Koji Suzuki: Birthday

In between the waves, Reiko's ears picked up music.

At first she thought it was a radio in a neighboring room, but that didn't seem right.

She looked at the window, at the darkness it framed, and realized that the birth was going to last far into the night. She couldn't imagine that the music was coming from beyond the darkness. Maybe the hospital was playing some kind of background music for the fetus's benefit.

The music was soft, the melody mysterious and beautiful; it briefly lessened Reiko's suffering.

All at once she placed the source of the music. She could hardly believe it as she raised her head and stared at her belly.

"Stop singing down there and come out already."

She fantasized about her own son singing in the dark womb to ease his mother's suffering. Maybe the events of the Loop were still with her; she was starting to confuse the relationship between protector and protected, container and contained.

By a little after eleven, her cervix had completely dilated. Reiko was taken from the labor room to the delivery room and placed on the delivery table.

She started pushing in time with her labor pains, following the instructions of the doctor and the nurse.

The rhythm was quicker now than before, and the contractions of her uterus and abdominal muscles kept pace.

She could feel all the strength in her body concentrating in an effort to push the baby out.

She tried to switch to abdominal breathing like the nurse told her to, but it was difficult. Between the pain and her nervousness, the deep belly breaths she tried to take ended up as quick shallow ones. She needed to relax. She thought of Kaoru's face again and began to talk to him.

"Don't speak!"

She was calling Kaoru's name now with every groan, every ragged breath that escaped from the corners of her mouth. Each time, the nurse cautioned her not to talk—

it was wasting energy that she needed for the delivery.

Then the nurse gave a little cry and looked at the doctor. It had looked, just for a moment, like the baby's head had peeked out from Reiko's vagina.

The doctor gave a long sigh beneath his mask and clicked his tongue. He looked worried.

"She was dilated when she was brought in here, wasn't she?"

It wasn't really a question aimed at the nurse. He was just muttering to himself, confirming what he already knew. Her cervix, which had been dilated up until a few moments ago, had closed again.

Reiko had sensed something in their conversation, in the atmosphere of the room. She raised her head.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing."

The doctor had no choice but to give a vague answer, not wanting her to worry. But Reiko showed no hesitation about putting into words what the doctor was beginning to fear.

"Did my baby go back inside?"

"Well, that's certainly what it looks like." There was something so childlike about the way Reiko had spoken, it did away with the doctor's apprehensions and put him in a slightly mirthful mood. "Why don't we just wait a little while?"

Mother and fetus were both doing just fine, and it looked like there would be no harm in letting nature take its course. The energy involved in birth all went in one direction; there was no chance it was going to reverse itself. They took Reiko back to the labor room, where she settled down to wait for a while longer.

If the labor pains of a few moments ago had been a raging storm, Reiko now felt like she was in the middle of an evening calm. The waves had been immense—

where had they gone? Now that she asked herself that, Reiko began to find the peaceful respite unnerving. She could recall the exact instant when the energy shifted gently. When the nurse had given her little cry, Reiko had immediately known what it meant—she'd been about to cry out herself. She'd felt the air move against her skin right then.

"Hurry up and come out."

Somehow it seemed like the baby was reluctant, as if, having gotten a glimpse of the outside worlc^ it was trying to decide if it was a place worth going out into.

Reiko looked at the white wall beyond her dis-tended tummy and addressed her child.

"It's a pretty good place out here, you know."

She placed her hands on her abdomen and checked for movement, but there was no reply.

She glanced at the clock beside her pillow and closed her eyes. It was almost one in the morning. It had only been six hours since she'd checked in. She tried to calm down, telling herself it was still early.

An hour later the nurse came back to check on her.

Nothing much had changed. "Hang in there," she said, and left.

Right after that, Reiko had a mighty contraction. It felt like the entire contents of her abdomen were going to be pushed out. She groped for the buzzer beside her pillow but couldn't find it.

The baby's coining!

As that maternal intuition coursed through her body, consciousness receded.

The next day Reiko was lying in bed with a peaceful look on her face as the preceding night's struggle receded to the far side of memory, to be replaced by a drowsy, languid satisfaction. The pain of delivery had been transformed into the moving feeling of having delivered; joy welled up from deep within her.

A baby cried, right next to her. It wasn't in bed with her. The nurse was dandling it in her arms.

Reiko observed the baby's expression almost unconsciously. It was a boy, just as expected. Something about his face made him look like his father.

Behind the nurse was a thick pane of glass separat-ing the nursery from the outside to keep it germ-free.

The glass also acted like a mirror, reflecting the nurse and the baby. The real scene and the fictive one in the glass faced each other and swayed in the same direction.

Reiko could see the hint of a tall form looking down at the baby reflected in the glass. It was just a hint, a shade. It leaned over and brought its face close to the baby's, gazing at it, as if to whisper something to it.

The outlines of the image became clearer, its features more defined.

Kaoru.

Reiko raised her head, faced the image, and called to it. She had the feeling that words he'd tried to speak but couldn't before were finally emerging from his mouth.

Happy birthday.

The words tumbled from his lips, celebrating, not a day, but birth itself.

Reiko thought with pleasure: when her son grew older, how she'd tell him about his father, and watch his exploits together. This vision of the future made her heart dance. She was sure her son would be proud of the man his father'd been.

Reiko cradled Kaoru's words and repeated them to their son.

Happy birthday.