And Paul had been with her, holding her hand for support - until the midwife walked in.
Tall enough to actually have to duck under the door when she entered, the sharp woman was anorexically thin. Scanning the room and its occupants, Paul and Sally saw the sharp cheek bones jutting out from beneath tracing-paper skin and the deep mahogany eyes above them that looked like cruel cigar burns. Watching her move about the room like a Minister from the Ministry of Silly Walks, the expectant couple forgot themselves. Their pains and worries were gone as the room’s atmosphere cooled; the sweat washing Sally’s body chilled her skin. The woman hadn’t said anything. Just walked in carrying a sports holdall that appeared much too large and far too heavy for someone so skeletal. Not even glancing at their faces, she stood before Sally’s open legs, dumped the bag and peered inside.
Spotting their confusion, the nurse who had been caring for Sally answered their silent questions. “This is Sister Bava. She’ll be acting as midwife for you today.”
“Sir. Madam,” said the disembodied voice from beyond Sally’s waist.
Sir? Madam? Sally and Paul shared a bewildered look – one that carried a horrid sense of concern.
Their perplexity was ripped apart by another contraction. Using the gas to breathe through the searing agony, Sally bit down on the plastic mouthpiece, spittle and sweat dribbling down her chin as she sought desperate relief. Her torturous squawks made Paul feel like crying. He just wanted it to stop; wanted to make everything better for his beloved. He’d never heard anything like this. But as quickly as Sally’s pain started, it stopped. Screams of murder and carnage were replaced by measured panting.
Knowing he didn’t have long before the next one came along to scare the crap out of him, Paul took advantage of the quiet. Releasing Sally’s grip, he approached the midwife, keeping his view averted from that which was keeping Bava so fascinated. “Err, excuse me, Sister? Could I have a word?” Without waiting for an answer, he stomped towards the door. Outside, he leaned his back against the cool corridor wall and waited the few seconds for the woman’s elongated form to navigate the doorway.
She closed the doors behind her. Trying his best to keep her ratty stare, he asked her about Hazel McDougal, the midwife they’d met at an antenatal class.
“Midwife McDougal called the hospital this morning, complaining of sickness. Not wishing to see others suffer for her own inadequacies, I kindly volunteered to care for those her actions would disappoint and upset.”
Paul struggled to keep his mouth closed.
Her tone matched her appearance: weedy and stretched. But her inflection was anything but. She sounded like she was still sucking on the silver spoon she’d been born with. It was immaculate. Not a vowel dropped or apostrophe added. “And to be quite frank, sir, I can assure you that, as much as I may enjoy bringing a new life into this world, it really is most inconvenient. Hazel McDougal is the not the only member on the hospital’s staff to ever suffer the painful consequences of drinking too much alcohol yet she seems to believe she has the right to disrupt and incommode the lives of others by not being able to comprehend the consequences of her actions and thus feeling she does not deserve to continue her employment whilst suffering with a hangover.”
Silent on the outside, Paul was pissing himself on the inside. Incommode? Who said that these days?
“Well… er, yes… I, well, I suppose that’s something I’m sure you will take up with Miss McDougal when you see her next.” Struggling for composure, Paul glanced over the woman’s high shoulder to focus his attention. “My priority is to my wife and baby…”
“As it should be.”
“Er, yes. Indeed. Well, I’m sure you can understand my concerns about having a new midwife thrust upon us at the last moment. This is a scary time for both Sally and myself and we need to feel reassured. So if you don’t mind, can I ask you how many deliveries you’ve made and your approximate success rate?”
He hated asking. Never mind the woman having a stare capable of turning Superman to pus, he just didn’t see the need in being so confrontational with someone whose main concern had to be – by law, if not by moral obligation - Sally’s wellbeing. It was like those idiots mouthing off at their dentists the moment they walked through the door. Why would you do that to someone about to stick a metal hook and drill in your mouth? It was the same with Sister Bava. There were instruments in that room that would shame a torture chamber but the mothers at the antenatal classes had all insisted on it. They said they had every right to feel reassured by the staff involved. No midwife should feel offended by their asking.
Yet clearly she did.
Sally screamed out another contraction.
