I spent Tuesday reading and re-reading Epstein’s birthday book.
Yes, as others have pointed out the whole package is misogynistic and lewd, and it beggars belief that the alleged Trump artwork, is not by Trump.
But it’s the jokes about my 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein by Alan Dershowitz and Leon Black – and I suspect a veiled allusion to it by Mort Zuckerman – that are personally triggering.
They bring back memories I have long tried to suppress, about a truly hideous time in my life, when I worked night and day to get to the bottom of something I could sense was evil, only to get outmaneuvered by Epstein, who was supported, it turns out, by a cabal of guys, who joked about my efforts to expose him and his crimes.
The pages took me back to a wintry morning in early 2003 when I decided to take a cab uptown to the hospital because I hadn’t been able to sleep. I felt a throbbing pain in my lower back, and I felt unwell in general. But I’d felt so unwell in general in this pregnancy, stressed and overwrought for months, mostly because of harassment and threats from Jeffrey Epstein, that this day didn’t feel much different. My babies were not due for another two and a half months.
But by the time I got to the hospital, I was screaming.
Next thing I knew, I was in a ward, surrounded by an army of doctors and nurses who were shouting at each other. “Do this,” “Do that,” “Someone hold her still. She’s got to get an epidural…”
“Can’t you give me an injection to stop the labor?” I asked someone… “It’s too late,” I was told. “You are fully dilated and I see a head.”
My husband arrived just as someone told me, “We are cutting you now.” He grabbed my hand. I’ve never felt so relieved and afraid at the same time. This couldn’t be happening, I kept thinking. But it was.
I glimpsed Baby A, who looked like a little martian, and then Baby B, who I already knew was way, way too small. Then they were gone. I had no idea where. Seconds later, I threw up and passed out.
When I woke up, I was hooked up to drips, in a small dark room off of the labor ward and I looked straight into the anxious face of my doctor, Robert Sassoon, who had lived too far away to get there in time for the birth.
“Oh My God,” I said to him. “What a fuck up.”
In that moment, I realized two dismal things simultaneously:
- I had just given birth in a dramatic and completely horrifying manner at just 30 weeks, to two tiny babies, weighing 2lbs and 3lbs respectively, who now faced an uphill battle to survive. I did not know if they would make it, and, if they did, in what shape.
- Jeffrey Epstein had won. He had told me he’d curse my unborn children – and, it now seemed, he had done so successfully. What else might he now do to harm them further?
You are not supposed to feel terrible despair when you give birth. But that’s what I felt.
Read the rest of the article on Vicky Ward Investigates.