Read Ebook: Blessed Event by Farrell Henry

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Ebook has 342 lines and 12706 words, and 7 pages

"No, the baby," Ginny said. "Wasn't it funny the way I imagined all that?"

Lester forced a smile. "Yeah," he said, "sure."

Just then a nurse, eyeing Lester with uneasy speculation, edged quietly into the room. "You'll have to leave now, Mr. Holmes," she said. "The doctors are waiting for you."

"Doctors?" Lester said, then decided to let it go; the hospital had became a dark and mysterious place. He leaned down and kissed Ginny lightly on the lips. "Get some rest, dear," he murmured.

There were six doctors in the little office, an assorted half dozen of varying sizes and ages. The white-coated oath-taker with whom Lester had shared the cryptic conversation in the hall presided over the gathering from behind a desk at the far side of the room. The others sat in chairs that had been arranged against the walls. All of them eyed Lester with something like grave wonder as he moved forward and took his seat in front of the desk. Lester looked hopefully from one to the other, then cleared his throat. The small doctor to his left jumped.

"I realize," Lester said, "that I'm not acquainted with hospital routine. This is the first time...."

"Of course, Mr. Holmes," the pinkish doctor put in quickly, with a sort of reverent horror. "And I must confess that procedures have necessarily been a trifle irregular in this case...."

"Case?" Lester said. "What's wrong, doctor? Why won't you tell me?"

Lester stared at him blankly for a moment. He was conscious of a sinking sensation, much as though he were a cake in an oven and someone had slammed a door somewhere. "Yes, I have," he said cautiously. "I don't remember the score exactly. They said I was average. Is there something wrong with my son, doctor?"

Again the doctor avoided a direct reply. "How about your wife, has she ever had an intelligence test?"

"I don't know," Lester answered truthfully. "She's mentioned several times that she only graduated from school by the skin of her teeth. But what has that got to do with...."

"I wonder, Mr. Holmes, if you'd be willing to submit to an extensive examination and observation? It might take about a month or so, I'm afraid. You work for a bank, don't you?"

Lester nodded. "I'm a teller at the People's Trust. But...."

"Perhaps we could make arrangements with your employer for a leave of absence...."

The doctor broke off as the door suddenly burst open and a nurse charged into the room. She was an uncommonly homely woman whose face would have been attractive only coming down the stretch in the fifth at Pimlico. Her cap was askew and her red mane had gotten loose from its moorings. Breathing heavily, she pulled up abruptly in front of the desk and glared furiously at the doctor.

"I quit!" she bellowed, banging her fist down on the desk. "I will not be referred to as that splay-footed, cold-fingered old nag! Especially not by any mere infant!"

"Miss Klatt!" the doctor said sternly. "We're in conference with a patient!"

"I don't care if you're in Tucson with Marilyn Monroe!" the nurse yelled. "I'm quitting. In fact, I've quit. If it's a nurse for babies you want, then okay, but if you're looking for a verbal punching bag for a three-hour old comic, you can damn well look somewhere else!"

"Miss Klatt!"

"Phooey!" Miss Klatt responded hotly. "Just call me up sometime to come back to work and listen to my hollow laughter. And as for that new-layed egg you call a baby, you'll find him in his crib in the nursery!" And with that she turned on her heel and stalked from the room, slamming the door. There was a moment of horrified silence.

"Oh, dear!" one of the doctors said distractedly. "Oh, dear!"

The pinkish doctor leaped out of his chair. "Holy smoke!" he yelled. "Did she say she put him in the nursery?"

He raced for the door, and his five colleagues rose hastily and followed in his trail. Lester jumped up and followed after.

"Hey!" he hollered. "Hey, wait a minute!"

Lester arrived in the viewing room only a step behind the doctors. Already, it appeared, quite a crowd had assembled in the room, a random mixture of staff members and visitors. There was an excited murmuring, along with a general tendency to back away from the viewing panel. The doctors had stopped in their tracks just inside the door, in a collective attitude of stricken dismay. For a moment Lester was completely at a loss to discover the cause of all this, then a voice, a very small but distinct voice, echoed over the speaker.

