by Tim Winton
In the light of the fire, Rachel’s flesh looked polished. Jerra rubbed her back and whispered in her ear. She breathed across her contractions.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I can do it. Nice here. Look at the fire.’
The rushes came on like advancing weather. Jerra saw her knotting up till her flesh became armour and she hissed and they counted and Annie came out to sit by the fire.
‘Having a baby?’
Rachel laughed. In the lull, Jerra sponged the sweat from her. She rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes. Her long braid fell across his thigh. He saw Annie by the fire. She too had her eyes closed and she was moving her lips. Praying, he thought; she’s bloody praying. He remembered the prayer his mother had sung him at bedtime when he was a child, before it all got too embarrassing.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
Look upon a little child
Pity his simplicity
Suffer him to come to Thee . . .
Maybe I’ll even sing it to this little critter, he thought; just out of nostalgia – what the hell.
At two o’clock the contractions took Rachel with such force that pauses between became moments of irony rather than serious relief. Jerra rubbed oil on her lips. He massaged the small of her back. He felt the vibrations in her flesh. He tried, he stayed close, he felt it in his skin, but he couldn’t know it for himself; he couldn’t know what it was like.
Annie gloved up for an internal.
‘Having babies’d be fine,’ Rachel panted, ‘if it wasn’t for other people’s hands up you.’ She winced, writhed a little.
‘You’re not dilating,’ Annie said. ‘You’re so angry in there I can’t feel it right. We’ve got twins, people, or a breech. How you feel?’
‘Better when you. Get. Your. Hand. Out. Ah. I got plenty left.’
‘Better call the doc. We might have to go to hozzie.’
‘I need a crap.’
‘Get the commode, Jerra.’
He heard his footsteps on the plastic-draped floor. It was like walking on water.
Jerra drove and the women sat in the back. Though he knew the way, he needed to be told. Annie shouted directions over his shoulder and comforted Rachel at the same time. He saw their moving shadows in the mirror. The hospital loomed. He had forgotten a jumper. He wished he hadn’t worn overalls. They’ll think we’re hippies, he thought.
‘Don’t cry,’ murmured Annie to Rachel. ‘You got plenty left.’
They waited outside the emergency entrance. It was a private hospital. They had saved for insurance in case this should happen.
In the lift they propped Rachel up during contractions. At the desk they asked her to fill out a form. Jerra tried to be calm.
‘I can only be an observer now,’ Annie said. ‘But the doc’ll be here soon. Let’s hold tight.’
Nurses and orderlies crowded round, strapping things on, tucking, adjusting. Someone cheerful inserted an intravenous drip.
‘Try it at home, eh?’
‘Be tough,’ Annie whispered.
Jerra saw Rachel on her back on the bed. She breathed slow and deep in a trough.
‘Let’s just get this little fella out and go home,’ she murmured.
It was five in the morning. At six their doctor came. He was a small man, a conservative dresser. He seemed to like people to think he was a conservative man as well, though it was just a front. Rachel liked him. She said he was old-style, that he didn’t play God. She called him Doc.
‘Four centimetres,’ he said, wiping his glasses. ‘Like trying to drive a bus through a gas pipe.’
Jerra felt hyperventilated. He wished the big clock across the room could be covered somehow. He saw blisters of sweat bursting on Rachel’s face.
‘We’re getting two heartbeats here,’ someone said. The room seemed full of people.
‘Can’t we get a scan?’ Jerra asked. ‘We don’t really know what we’ve got here.’
Someone mumbled something. Rachel let out a tiny yelp of pain.
‘Time for an epidural,’ someone said.
‘I got plenty left,’ said Rachel.
‘Can’t we get an ultrasound?’ Jerra asked.
A masked face tutted. ‘All that technology. Dear, dear.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Jerra said quietly through his teeth. ‘It’s not for the warm feeling it gives us.’
‘What do you think, Rachel?’ the doc asked.
‘Can’t you send them all out?’
‘It’s their hospital.’
‘I didn’t want drugs.’
