"Well, do something," Leon said. "What are you going to do?"
"Go buy some newspapers," the doctor told him. "Anything will be fine-News American, Sun… but fresh ones, you understand? Don't just accept what someone hands you in a diner, saying he's finished reading it…"
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I don't have change," Leon said.
The doctor started rummaging through his pockets. He pulled out his mangled pack of Camels, two lint-covered jellybeans, and a cylinder of Rolaids. "Emily," he said, "would you happen to have change for a dollar?" Emily said something that sounded like yes, and turned her head from side to side. "Try her purse," the doctor said. They felt along the floor, among the gym clothes and soda straws. Leon brought up the purse by its strap. He plowed through it till he found a billfold, and then he raced off down the street, muttering, "Newspapers. Newspapers." It was a cheerful, jumbled street with littered sidewalks and a row of thy shops- eating places, dry cleaners, florists. In front of one of the cafés were various newspapers in locked, windowed boxes.
The doctor stepped on his cigarette and ground it into the pavement. Then he took off his suit jacket. He rolled up his sleeves, and tucked his shirt more firmly into his trousers.. He bent inside the car and laid a palm on Emily's abdomen. "Breathe high in your chest," he told her. He gazed dreamily 'past her, humming under his breath, watching the trucks and buses rumble by through the opposite window. The cold air caused the dark hairs to bristle on his forearms.
A woman in high heels clopped down the sidewalk; she never even noticed what was going on. Then two teenaged girls approached, sharing fudge from a white paper sack. Their footsteps slowed, and the doctor heard and tuned around. "You two!" he said. "Go call an ambulance. Tell them we've got a delivery on our hands." They stared at him. Identical cubes of fudge were poised halfway to their mouths.
"Well?" he said. "Go on." When they had rushed into Maria's Home-Style, the doctor turned back to Emily. "How're you doing?" he asked her..
She groaned.
Leon returned, out of breath, with a stack of newspapers. The doctor opened them out and started spreading them under Emily and all around her. "Now, these," he said conversationally, "will grant us some measure of antisepsis." Leon didn't seem to be listening. The doctor wrapped two newspapers around Emily's thighs. She began to blend in with the car. He hung a sports section down the back of the seat and anchored it td the window ledge with the track shoe she'd been holding all this time. "Next," he said, "I'll need two strips of cloth, two inches wide and six inches long. Tear off your shirttail, Leon."
"I want to quit," Emily said. "Quit?"
"I've changed my mind." The cook came out of Maria's Home-Style. He was a large man in an apron stained with tomato sauce. For a moment he watched Leon, who was standing by the car in nothing but his jeans, shakily tugging at his shirttail. (Leon's ribs showed 'and his shoulder blades were as sharp as chicken wings. He was much too young for all this.) The cook reached over and took the shirt, and ripped it for him. "Thanks," said Leon.
"But what's the use of it?" the cook asked.
"He wants two strips of cloth," said Leon, "two inches wide and six inches long. I don't know why." The cook tore again, following instructions. He gave the shirt to Leon and passed the strips to the doctor, who hung them carefully on the inner door handle. Then the cook propped a wide, meaty hand on the car roof and bent in to nod at Emily. "Afternoon," he said.
"Hello," said Emily politely.
"How you doing?"
"Oh, just fine."
"Seems like be wants to come on and get born," the cook said, "and then he wants to go back in a ways."
"Will you get out of here?" Leon said.
The cook let this pass. "Those two girls you sent are calling the ambulance," he told the doctor. "They're using my free phone."
"Good," the doctor said. He cupped the baby's head in his hands-a dark, wet, shining bulge. "Now, Emily, 'bear down," he said. "Maria, press flat on her belly, just a steady, slow pressure, please."
"Soo now, soo now," the cook said, pressing. Leon crouched on the curb, gnawing a knuckle, his shirt back on but not buttoned. Behind them, a little crowd had gathered. The teenaged girls stood hushed, forgetting to dip into their fudge sack. A man was asking everyone if an ambulance had been called. An old woman was telling a younger one all about someone named Dexter, who had been a breech birth with multiple complications.
"Bear down," said the doctor.
There was a silence. Even the traffic noises seemed to have stopped.
Then the doctor stepped back, holding up a slippery, bleak lump. Something moved. There was a small, caught sound from someplace unexpected. So fast it seemed that everyone had been looking away when it happened, the lump turned into a wailing, writhing, frantic, indignant snarl of red arms and legs and spiraled telephone cord. "Oh," the crowd said, breathing again.
"It's a girl," said the doctor. He passed her to the cook. "Was a girl what you wanted?"
"Anything! Anything!" the cook said. "So long as she's healthy. Soo, baby."
"I was talking to Emily," the doctor said mildly. He had to raise his voice above the baby's, which was surprisingly loud. He bent over Emily, pressing her abdomen now with both palms: "Emily? Are you all right? Bear down again, please." While he pressed, she couldn't get air to speak, but the instant he let up she said, "I'm fine, and I'd like my daughter." The cook seemed reluctant to hand her over. He rocked the baby against his apron, thought a moment, and sighed. Then he gave her to the doctor. The doctor checked her breathing passages-the mashed-looking nose, the squalling cavern of a mouth. "With such a racket, how could she not be fine?" he asked, and he leaned in to lay her in Emily's arms. Emily nestled the baby's head against her shoulder, but the wailing went on, thin and passionate, with a hiccup at the end of each breath. "What'd you do with those cloths?" the doctor asked Leon.
Leon was standing up now, so as to get a glimpse of the baby. Something kept tugging his lips into a smile that he kept trying to bat down again. "Cloths?" he said.
"Those cloths you tore, damn it. We're nowhere near done here yet."
"You hung them on the door handle," someone in the crowd said.
"Oh, yes," said the doctor.
He took one cloth, leaned in, and tied it around the baby's cord. For all the blunt, clumsy look of his fingers, he did seem to know what he was doing. "After the ball is over," he sang in his beard-blurred voice. While he was knotting the second cloth, a faraway cry started up. It sounded like an extension of the baby's cry-equally thin, watery-sounding in the wind. Then it separated and grew more piercing. "The ambulance!" Leon said. "I hear the ambulance, Emily."
"Send it back," Emily said.
"They're going to take you to the hospital, honey. You're going to be all right now."
"But it's over! Do I have to go?" she asked the doctor.
"Certainly," he said. He stepped back to admire his knots, which looked something like the little cloth bows on a kite tail. "Actually," he said, "they're coming in the nick of time. I have nothing to cut the cord with."
"You could use my Swiss Army officer's knife," she told him. "It's in my purse. It's the Woodsman style with a scissors blade."