"And you, too, fatso!" it said sharply. "Just what do you think you're staring at?"

Lester became aware of a large, dark-haired woman who suddenly gasped and backed away. Her lips worked feverishly over words that would not come.

"It's an invasion of privacy!" the voice continued furiously. "I stand on my rights! And I'll sit and lie down on them, too, if I have to! I demand a private room!"

During this pithy bit of dialogue, Lester edged cautiously through the ranks and peered into the brilliant inner reaches of the nursery. At first he saw nothing of particular note, then, slowly his gaze, moving along the first line of cribs, stopped at the one just left of center, where its infant occupant appeared to be sitting boldly upright, shaking its small pudgy fist at the window. The baby's face was quite red, and its tiny eyes glittered with a furious intelligence that was distinctly upsetting. If Lester's senses had not failed him, this was the originator of the angry voice.

"And what are you nosing around for, stupid?" the baby asked hotly, darting a swift glance in his direction. "I suppose you have never seen a baby before? How would you like it if every time you looked up from your bed you were faced with a lot of dough-faced, low-grade morons gaping at you through a plate glass window? Talk about goldfish!"

"Wha--!" Lester said, unable to grasp the situation or any part of it. He whirled about to the doctors and found them in hasty retreat toward a doorway at the far end of the room.

"Hey!" Lester yelled and took out after them.

He raced along in their wake down a narrow hallway and through another door, into a small room full of electric sterilizers. Instantly upon arrival, the doctors went quickly to the business of donning masks.

"Now just look here!" Lester cried, but the doctors were already in retreat toward an inner door with a glass port-hole through which could be seen the nursery. Lester shoved after them, but was held back.

"You can't come in without a mask," one of the doctors told him, then slammed the door in his face.

"I'm getting sore!" Lester said. He swung about, found a discarded mask lying on a white porcelained table and slipped it on. Adjusting the strap, he hastened into the nursery.

He was greeted by a deafening din as he shoved through the door. Thirty odd babies, suddenly roused, had taken up the cry in shrill discord. Intermingled with this was the disgruntled rumblings of the doctors and the outraged mouthings of the truculent baby.

"Well, high time!" the infant yelled. "Get me out of this Bedlam before I lose my temper! How do you expect anyone to get any rest in a room full of howling brats!"

"Shut off that loudspeaker!" one of the doctors yelled, and a colleague rushed to a switch on the wall.

Lester wedged himself determinedly into the fast-closing knot around the crib. He shoved his face through an opening between two white-clad shoulders and looked up at the doctor across from him.

"How is he doing that?" he asked.

The infant in the crib looked up at him wearily. "Another one," he commented. "That makes seven. Seven come eleven and not a brain in the lot. What do I have to do to get a private room in this butcher shop? Clear out, you underlings, and send me the manager!"

"You're going to get a private room!" the doctor across from Lester said shortly. "You're going to get one if I have to build it myself." He scooped the infant up in his arms.

"Well," the baby said, falling back importantly into the crook of the doctor's arm, "that's more like it."

"The human race," he commented, "is certainly not an attractive one. You jokers make up as ugly a crew as ever blotted the horizons of hell. Not to mention that nurse you sent me. What a horror that one was!"

"She quit the hospital, you'll be delighted to know," the doctor said, bristling.

"And thereby provided the medical profession its greatest single advance in years," the infant retorted blandly.

"You didn't have to insult her," the doctor said.

"Somebody had to," the baby said, the absolute soul of reason. "No one with a face like that could go without insult much longer."

The doctor opened his mouth to reply, then glanced around uneasily at the others. "It's ridiculous, arguing with a mere infant like this," he murmured. "I feel like a fool."

"Don't be alarmed," the baby said mildly. "You also look like a fool. And I think that clears up your status most conclusively."

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