These distinctions matter: the narrator’s experiences involve several providers, while Dr. Patrick’s clearly identified role becomes especially prominent in her reproductive and pregnancy care.

Dr. Patrick recommends that the narrator consult a sex therapist. The recommendation comes after the narrator has promised Eli she will seek help with their difficulty. The therapist identifies vaginismus and explains how the narrator’s long-standing estrangement from her body may be connected to the muscles’ involuntary response. The narrator then reads about the condition and undertakes a gradual exercise program at home. Dr. Patrick is not described as diagnosing or treating the condition herself; her contribution is the referral that enables the narrator to pursue specialist help. The distinction between referral and treatment keeps the episode’s focus on the network of care rather than assigning Dr. Patrick actions the narrative gives to someone else.

Pregnancy and the hospital referral

During pregnancy, Dr. Patrick explains the narrator’s unusually large appearance by pointing to her low weight when she became pregnant. The narrator recalls having been underweight by five or ten pounds and connects that condition to weight loss during the anxious first year of marriage. Dr. Patrick’s explanation gives the narrator a medical account of a visible change that relatives and strangers repeatedly notice, including questions about whether she is carrying twins. The pregnancy is therefore framed not only through family commentary about appearance but also through the physician’s account of the narrator’s prior health.

At a routine appointment late in the pregnancy, Dr. Patrick checks the narrator’s reflexes and blood pressure. The narrator’s knee responds sharply to the reflex test, and the blood-pressure reading is 135 over 85. Dr. Patrick judges that the baby should be delivered and tells the narrator to go to the hospital. The decision abruptly interrupts the narrator’s plans: she has been thinking about gaining further education so she can improve the prospects of her child and does not yet know how she will persuade Eli to support that goal. Instead, the next step is immediate medical assessment. Dr. Patrick’s intervention changes the narrator’s attention from a hoped-for future after birth to the urgent circumstances of getting there safely.

At St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital, the narrator learns that she has preeclampsia and that it poses a danger to the baby. A hospital physician explains the diagnosis and the plan for inducing labor, while the narrative makes clear that Dr. Patrick had sent the narrator in and that the hospital admission followed her assessment. The induction is planned in stages: medication is to be administered first, followed by Pitocin the next morning, with an epidural available once contractions become painful. Dr. Patrick thus sets the referral in motion, while the hospital team explains and carries out the treatment plan.

Labor, delivery, and recovery

Twenty-four hours after admission, Dr. Patrick wakes the narrator and announces that it is time for labor to begin. The narrator’s account places this brief, cheerful intervention beside the unfamiliar and controlled setting of the delivery ward. Because the narrator is considered ritually impure during labor, Eli cannot touch her; a nurse assists instead. The narrator experiences this arrangement through the rules governing her marriage and religious life, even as medical staff manage the birth. Dr. Patrick’s presence belongs to the practical urgency of delivery, but the scene also shows how clinical care and religious expectations operate together around the narrator.

After the birth, Dr. Patrick stitches the narrator, whose postpartum pain is more severe than she expected. The nurse offers only ibuprofen, and the narrator’s attempt to feed the baby is interrupted when pain overwhelms her. The account does not present recovery as an uncomplicated transition into motherhood: physical distress accompanies the narrator’s uncertainty and exhaustion. After two days in the hospital, Eli takes her to a new-mothers’ home in New Square, where she is to stay for two weeks. That arrangement moves care from the hospital into a community setting, while the narrator remains separated from the baby’s circumcision ceremony and dependent on reports from others about what happened.

Postpartum decisions and significance

Six weeks after the birth, Eli is already asking about the narrator’s return to the mikvah. She is not yet ready to begin the required counting and is apprehensive about examining her changed body. She also worries about the prospect of another pregnancy, since contraception is not permitted by the rules she has been taught. Seeking Dr. Patrick’s approval gives her a reason to consult the physician before deciding what to do. At the appointment, Dr. Patrick examines her and gives her the go-ahead; she also offers free contraceptive samples, which the narrator accepts and pockets. The narrator’s response is not presented as a final resolution of the conflict between religious expectations and reproductive choice. It is a concrete act of securing an option and retaining some say over what happens next.

Dr. Patrick’s importance lies less in a fully developed personal portrait than in the sequence of care attached to her name: referral to a specialist, assessment during pregnancy, a hospital recommendation, presence at the onset of labor, and postpartum approval. The narrator’s account does not claim that medical care dissolves the constraints of marriage or religious practice. Instead, it records how medical judgment can identify risks and make choices available within a life where other people and institutions also claim authority over the narrator’s body. Dr. Patrick’s role is therefore both practical and structural: she helps the narrator move through pregnancy and recovery, while the narrator’s responses reveal the distance between receiving care and feeling in control.