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Read Ebook: Blessed Event by Farrell Henry
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Ebook has 342 lines and 12706 words, and 7 pages
pped his broad hands together with enthusiastic approval. "Hey, that's wonderful!" he said. "It sounds classy, too. We make this million quadrillionth baby the most wised-up kid any pair of parents ever had. Write that down, Haywood, just like you said it. Put it in the special specifications part."
"All right," Haywood said, rather pleased with himself, "then, that's what it'll be." He turned carefully back to the cloud bank, wriggled his knees into its fleecy confines and took up his pen. "I'll have to word it carefully so there won't be any oversight."
"Gosh!" Mac grinned rapturously, "just think how tickled those parents are going to be. It makes you feel good just thinking about it!"
Hair rumpled and necktie askew, Lester sat in the hospital waiting room and smoked endless cigarettes. Across from him sat another young man in a similar state of disheveled conflagration, but the two of them did not speak. The situation was understood and words would only make it worse. Time passed.
At last a door swung open and a nurse with a starched expression and a severe uniform stepped flat-footedly into the room. In unison Lester and his companion sat up and looked around like a pair of beagles alerted to the scent of the fox. There was an ominous pause while the nurse, indulging a sadistic sense of the dramatic, looked questioningly from one to the other.
"Mr. Holmes?" she asked crisply.
"Yes!" Lester said, leaping from his chair. "Yes, yes! That's me!"
The nurse regarded him slowly, as though finding only what she had expected, which wasn't much. "Your wife," she announced thinly, "has just given birth to a healthy six pound boy." She edged back toward the door, then stopped. "Congratulations," she added grudgingly.
"Holy smoke!" Lester said. "Can I see Ginny?"
The nurse eyed him levelly. "Ginny?" she enquired.
"My mother!" Lester said confusedly, making a Freudian slip. "I mean, my wife, the mother of my son. You know...." he ended lamely.
"Mrs. Holmes will be resting for the next couple of hours," the nurse said, "and she mustn't be disturbed. Meanwhile, if you'd care to see your son, he will appear shortly in the nursery, in the crib marked with your name. You may view him through the glass partition."
"Oh," Lester said. "Oh, sure. But, Ginny--Mrs. Holmes--how is she?"
"She came through the delivery splendidly," the nurse told him and left.
Grinning, Lester turned to the other young man who looked back at him numbly. "Well...." he said. "Golly!" He waited for a moment, then shrugged happily and started toward the door.
He paced back and forth in front of the plate glass window, nervously eyeing the first row of metal cribs which contained the one marked "Holmes." His crib, or rather the crib of his son, was exactly like all the others in the line, except that it had remained starkly unoccupied for some time now and for that reason seemed somehow larger and more ominous than the others. Absently, Lester was aware of other sleepy-eyed fathers along the window, and of the occasional presence, within the panelled confines of the nursery, of nurses, moving back and forth like the masked ladies of some frightfully pristine and hygenic India.
From time to time, these last would bring a baby forward to the viewing window for the inspection of the fathers who were already planning complications for the little newcomer's life. Lester watched as a sandy-haired young man with dark shadows under his eyes moved to the speaking tube at the side of the window and briefly requested an introduction to his new-born daughter. Within the nursery one of the nurses nodded to him and said a polite "yes, sir," which was communicated to the young man over a concealed speaker. Waiting until the young man had departed, Lester followed his example and edged up to the tube. There was another nurse conveniently at hand.
"Miss," he said mildly. "Nurse."
The young lady turned and regarded him from over her mask with a pair of large brown eyes. "Yes?" she asked. "Are you one of the fathers?"
"I--yes," Lester nodded. "Only my baby isn't in the nursery yet, and it's been quite a while now since they sent me here to see him."
A flicker of puzzlement showed in the nurse's eyes. "What is the name, please?" she asked.
"Holmes," Lester said. "Lester Holmes. It's a boy. Six pounds. If that helps you any."
The brown eyes changed expression swiftly and unexpectedly. They raked Lester's face hastily, as though passing over some object too loathsome for closer observation. It seemed to Lester that the exposed part of the nurse's complexion turned a ghastly white.
"Good grief!" the girl said over the speaker and hurried out of the room.
"Hey!" Lester said, bending closer to the tube. "Hey, nurse!"
He stood there for a moment, feeling vague stirrings of impending doom, then he moved back. Inside the nursery the door opened and two nurses, neither with large brown eyes, stepped inside, stared hauntedly in his direction for a moment, then disappeared again. Lester watched this denouement with utter bewilderment. He retreated to the far side of the room and sat down in a chair with iron legs and slippery red plastic cushions.
Lester was still sitting there, without benefit of spurs, when the doctor came in. He was a tall, pinkish sort of man, balding of head and jittery of manner. He leaned down to Lester as though preparing to say a very confidential and filthy word.
"Holmes?" he enquired.
"Yes!" Lester said, starting. "That's me."
"Would you just step out here in the hall for a moment?"
Lester got up and silently followed the doctor outside. The door to the waiting room sighed shut behind them, and for a moment they stood looking at each other.
"Mr. Holmes ..." the doctor said, then lapsed into undecided silence.
Lester made a small gesture with his hand. "Look, doctor," he said. "I know I'm not familiar with the way things are done around a hospital, but frankly I'm beginning to get a little worried."
"Of course you are," the doctor said emphatically.
"Huh?" Lester said.
"Expectant fathers are always worried," the doctor said and smiled stiffly.
"I'm not expectant any more," Lester said. "The nurse said everything was all right, that the baby was healthy and Ginny was doing fine."
The doctor looked at him, as though with sudden inspiration. "Would you like to see your wife, Mr. Holmes?" he asked quickly.
A look of momentary relief lighted the doctor's face. "Fine," he said, "fine. And when you've finished we'll have a little talk, eh? Now, just come along this way."
Ginny, in the tall, awkward hospital bed, looked kind of pinched and stringy, like she always did in the summer when she'd spent a day canning fruit. As Lester entered, she smiled in a slack-mouthed sort of way.
"Hello, dear," she said weakly.
"Hi," Lester said.
"Daddy," Ginny said dreamily. "You're a daddy now."
"And you're a mother," Lester said foolishly.
"Yes," Ginny murmured. "You are a daddy and I'm a mother. Both at the same time." She smiled again. "It's funny."
"Funny?" Lester said. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand. "How do you mean?"
"The anesthetic was funny," Ginny said, and suddenly she giggled.
Lester looked at her worriedly. "Did anything happen?" he asked. "Besides the baby, I mean?"
"Oh, just something I imagined," Ginny said. "But it was so clear it was like it was real." She looked at him from between half-closed lids and giggled again. "When the doctor spanked the baby--you know how they do--he said, 'Stop that, you big ape! Try swatting someone your own size!'"
"The doctor said that?"
"No, the baby," Ginny said. "Wasn't it funny the way I imagined all that?"
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