“I can assure you, sir,” Bava said, ignoring the noise. “There is no approximation with my figures. I have successfully birthed 547 women, providing 602 healthy babies. My rate of success currently stands at 99.2%!” Paul stared at her in dumbfounded silence. Almost a 100% success rate. Was such a thing possible? “Now, as I’m sure you can hear, your wife’s contractions are moving ever closer together and from my initial glance I was able to see she has dilated a full ten centimetres. Therefore I would now like to go and deliver your first child – unless of course, sir, you would prefer to stand out here and chat about the weather perhaps?”
“Er… er… of… er… of course,” he spluttered, moving past her so he could open the door to let her through.
She marched in, taking up her original position underneath the sheet hiding the scene being played out between Sally’s legs. Following her, Paul stood at Sally’s left shoulder. The nurse was still sitting on her stool on Sally’s right, holding her hand; shared sweat lubricating their grip. He smiled at Sally, answering her quizzical look by mouthing, “she’s okay” to her. Standing beside her, he picked up the discarded oxygen tube.
“I’d like you to take some of that, if you could, sir. It helps to calm both mother and baby.”
“Er… sorry?” Paul gingerly asked. The whiffs he’d picked up of the supposedly odourless substance had turned his stomach, making him glad he wasn’t the one taking it – but now he was supposed to?
“It’s quite simple, sir. If Madam sees you partaking in the whole experience, she will no longer feel so alienated or as though this is a battle she must fight on her own.”
“A battle?” Paul asked with a laugh. The woman’s stretched face shot up from between the stirrups like a Jack in the Box. Her dark eyes seemed to glow red hot. “Er… yes… yes, of course.”
Another contraction.
“Good, but first, be so kind as to let your wife have a go. Madam? Push! Push with all your might. Baby is coming!”
Sally begged for relief. For this agony to stop. From gritted teeth, a cocktail of spittle, sweat, guttural roars, swearwords and insults were aimed towards the man whose carnal lusts had done this to her.
The nurse smiled, the midwife tutted, the contraction eased. Sally took in great lungfuls of oxygen, rejuvenating her bloodstream. Handing the mouthpiece to Paul, she muttered, “so much for the fucking epidural.”
“Less swearing and more pushing please!” the midwife chastised. “Nurse, once the gentleman has completed his breaths, you should also do the same.” Releasing Sally’s hand and moving alongside the midwife who she noted chose to lean on the bed rather than take a stool, the nurse gawped in confusion
“I’m sorry, Sister, but do you mean you want me to take the gas?”
“Yes, child. I do! You are trying to calm the mother. Sharing part of her experience will bring you closer together. You may not feel her pain but you can feel her relief. You can feel that pleasure. It will help you the show the mother how to make the most of the liberation when the pains end. So yes! Do it! And kindly refrain from inhabiting my space whilst I’m working.”
“This is getting farcical,” Sally spluttered just as another contraction pulverised her. “Nurse, just do as the fucking woman tells you, for Christ’s sake!”
“Tut, tut,” growled Midwife Bava, shaking her head in disappointment.
Paul finished his own consumption of the gas, feeling the wooziness wrap itself around him as though he were putting on his favourite coat on a freezing winter’s day. His limbs surprised him by being unobtrusively heavy. Trying to pass the tube to whomever wanted it, he let it drop over Sally’s chest; his own spittle merging with her fluids on the garish hospital gown.
Hesitant, the nurse took the tube and inhaled.
Sally grimaced; screamed. Fucking cursed.
“Push, madam! Push! Baby’s head is here! That is right! Keep doing it! Well done. You can now take a break.”
As the spasm eased, so did Sally’s straining. She took the tube from the nurse who now appeared as misshapen as Paul. Her body sagged; bobbed up and down as though treading water.
Sally took a couple of deep breaths. “This… this is different… different stuff…”
The contraction came.
Sally stayed silent.
The midwife looked up over the sheet. All three were asleep, Paul and the nurse resting against Sally’s breasts as though she were practicing her feeding technique on them.
“Push, Madam! Push!” Nothing. “Madam?” Silence. Satisfied, Sister Bava opened the bag, saw what was inside and turned back to Sally’s open vagina, admiring the baby’s head and its dark hair, smeared in a blood and mucus paste.
Another peaceful contraction.
