“She’s driving her friend’s car from Idaho to California. She won’t make it in time. We have to go to the hospital.”
“Really? Is that really true?”
I nodded.
She was crying, and now another contraction was starting. “They’ll cut me open, I don’t want to be cut.” She began to pee. Then, with the pee still running down her thigh she lowered her head to the floor and threw up. She was exploding and disintegrating. I tried to clean her off but she rolled against the wall. “If we don’t go, does it mean the baby will die?”
“No, no. Of course not.” She said thank you; the only thing she cared about was not going to the hospital. If I had it to do over again I would have said Probably. It might live, but probably not. Also, I would have dragged her to Dr. Binwali the moment the midwife said Idaho. Because now it was getting away from us; the hospital seemed like a rest stop we had missed hours ago. Clee let out a bellow. “Should I push?”
“It feels like you want to push?”
“I have to.”
“Okay, just a little. Let me call the midwife.”
But she wouldn’t let me leave until the push was done. The midwife had the radio on very loud — a country song, it sounded like.
“What do I need for the delivery?” I yelled.
“She’s progressed? You need to go to the hospital.”
“She’s pushing. We’re having it here. Do I need to boil water? What do I do?”
She turned the radio off.
“Shit. Okay. Bare minimum, you need three clean towels, some olive oil, a bowl of hot water, some sanitary sharp scissors, and a clean piece of string.”
I was running through the house, grabbing the things as she said them. Rick was in the kitchen, pouring boiling water into a mug.
“I need that water!” I yelled.
He bent down and calmly unlaced his tennis shoe. “There’s already hot water in the bedroom,” he said, dropping his shoelace in the mug. “I don’t think you have any string, but this will do.” He was rolling up his dirty sleeves and washing his hands at the kitchen sink with brisk authority.
Clee bellowed in the other room.
“Do you really know how to do this?”
He nodded modestly. “I do.”
I studied his face. It was not soft or deranged; his eyes were clear, his brow almost hawklike, though overly tan from outside living. A fine surgeon who fell from grace — malpractice, destitution, homelessness. I didn’t verify any of this, just followed him into the bedroom. He gently placed the mug on my dresser, beside a steaming bowl. The scissors and olive oil were waiting, and a stack of towels. The floor was covered with black plastic garbage bags. I smiled weakly with relief.
“You’ve done this before.”
His brow furrowed and he started to speak, a response that already sounded terrifyingly longer and more complicated than Yes. Clee screamed, crawling into the bedroom on her hands and knees.
She was yelling that its crown was showing. A royal baby. She meant he was crowning, but he wasn’t.
I explained about how we were in Rick’s hands and also how he had washed his hands. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the swarm of doubt flying around the room. But she was past all that.
“Can I really push now? I want to get it out.”
My heart jumped. It. I had forgotten about the baby. Until then she had been giving birth to birth — to contractions and noises and liquids. There was someone in there.
We gave her water and Recharge energy drink and a little bit of honey. I had forgotten these things earlier but with Rick here it was easier to think. He suggested I wash my hands before the next contraction. But it was too late. She squatted and with an unearthly scream her legs slowly split apart to reveal a perfect wedge of head. Clee reached down and touched it.
“There’s no face,” she said.
Rick took my palms and squirted Purell into them. He waved his hands in the air to indicate I should do the same. We flapped our hands. Clee suddenly reclined and seemed to fall asleep. I raised my eyebrows at Rick and he made a smooth gesture with the flat of his hand, indicating that this was normal. He put his face in front of her and in a low, unfamiliar voice he said, “It comes out on this push.” Clee opened her eyes and nodded obediently, as if they shared a long history.
“Big breath in,” said Rick. She took a big breath in. “Release it with noise and push. Harder.”
It came out with a gush of fluids and Rick caught it. A boy. He looked dead, but I knew from the birth videos we watched in class that this was normal. The silence was terrible, though. And there was a foul smell. Rick tipped the baby to the side and he coughed. And then he squawked. Not like a person making his first sound ever, but like an old crow — a bit tired, a bit resigned. Then silence again. Rick lay the baby on the floor and cut the umbilical cord with a seasoned swipe of my nail scissors. He tied his sanitized shoelace onto the baby’s stub. Clee tried to stand and fell into a convulsive squat. A pile of gizzards dropped from between her legs. The placenta. She leaned back against the bed. “You take him.”
He weighed almost nothing. His legs were covered in green slime, like pea soup, and his eyes rolled upward like a drunk old man trying to get his bearings. A pale, drunk old man with floppy arms and legs.
“He’s pale, isn’t he?” I said.
I looked at Clee’s skin, tawny even now.
“You’re not pale. Is his dad pale?”
I tried to think of all the very pale men in Clee’s world. The baby was so fair it was almost blue. Who that we know is blue? Who, who, who do we know that’s blue? But this question was just a funny costume, a silly clown nose on the real thought I was having.
“Call 911,” I said.
Clee lifted her sleepy head and Rick froze.
The phone was by his knee; he picked it up slowly.
“Pea soup. We learned that in class. It means something bad. Call 911.”
The baby was darker blue now, purple almost. Seconds, I was thinking, we’re down to seconds. Suddenly there was a feathery sound like giant wet wings unfurling — it was Clee’s body unsticking from the plastic garbage bags. She was standing. Her big hand tore the phone away from Rick. She dialed and said the address, she knew the zip code, she knew the cross street, the dispatcher was giving instructions, she clearly relayed each one—“wrap him in a towel,” “cover the top of his head,” and I completed each task with an unusual fluidity, as if we’d been working on this scenario for years, this baby-saving simulation, and now was our chance to perform it. Rick watched from the corner, disheveled and shrunken; he was the homeless gardener again.
The ambulance people yelled and threw equipment around like a swat team. A beige blanket was wrapped around Clee. An athletic-looking older woman was counting over the baby. Maybe keeping track of how many seconds it had been since he’d died. She would never stop, she would count forever if that’s how long he was dead for.
Rick handed me a Tupperware container just before I got in the ambulance.
“I washed it off,” he cried. “It’s clean.”
Spaghetti, I thought. Kate’s spaghetti in case we get hungry.
CHAPTER TEN
Something huge was inserted into his tiny throat. A cord was implanted in his raw belly button. He was covered in white stickers. A net of cables and tubes was woven between him and many loud, beeping machines. There was hardly enough baby to accommodate all the things that had to go into him.
“Do you think they know?” Clee whispered from her wheelchair.
We were gripping each other’s hands between the folds of our white hospital gowns — a small hard brain formed by our interlocking white knuckles. I peeked around at the nurses. Everyone knew that this baby was up for adoption.