‘Neither did I. But you’re tired. You’ve worked hard enough for two babies already.’
Her face went white-hard. Jerra breathed through the contraction with her. He kept his face close to hers. They had trained for this and it worked. She beat the pain.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said in the short lull.
‘I’ve got to get back for morning surgery. They’ll call me about the scan. Be yourself.’
It went on all morning. Rachel whooped and hissed and panted and turned to ice only to melt and begin again. Breathing with her, Jerra was almost delirious. His head was gorged with oxygen. The clock was cruel with him. Rachel got older and older.
At nine someone wheeled a trolley in and inserted an epidural into Rachel’s spine. Jerra watched it happen as though he was absent from himself. ‘We don’t want drugs if it can be avoided,’ he said to the white smock. ‘We want to be reasonable —’
‘This is a hospital,’ the smock said.
At ten he paced the room alone. Annie was asleep down the hall on the floor of the fathers’ room. Rachel had been wheeled out to the ultrasound room and they’d stopped him going. I’m weak, he thought. I’m piss-weak. He paced like somebody on television and it didn’t seem funny. He was almost jogging. He felt ill. He paced. He knew he’d die if he stopped. Outside, through the frosted glass, a day was happening; it was going on without him.
By the door of the delivery room he saw Rachel’s candlewick gown hanging from a peg, and below, her sheepskin boots. He picked up the boots and squeezed them; he held the gown to his face, and in that moment it seemed possible that they might not bring her back. He stood out in the corridor. A nurse smiled at him. He felt something logging up behind his eyes. He ran to the toilet down the hall. On the toilet it felt as though his blood was running out of him. He was afraid.
He woke with his ear against the white wall. Sleep. He had been asleep. A few minutes? A moment?
The flush of the cistern sounded like a mob in a stadium. Out in the hall, a thread of that old tune stuck to him. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild . . .
The delivery room was still empty. He paced in a wide arc from one corner to the other. His head ached. He began to jog. Fifteen hours. He wondered what he had been like fifteen hours ago.
Twenty minutes later a white crew wheeled Rachel in. They shepherded Jerra into a corner while they renewed her spinal block. Annie came in looking sick. He wanted to speak to her but he couldn’t decide what to say. Instead he elbowed his way to the bed.
‘Just one,’ somebody said. ‘Breech.’
‘Will it fit?’ he asked.
‘Has to, now. Too late for a C-section.’
‘You okay?’ he whispered to Rachel.
She nodded. Her lips were dry. Her eyes had retreated. He found a flannel and squeezed some droplets onto her mouth. It was suddenly conceivable to him that she might die, that she was able to die. He lurched.
‘Get him a chair.’
He heard Annie whisper in his ear from behind. ‘They’ve brought in a gynie. Be brave.’
‘Doctor O’Donelly will be down soon,’ someone said, plugging in something.
‘The Knife,’ Annie muttered. ‘Isn’t there anyone else?’
‘You don’t work here anymore, Annie.’
‘I remember. But these people are paying for this. They’re consumers. They have rights. Did the patient request or a
ssent to the epidural? The IV? To be lying flat on her back?’
‘I didn’t consent to any fucking thing,’ Rachel hissed. ‘They’re gonna do what they want.’
‘Annie, I’m warning you,’ a smock said.
‘I want to squat,’ Rachel breathed.
‘You’ve got no legs.’
Jerra got down close to her. ‘C’mon. We have to beat these fuckers. Let’s breathe, c’mon, don’t lose it, let’s breathe.’ He stayed close to her. He could not imagine what must be happening inside her; it was another universe beyond that hard-white flesh.
Shifts changed. Annie sat by Rachel, crooning and stroking, and he went to call his parents. They must know something’s up, he thought. His mother wept. He wanted to throw up.
Breathing. Breathing. Walls bent. He was in a bellows. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, stop me going fucking wild . . .
Eat, they told him.
Pant, they told him.
Die, they told him.
They told him.
The gumbooted gynaecologist strolled in at one after the pushing had begun.