She inserted her fingers. Gripping the tiny cranium, she gently eased him out onto the bed.
Bava looked down at the new-born baby boy. “Perfect,” she grinned.
The boy was deformed. He had no face. His features were nothing more than tiny indentations, like fruit segments pushing against the pastry’s underside in an unbaked pie. The remainder of his body was as it should be but the face simply wasn’t there. He had ears but they were marble-sized balls like crumpled paper. He couldn’t possibly hear through them. Two tiny square holes no bigger than the boy’s little toenails formed the nose and an uneven one centimetre long slit constituted the mouth. There were no eyes. No features such as cheeks, lips, a philtrum or eyelids. No eyebrows. Just a smooth, featureless palate.
Lifting the boy by his feet, she slapped his fatty bum. She heard asthmatic breaths emerge from the flattened nostrils as air reached into its lungs. But no scream.
“Just perfect.”
She wiped some of Sally’s excess fluids from the child’s body, its white skin lost under a sheen of purple and red. The umbilical cord emerged from his belly like a mutated penis, the flesh rope wrapped up in a heap on the bed outside his mother.
Upturning him, she held him tight against her chest. Using her free hand she wrestled for a grip on the thing in the bag. Straining with the dead weight she pulled the stillborn out by its right leg, its left defying the rigor mortis’ emergence by dangling like a forgotten rag. She slumped it on the bed in front of Sally’s contracting vagina.
Using the scissors on the instrument tray to her left, she cut the umbilical cord at the joint with the boy’s belly. The thick worm draped over the bed’s edge as though it were Sally’s devil tail. Free of his mother, she carefully placed the boy in the bag; wrapping him in the blankets she’d already prepared in the makeshift manger. Zipping it closed, she left him a few inches of breathing space. Inside the bag was a bottle of milk and special formula, developed by her superiors to maintain life in frail new-borns. She didn’t know what was in it but it obviously worked - it had kept most of them alive during that crucial period between the hospital and her own maternity ward back at The Shuttle. 99.2% of them.
Paul groaned but did not wake. Sally’s eyes flickered as though she wanted to open them but couldn’t quite manage it. With her eyes still closed, the nurse yawned. Sister Bava recognised the signs from the dozens of births before. She had approximately thirty seconds before the gas’s effects wore off and they woke.
Her strength defied her size. Lifting the dead child, she did so as if she were holding a quart of milk. She dangled it above the bed, smearing its tiny body with the blood and embryonic fluid congealing at Sally’s tired opening, hiding the blue tint staining the child’s ghostly skin. The child – a boy like its replacement – had been taken from its mother barely ten minutes before Bava had entered Sally and Paul’s room; stolen from the morgue after the boy had been stillborn to a teenager who had already signed the baby over for adoption.
A child given up by a child.
It was only by chance the baby had been a still birth. Most times Bava would kill the new-born by smothering it before fooling the parents into believing what their eyes did not want to see. Her game was opportunity, money and murder. Supply and demand meant she had to improvise rather than waiting in her office for the right family to come along. So she took it to them. Teenagers were paid life-changing fortunes. Junkies had their babies taken from them under the guise of social services only for the child to be lost in paperwork. Rape victims refused to look at their rapist’s offspring. It was all very easy.
Once more inserting her fingers into Sally, she removed the placenta and the last gush of embryonic fluid. Using the bulbous flesh as a sponge, she wiped the baby down, smearing the cardboard skin with flecks of red and purple gore, keeping the mouth and nose clean for the illusion’s masterpiece. Her actions were swift and precise. Seconds of expertise and she could show them a freshly-emerged baby whose life had ended only moments before.
The parents and nurse stirred. Bava retrieved the scissors, timing it so that when the father’s eyes opened, he saw what she wanted him to see: her snipping the umbilical cord.
“Wha’… what happen… hey! Hey, we wanted to do that!” He watched the midwife ignore him as she placed the baby on the bed. His wife stirred at his call, finally opening her eyes as Paul moved to stand before his child. “He’s not crying. He’s not moving.” He turned to Midwife Bava. “Why isn’t he moving? He should be moving or crying.” He turned back, reaching out to touch his boy; his naked new-born son. “Oh shit! He.. he’s cold. He’s not breathing. Why isn’t he breathing?” Bava placed a hand on his shoulder but Paul didn’t seem to notice it. The realization was too strong for anything else to bother him: “Oh Christ… Oh fucking Christ, no. Please, God, no. Don’t do this to us, God. Not this. Anything but this.”
