«But the new hospital doesn't exist either,» Alena said.
«Why didn't you tell her about your contractions? Maybe it's time for you to go into labor.»
«I really don't want to right now — haven't used up all my maternity leave yet. I could party for another two weeks. Why should I give this money to somebody else? Or maybe I should just go ahead and deliver?» She turned to Masha. «Yesterday I took a urine test to the lab, but then a piece of plaster fell all over me — they had to pour out all eight jars.»
«What can you expect from a building that hasn't existed for five years?»
«Alena, you were going to try and find out about my antibiotics, whether it might hurt the baby because I lied about those two weeks?» the Girl-woman asked hurriedly. «You will call, won't you?»
«It's only yourself you deceived. You fudged the two weeks so they'd give you antibiotics, so now go ahead and poison the child,» Alena answered.
«It won't be me that…»
«From six months on taking antibiotics is okay, and that's exactly where you are.»
«That's if you count the fudged time, but it's really only five-and-a-half. You will call your friend, won't you?»
«Come on, Golubova, let's take your blood pressure.»
Masha went out into the corridor and walked toward the voice. As she walked, she thought: This is me walking in a corridor that no longer exists. For some reason she couldn't stop wondering about the building's being extinct and about that commission from Moscow, although she herself didn't know why this was so important.
In the dining room the elderly midwife was taking the blood pressure of some newly arrived patients, who were covering their nostrils from the stench. On the wall hung a colorful advisory: PERMISSION OF MIDWIFE REQUIRED BEFORE TURNING ON TELEVISION. Masha glanced about in search of a TV set but found none. Quick-witted Masha, who had grown up in a crowded hostel, suddenly felt uncomfortable and confused. She looked around uncertainly. The pressure dial showed one-sixty over one hundred. Of course, it's just my blood pressure, she said to herself. If I could just lie down and get some sleep.
But sleep was impossible. Although Alena did not wish to give birth, nature had gone to work — implacable as a clock — and the birth process was accelerating. Alena kept moaning and repeating, «So many people on earth, did they all start like this? So many people on earth…»
Drrra-bub-bub-b… The earth-mover wheezed and expired.
«Our friend finished up a bit early today, didn't he?» said the Girl-woman. «Of course, if I'd known my kidneys would go on the blink, I wouldn't have lied in the first place.»
«Look, I just won't have time to phone anybody,» Alena said in an interval between contractions.
«So what do you want,» Masha asked her, «a boy or a girl?»
«Agirl. Isolde.»
«I want a boy — Vadim,» Masha answered.
«The patronymic will be awkward for his children: Vadimovich. One has to think of the future.»
«Who knows what people will be called in the future? Perhaps they'll all have nuclear names or something like that.»
«Maybe it's false labor after all, huh?» The Girl-woman was using her fingers for complex calculations of the term of her pregnancy.
But this was no false labor. Alena understood at last that she was giving birth in earnest and it was time for her to go to the delivery room. She asked Masha to dispose of her apple cores and watermelon rinds.
«Is the bathroom far?» Masha could hardly see through the specks dancing before her eyes.
«Yes, and be grateful that it is — it doesn't smell so much.»
«Is it true there's no water there?»
«How can there be water in a building that hasn't existed for five years?»
Masha walked along the corridor and found her destination. She tossed the garbage into a trash can where it became a committed partisan in the battle among the many other odors hanging there. But she'd had enough for now. Masha walked back to the ward. Alena was gone.
The women asked whether there was a line for the lavatory. Yes, there was. Damn!
«Even in the hostel where I hang out it's not so bad as here,» said the Girl-woman, and she sat down across from Masha.
Masha understood that the Girl-woman wanted to have a chat and said through the red speckles, «You hang out in a settlement house, but my hangout is the barracks.» She lay down.
«What about me — I usually hang out at the train station,» announced the woman who had been so interested in the shot of alcohol earlier. «In a barracks, you say? And your husband does… what?»
The words somehow came out against Masha's will. «Well, let's see… he was a photographer for awhile, but now he's gone out to do some construction.»
He was a photographer, in fact, only he never had become Masha's husband, even though he used to say to her: «There's an old saying: 'It's a quicker trip to the registry office from the bedroom than from the cinema'.» As it turned out, the quick trip had been to the maternity hospital. But after all, she was thirty-one; when would she be able to have a child if not now? It was three years since her mother had died, leaving her and her sister alone in the world. They'd hold things together somehow and raise the child. But then again, barracks was a barracks.
«He's trying to get an apartment, hmmm? They say working on a construction site helps you get one sooner.»
Masha realized it was the Schoolmarm speaking to her. Yes, he was trying to get an apartment. Yes, they'd been married a year. Yes, it was because of her blood pressure that she'd been hospitalized earlier. I'm staying in a hospital that doesn't exist, talking about a husband I don't have. Here the midwife called her for an injection and Masha returned to reality. She went out into the corridor, and suddenly her water broke.
«My water broke,» she said aloud.
«What happened, Golubova?» asked the midwife, peering out of the treatment room. «Here's the water, but what about the contractions?» she fretted.
«I don't know.»
«Let me take some blood from you right away and we'll send you over to pre-birthing. They'll give you some castor oil there, maybe the contractions will come. But this stimulation…»
When Masha arrived in pre-birthing Alena was hollering above the noise, lying in bed and waving her arms as if preparing for takeoff.
«What about you-ou-ou?!» Alena bellowed to Masha, and they carted Alena off to delivery.
Masha could hear the powerful voice of the gynecologist, Alena's silence, and then the hoarse cry of a baby. But I'm not having any contractions, Masha thought, noticing that the window and wall were tilting slantwise. Outside it was already night. «It's my blood pressure again,» Masha said softly aloud. She knew she would leave this place with a baby, and for its sake she could endure anything.
At midnight the doctor gave Masha some castor oil and then began sliding obliquely to the floor. Masha grabbed him by the arm.
«What's the matter with you?» she heard.
«Nothing. This happens sometimes because of my blood pressure. Things move.»
«Do objects move, or do you?»
«I don't move, no.»
«That's not so bad. Drink the castor oil in one gulp. That's a good girl.»
Masha gulped it down, and soon the first contraction overwhelmed her. Those that followed frightened her, and she begged and begged: «Vadim, Vadim, have pity.» But Vadim was bursting pitilessly into the world — Masha could already feel his head. Such a world you're pushing into, where some things don't even exist on paper, Masha thought, and she cried out into the darkness of the corridor, «My baby's coming!»