The Baby
My wife screamed, though in pain or fright I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter a whole lot anyways — I was trying to get her to the hospital as quickly as I could, and I’d just cut across three lanes of traffic to make the exit. Horns blared behind me, and I knew it was stupid, but I had to hurry. Her contractions were really close together now, to the point where she almost couldn’t talk to me. That was the main reason I’d even taken the chance of crossing traffic like that, because I knew she couldn’t really say anything about it. She tried though.
“You stupid son of a — oooohhhh!” Another contraction ripped through her, and I patted her leg.
“We’re almost there, sweetheart, don’t worry. Almost there.”
“Shut it,” she said, gritting her teeth. She sounded like she was going to say something else, but I interrupted her with the horn, trying to warn off some of the upcoming traffic. It didn’t work, so I pulled around them and cut across two lanes again to make my turn. More horns blared, but we were only a couple of blocks from the hospital. Even if we got into an accident now, at least medical attention was just seconds away.
I screeched into the emergency drop off, scattering some pigeons, turned off the ignition, and jumped out of the car before the engine had completely died. I could hear my wife cursing loudly through the windshield, and was thankful it’d be over soon — she was normally such a sweetheart that it was almost embarrassing to hear her swear like a sailor. A nurse came out as I was opening the door for her.
“She’s in labor. We need a wheel chair,” I said, trying to sound calm. The nurse nodded and ran back inside as I helped my wife out of the car. She grabbed on to my shoulder with superhuman strength, and hissed in my ear.
“I am going to kill you for doing this to me,” she said. I wanted to laugh, and probably would have if my eyes weren’t tearing up from her steel grip on my shoulder. I silently thanked God she’d recently taken up chewing her nails, or else I’d probably be getting stitches while we were here.
The nurse came back and we helped my wife into the wheelchair, comforting her as much as two men possibly could. Once inside, two more nurses helped her up again, then onto a gurney. A doctor came over and examined her briefly, then motioned one of the nurses to take her back deeper into the hospital. I started to follow, and the doctor held me off.
“We need to make sure she’s stable first. Then we’ll come out and get you,” he said. I nodded, then started pacing.
I don’t know how long it was before they came and got me, but it felt like forever. By that time, I was a nervous wreck, countless scenarios playing through my mind. None of them were close to what was going to happen though, and in some ways, even the worst I’d imagined might’ve been better.
After cleaning up and putting on some blue scrubs, they led me back to where my wife was delivering our child. I could hear her cursing and yelling long before I got there, and when I entered, her volume rivaled an operatic singer.
I took her hand, and she crushed my knuckles as she pushed. I tried telling her to breath (because I couldn’t think of anything else to say), but no words would come out. In fact, I was finding it difficult to remember to breath myself.
“The baby’s coming!” the doctor said, waving at me to come over. I walked to him, thankful that my wife let go of my hand; it would take some time before I had enough feeling in it to see if she’d broken anything, but it certainly felt like a possibility. “Push! Just a couple more pushes and it’ll be out,” the doctor egged my wife on.
“I am pushing you assss—aaahhhh!” I heard the moan in her voice take on a different tone, one of relief, and I knew the baby was out. I hurried the short distance to the doctor to see my new child — we didn’t even know if it was going to be a girl or a boy, because the ultrasounds never seemed to come out just right. I looked back at my wife, and she was laying there with her eyes closed, trying to catch her breath.
The room was suddenly quiet, much more quiet than I’d expected it to be. I looked at the doctor, and over his mask, I could see his eyes looking at me in confusion. He shook his head softly, and I could tell it wasn’t good news.
“Let me see, please,” I asked him, my voice muffled by my own mask and by the fear that was welling up inside. It couldn’t be… We’d been waiting for this for years, for her to finally get pregnant, and we’d been so ecstatic when we finally found out. Now…
I could tell he wasn’t very willing to hand the baby over, but I held my ground and reached my arms out. I took the limp infant in my hands and pulled it close to my body, rocking it gently. It was most definitely dead, I could tell that just by the weight and feel of it. I choked back a sob; I couldn’t let my wife hear me cry.
Its head rolled back in my arms, and I almost dropped it for fright. Its eyes opened as its head moved, and I saw two dimly glowing, red orbs glowing back at me, with elongated pupils like cat’s eyes. The eyes closed again, and before my curiosity got the better of me and I opened them again myself, the baby moved.
It cried like every baby I’d seen born in a movie, wailing fiercely and struggling in my arms. It looked at me again, and this time, there was no glow, and its eyes seemed perfectly normal, blue like its mother’s. Its, I thought to myself, and did a quick check; his eyes. It was a boy. And, in the relief of hearing my son cry, I forgot about the glowing eyes and I smiled. The eyes were probably just my own imagination, from emotions run ragged with my wife’s labor and thinking that he’d been stillborn.
I carried him over to his mother, who was waiting with outstretched arms. She smiled as she took him, such a beautiful smile that I completely forgot any remaining fears I had. I knew in that moment what happiness really was, seeing the mother of my child, holding him closely to her chest and smiling down at him as he fell silent and started to sleep.
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