“Paul?” Sally asked, her shaking voice filled with terror. “Paul, what is it?” He looked across at her but on seeing her eyes turned away in shame. “Paul, for God’s sake tell me what’s going on. Where’s my baby? Where’s my…” She struggled to move, throwing the sheet aside as she severed her own question. Her husband’s pale face told her everything she didn’t want to know. His tears provided confirmation of a fear held since she missed her first period; rubber stamped by that night in the bath. But she had to see with her own eyes. She had to know for sure.
She was screaming before the sheet hit the floor; the nurse reaching across to pull her legs free of the stirrups. Her body reacted but her mind lost itself as she watched Sister Bava lean over her son, struggling to breathe life into what everyone in the room knew to be dead lungs.
***
The funeral was a small affair, held at the church only a few streets away from their own. Family and close friends only; outer circles and neighbours asked to attend the wake held in Paul’s local pub. A pub he’d longed for. A pub housing staff who knew his drink the second he entered.
A pub that had seen too many wakes.
The tears were quiet, the parents inconsolable. Sally was told their son had caused irreparable damage when he spilt her blood in the bath. She would have no more children. Ruptures. Ruins. Fallopian tubes removed.
Paul felt useless. Unwanted. He felt he no longer cared.
As long as their son was dead neither mum nor dad could care anymore.
Neither wanted to live anymore. Neither could look each other in the eye anymore. Words meant nothing, actions even less.
Sally died
first, officially from a heart attack but all who had known her knew it was much simpler than that: a broken heart is the simplest excuse for so much pain.
Paul tried to stay on afterwards. For Denny’s sake more than his own. But he couldn’t keep it up. Couldn’t maintain the charade. With a new razor and a bottle of Paracetamol, he joined his wife, leaving a note for his parents, asking them to care of their beloved dog.
All three were buried in the church’s grounds, protected by the crucifix atop of the spire.
Overseen by The Shuttle.
***
The boy was doing well. Despite his disabilities.
He didn’t seem to miss his mother the way others had done in the past. Perhaps it was because he had no eyes; or the lack of a true nose had stolen its ability to smell. Either way, it didn’t really matter to the nanny. The child slept, ate and maintained good health.
The dust had done wonders this time. Falling as concrete dust and ruining what grew inside the woman’s womb.
Standing in the nursery on the mezzanine floor above the basement’s maternity ward, she held the baby against her ample bosom, feeding it from her right breast. He was a hungry little tyke, drawing on her nipple as he always did: as if this were the last time he would taste her goodness. It was as if he knew that day would come. Because it would. It always did. The powers-that-be would take him away and barter his body parts and organs to the celebrities whose own children weren’t perfect enough. And when they had taken everything they could from him, they would make him work the factory, churning out more of the scientist’s raw materials from deep inside the ground. And she would be passed another to nurture; another to bring into this world of supply and demand.
She didn’t think this one would turn out to be a runner. She had a good feel for these things. This one would never break free at night and roam the fields; searching for something… different. They didn’t know what it was they sought, but there was an obvious need in them for the free world. Something in their genes, perhaps. But they never took it. Whenever they found it, they let it go. Whenever they came close to anyone other than The Shuttle’s occupants, their minds reverted to type and they ran home. And when they returned, they were punished; used as fuel for the fires needed to keep the hospital’s boilers burning. A punishment, deterrent and fuel supply, all in one. But she didn’t think this one would be like that. This one had come from good parents. Parents who would have loved their son unconditionally, whatever his deformity. The children of those parents didn’t run. They appreciated life. It was in their genes. The children of crack whores and barely-formed teenagers were different. If those were taken by the conniving midwife then they would disobey the rules. She didn’t like those children. Those babies held bad vibes. They should have been taken to an adoption agency, not bought for this place. This place was for the pure children. The ones who didn’t cause trouble. Who succeeded in selling themselves to the highest bidders and making The Shuttle millions of pounds, dollars and Euros for her employers.
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