WHILE WE WERE WAITING

Two very different stories of trauma converge in a New York City maternity ward as two families face uncertain childbirth outcomes.

Lorraine Stern and her husband, Will, are in the Maternal-Fetal Care Unit at Metropolitan University Hospital, as are Clement and Rana Ghanima. Lorraine, a talented pianist in her early 40s, suffers from severe preeclampsia; Rana, a radiologist who emigrated from Iraq with her husband (his mother joined them a bit later), has high blood pressure and a botched prior surgery to her uterus may lead to trouble. As Lorraine hovers between consciousness and coma, her memories tumble out—from her childhood as a musical prodigy who was admitted to Juilliard at 10, on to her college year in Paris, where she came under the tutelage of famed modernist composer Darius Milhaud’s widow and then met Will at a nightclub. As Rana faces an uncertain outcome, Clement reluctantly recalls the war on terror–instigated tragedy that led his family to leave Iraq. Even more reluctantly, Lorraine swims through fragmented flashes of a terrible assault, one that forever altered her relationship with her mentally ill mother. Author Hughes keeps the tension high, cutting among the perspectives of individuals and pairs as physician-ordered deadlines loom: Will Lorraine’s 32-week-old fetus be able to breathe on its own? Can doctors prevent Rana’s uterus from rupturing? These and other questions contrast with the concrete pain of the past for both women—Lorraine’s told from her perspective and Will’s, Rana’s from Clement’s and his mother’s. The back-and-forth narration, syncopated and sometimes difficult to follow, echoes jazz improvisation, the truly unteachable kind that Mme. Milhaud tells Lorraine is “not available to everyone.” Improvisation is also what both Lorraine and Rana must submit to as their bodies and babies do things that are completely unexpected and often unwelcome.

Urgent if uneven, this novel reminds readers that even when life is at its worst, people can choose hope.