"Jesus!" Moss sat bolt upright. "Why didn't you tell me a while ago?"
His wife shrugged. "I've watched plenty of cows and sows and ewes give birth. I know what happens, as well as you can till it happens to you. I wasn't going anywhere much. Now I am-and so we'd better get moving."
"Right," he said. They'd packed a bag for her a couple of days earlier. He had clothes draped over the chair, ready to throw on. As he got out of bed, he gave her a kiss. "Congratulations, sweetheart. You're saving us some money."
"I'm not doing it on purpose, believe me," Laura said.
"I know." The lawyerly part of Moss' mind operated automatically. "But if Junior'd waited another week and a half, it would've been 1933, and then we couldn't write him off this year's taxes."
Having doffed her long wool nightgown, Laura was putting on a long wool maternity dress. A tent would have had no more material and been no less stylish. She draped a coat over the dress; it was snowing outside. "Somehow or other, taxes aren't my biggest worry right this minute," she said, her voice as chilly as the weather.
Moss lit a cigarette and patted her on the bottom. "Really, babe? Why is that, do you think?" She did her best to make her glare withering. He did his best not to wither.
Going downstairs was another adventure. He carried the case in one hand and held his wife's hand with the other. She had to pause on the stairs while a labor pain passed. He didn't want to think about what would happen if she fell. He didn't want to, and so he didn't. He did, however, let out a loud sigh of relief after they made it to the lobby, went down a few more stairs, and reached the sidewalk.
His breath would have smoked without the cigarette. When he inhaled, the air cut like knives. In conversational tones, Laura remarked, "The auto had better start, don't you think?"
"What, you don't want to hang around waiting for a cab?" Moss said, which earned him another glare. He opened the Bucephalus' door and carefully handed her in, then flung the overnight bag onto the back seat.
He slid behind the wheel and slammed his door shut. That got him out of the icy wind. When he turned the key, he uttered something between a prayer and a curse. Past two on a cold winter night… Would the engine turn over?
The starter made a grinding noise. The engine didn't start. He tried again. Still no luck. "Come on, you goddamn fucking son of a bitch," he growled, wishing for a groundcrew man to spin the prop.
Laura looked down at her swollen stomach. "Don't listen to him," she advised the baby. "Hold your hands over your ears. He's just a barbarous Yank, and he doesn't know any better."
"I don't know any better than to keep driving this miserable old rattletrap," Moss said, and twisted the key once more, with savage force.
Grind… Grind… Grind… He was about to throw up his hands in despair when the engine belched like a man after three quick beers. He came down hard on the gas, hoping, hoping… Another belch, and then a full-throated roar. Steam and smoke poured from the tailpipe.
"There is a God!" Moss shouted.
"I should hope so," Laura said, "and I doubt He's very amused at what you said a minute ago."
"Too darn bad," Moss said; now that the Bucephalus had started, he was willing to make his language less incandescent. But he didn't back down: "I wasn't very amused with Him a few minutes ago, either."
"Jonathan, I think-" What ever his wife thought was lost as another labor pain seized her. When she could speak again, she said, "I think you'd better get me to the hospital as fast as you can."
"I will," he promised. "I want to make sure the engine warms up before I put it in gear, though. If it quits on me, that would be.. . not so good." Laura nodded. They might argue about a good many things, but she wasn't going to disagree with that.
Even though the streets of Berlin were almost deserted, he drove with great care. Skidding on snow would have been bad any time. Skidding on snow while his wife was in labor was one more thing he didn't care to contemplate.
Beside him, Laura let out a sharp hiss. She couldn't say anything more for most of a minute. At last, she managed, "I won't be sorry for the ether cone or what ever it is they give you to make the pain go away."
"We're almost there," he said. Nothing in Berlin was too far from anything else. He could have driven for quite a while longer in Chicago. Of course, Chicago also boasted more hospitals than Berlin's one.
As he took Laura toward the door, another auto pulled up behind his: a flivver even more spavined than his Bucephalus. The woman who got out was as extremely pregnant as Laura. Her husband said, "They can't pick two in the afternoon to do this, eh?"
"Doesn't seem that way," Moss agreed.
Nurses took the two women off to the maternity ward. Moss and the other man stayed behind to cope with the inevitable paperwork. After they'd dotted the last i and crossed the last t, another nurse guided them to the waiting room, which boasted a fine selection of magazines from 1931. Moss sat down on a chair, the other fellow on the leatherette sofa. They both reached for cigarettes, noticed the big, red NO SMOKING! FIRE HAZARD! signs at the same time, and put their packs away with identical sighs.
"Nothing to do but wait," the other man said. He was in his mid-twenties-too young to have fought in the Great War. More and more men these days were too young to have fought in the war. Moss felt time marching on him-felt it all the more acutely because so many of his contemporaries had gone off to fight but hadn't come home again.
Nodding now, he said, "I wonder how long it'll be."
"You never can tell," his companion said. "Our first one took forever, but the second one came pretty quick."
"This is our first one," Moss said.
"Congratulations," the other man said.
"Thanks." Moss yawned enormously. "I wish they had a coffeepot in here." Then he looked at the NO SMOKING! FIRE HAZARD! signs again. "Well, maybe not, not unless you want cold coffee."
"I wonder why it's a fire hazard," the Canadian said.
"Ether, maybe," Moss answered, remembering what Laura had said just before they got to the hospital. He sniffed. All he smelled was a hospital odor: strong soap, disinfectant, and a faintest hint of something nasty underneath.
They waited. Moss looked at the clock. The younger Canadian man did the same. After a while, he said, "You're a Yank, aren't you?"
"That's right," Jonathan admitted, wondering if he should have tried to lie. But his accent had probably given him away. American and Canadian intonations were close, but not identical.
Another pause. Then the Canadian asked, "Is your wife a Yank, too?"
Moss laughed. "No, she's about as Canadian as can be. Her first husband was a Canadian soldier, but he didn't come back from the war."
"Oh," the younger man said, and then shrugged. "None of my business, really."
Most Americans would have kept on peppering Moss with questions. Canadians usually showed more reserve, as this one had. Of course, some Canadians still wanted to throw all the Americans in their country back south of the border once more. Moss knew his own wife was one of them. If they hadn't been lovers, if she hadn't warned him of the rebellion a few years before, that might have been worse. He might have got caught in it, too, instead of coming through unscathed.
With another yawn, he picked up a magazine. The lead article wondered how many seats in the Confederate Congress the Freedom Party would gain in the 1931 elections. Not very many, the writer predicted. "Shows how much you know," Moss muttered, and closed the magazine in disgust.
He shut his eyes and tried to doze. He didn't think he had a prayer. He was worrying about what would happen in the delivery room, and the chair was stiff and uncomfortable. But the next time he looked at the clock, an hour and a half had gone by. He blinked in astonishment. His companion in the waiting room had slumped onto one arm of the sofa. He snored softly.