‘Okay, let’s get this job underway. She doing all right?’
‘She’s fine,’ Rachel croaked. ‘And. We been. Going. Eight. Een. Hours. Mis. Ter. Ummmmh.’
‘Isn’t she terrific?’
Jerra knew that all the hatred he had ever felt before was merely ill-will and mild dislike.
‘Ten centimetres.’
Trolleys clattered. A ticking box appeared behind Rachel’s head and someone connected it to the IV.
‘I don’t want syndemetrine.’
‘You’re tired, lovie.’
‘And you’re not me.’
Annie gave Jerra a defeated look. He whispered. ‘Beat him, Rache.’ He saw she couldn’t go much longer. When she pushed, her veins rode up through her flesh.
There was a crowning of sorts. The perineum strained. Rachel’s anus dilated like a rose opening. At each contraction something showed like a tongue at the mouth of her vagina. It was flesh. Then he saw black. Meconium.
‘That’s shit,’ he said. ‘It’s in distress.’
‘Are you a midwife?’ someone asked.
‘Testicles,’ he said. ‘God, it’s a boy before it’s a baby.’
At each contraction the raw, swollen testicles came out a little further, only to be strangled in the lull by the closing gap.
‘I love you,’ he said in her ear.
Someone sniffed. A crowd of smocks and masks. O’Donelly moved in. Somewhere Jerra saw the white face of their own doctor. He saw the scissors opening her up. He saw them cut her from vagina to anus. There was blood. There were great silver clamps pendulous from Rachel’s flesh. Almost from within hers there was another little pair of buttocks.
‘Push, Mrs Nilsam!’
‘Legs up round his ears,’ Annie said in his ear.
‘Heartbeat faint now, Doctor.’
‘Okay, let’s get him out.’
Rachel reared as hands went up inside her. Jerra saw blood and shit on a forearm. Rachel let out a cry and unleashed a foot from its stirrup. She kicked. A smock took the heel in the chest. She tried again, but hands took the foot and pinned it.
Now there were legs within legs.
‘Jerra? Jerra?’
‘Beat ’em, Rache. Beat their arses off. At least you can shit and bleed on ’em.’
‘No heartbeat.’
They were wrenching now, and twisting out the little arms and applying forceps to the aftercoming head.
‘Jerra?’
‘Oh, fuck me.’
A little puce head slipped out, followed by a rush of blood and water. Jerra saw it splash onto the gynaecologist’s white boots. Across Rachel’s chest the little body lay tethered for a moment while smocks and masks pressed hard up against Rachel’s wound. He saw a needle sink in. Someone cut the cord. Blood, grey smears of vemix. The child’s eyes were open. Jerra felt them upon him. From the little gaping mouth, pink froth issued. They snatched him up.
‘Should have been a bloody caesar,’ someone muttered.
Rachel groaned to get her breath while they sewed her.
Jerra saw the child hollow-chested on the trolley where the smocks sucked him out. He heard the deadly sound of it and he saw the gloved hands on shiny little valves. With its blacksmeared hair, their baby’s head looked like the dark side of the moon.
That’s a dead baby, thought Jerra. That’s it. She can’t see it. How will I say it?
. . . suffer him to come to Thee . . .
A chest flutter.
Oh, Jesus Christ, he thought. Gentle Jesus, don’t play with me. Let him be dead but don’t crucify me.
The chest filled.
Oh, don’t fuck around with me!
A hand moved. Five fingers.
Oh dear God.
Other hands were gentle with it. There was grace in the plying of his limbs. A horrible ache rose from low in Jerra’s spine. He knew it was love.
‘Is he all right?’ Rachel croaked. She licked her lips. ‘Jerra?’
‘They’ve got him.’
The paediatrician looked up. A little cough entered the room. Then another.
‘He’s crying,’ Rachel said. ‘I can’t see him.’
They brought him over, wrapped in a blanket. In one nostril there was a clear plastic tube.
‘On oxygen,’ someone said.
Jerra hugged himself. ‘Is he okay?’
