A Real Pain

Women who experienced anesthesia failure during their C-sections share their stories.

- NICHOLAS QUAH

IN APRIL 2022, Clara Hochhauser, a nurse who works the labor-anddelivery floor at the University of Illinois Hospital, came in to have her own babies (twins) when the unthinkable happened. The anesthesiologist on call failed to administer painkillers properly, and despite her protestations, she was forced to feel every moment of her Cesarean section: blade cutting the abdomen open, hands retrieving the babies, uterus lifted out of her body ("exteriorized," in medical parlance), organ returned, skin stitched shut.

The second season of The Retrievals opens with Clara's experience, but it takes a moment to grasp how it's going to tell the story. "Six a.m. in Chicago," begins Susan Burton, who returns as host and lead reporter. "Of course, the shot starts at the lake. Camera pans over the water, and the magnificent buildings rise from the shoreline." Burton continues in this self-aware, vaguely noir register as she introduces Clara, another nurse named Mindy Figueroa, and Heather Nixon, the head of obstetric anesthesia at the hospital. "The action of the episode begins with Mindy in a nearly empty elevator," she continues. "Closer to 7 a.m. Change of shift. You can barely fit. Sardines. But Mindy's early today. She's almost always early." As the episode progresses, the season's stylistic gambit comes into focus. Burton is presenting the story as if it were a medical procedural or, more precisely, narrating it as if describing a TV medical procedural about the very real events she's reporting: "A humble hospital in Chicago. A hardworking nurse. A delivery with stakes. How could we not tell this like a medical drama?"