‘He’ll need some help.’
Jerra felt those eyes on him. Blood and water bubbled out of the infant’s mouth.
‘Son of God.’ Annie said.
‘Grab that side of the trolley, Mr Nilsam. Let’s get this boy down to I.C.U.’
As he ran out with the smocks, Jerra saw that the room was empty of white figures and only Rachel and Annie were left behind. They were holding each other.
Corridors, doors, potted palms. Past them, Jerra ran. People blurred by but he saw those black eyes on him and he wondered who he was a day ago.
The little boy held his hand and bleated up fluid as the paediatrician inserted a tube into the raw-cut navel. Jerra’s eyes stung with tears.
‘What’s his chances? No bullshit. Please don’t lie to me.’
The paediatrician looked up from his task. Only his eyes were visible, but he seemed to Jerra to be more than a technician. ‘Not bad, I’d say. Then again, I don’t know. His lungs’re full of garbage, I’d guess. Kidneys and liver won’t be too good. Have to wait. Hips might be busted. I haven’t checked. He’ll have a headache, that’s for sure. All that time without oxygen. He’s strong though.’
‘Like his mother.’
The baby seemed to fill with colour before his eyes. He went a mottled yellow and pink. Jerra wanted to touch the little feet, but he contented himself with the firm grip the miniature hand had on him. So it’s a reflex, he thought; what do I care.
‘Will he have brain damage, you reckon?’
The man shrugged. ‘I’m not God.’
He was sitting by the humidicrib when they wheeled Rachel in an hour later.
‘I’m stoned,’ she said.
‘Pethedine,’ said Annie. They’d been crying, he could tell.
‘Can I hold him?’
‘No,’ a nurse said.
A person with a clipboard came in. ‘Mrs Nilsam, you’re in room 6.’
‘Is that a single room?’ Jerra asked.
‘No. I’m afraid —’
‘You see, the thing is I’ll need to stay with my —’
‘I’m sorry, you —’
‘Look, for one, we’re entitled under all that bloody insurance we paid, and two, because my wife’s just had —’
‘Mr Nilsam, I —’
‘Okay, I’ll sleep in the corridor. I’m about to be hysterical.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘He’s alive,’ Rachel said.
‘Call him Samuel,’ said Annie. ‘I reckon you should.’
; ‘Sam.’
‘Sure,’ said Jerra, shaking as though a fit had come upon him. ‘He’s alive, isn’t he?’
They lay in the dark and tried to sleep. Jerra thought of the dead fireplaces at home. He thought of the empty little house. He turned on his folding cot and felt the huge load rise up in him and he began to weep. His body muscled up against the sobs. He tried to be quiet. Tears tracked into his hair and he tasted salt and it was as strong in his mouth as blood. Jerra Nilsam cried. He wept and did not stop and he thought his eyes would bleed, and when he found a pause in himself, he heard the big bed above him clanking. He got up and turned on a dim light. Rachel lay with a pillow between her teeth. Her eyes were breaking with tears.
‘I feel so defiled,’ she said.
He turned out the light and held her. She filled his arms.
In the middle of the night he crept out of the room and down the long corridor to the intensive care unit. The nurse looked at his matted hair and his bare feet. In the reflection in the glass window he saw there were bloodstains on his overalls. He went in to the lone perspex box marked Samuel Nilsam and he sat down beside it. A heart monitor bleeped. It was a mournsome sound.
His son lay spreadeagled on his front with his head in an oxygen cube. His blood-caked body was bound by tubes and wires. Beneath him, his huge swollen testicles. He had black hair. He did look strong, sleeping there, sucking on a dummy; he looked strong enough to be alive.
When the charge nurse turned her back, Jerra opened the little portal at the side of the humidicrib and carefully reached in. He touched the bright pink buttocks. He ran a hand down the closest thigh and felt the textures of hair and dried blood. There was warmth there.
Footsteps.
He looked up. The nurse regarded him with indignation. Her mouth was tight. She put her hands on her hips.