Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Actually, their lovemaking was a disappointment, a tedious anticlimax to their feverish, hungry talks — sluggish digestion following a delicious meal. Rachel, for all her lively wit and energetic body, seemed frightened to death when he made love to her. She looked pale, her eyes were solemn and earnest, she made no sounds, her body was in constant retreat from exploratory kisses; even after penetration, her hands lit on his back reluctantly, as if the gesture might be too bold. He liked her thin body, flattened pillows that hinted at real breasts, a puff of jet black hair covering her hard pubis, slight thighs meeting muscled calves with big, quizzical kneecaps joining them. She wasn’t a beauty; but she was distinctive, and if she would only bring the wit, energy, and fearlessness of her conversation to bed, she would be a great lover. Partly, he was grateful she wasn’t. He wasn’t terrific in bed either, a fact he had long ago resigned himself to. And he found her personality, her talk, her being, so interesting, so addictive that if she were also sexually thrilling, he’d have no control, no brake to stop from utterly surrendering his will to her.

That was being in love, he supposed. It had happened to him once and he hoped it would never happen again. Things were better this way, Diane and Rachel satisfying different longings. Rachel enlivened the mind, warmed the spirit; Diane kept order and regularly exercised his sex. At least, the last was true until Diane got pregnant. In the beginning he hadn’t minded the physical changes, the breasts gelling, Diane’s belly swelling into womanhood, her olive skin ripening, but then things got out of hand: the breasts laden, the belly explosive, the skin strained and exhausted. He found himself fearing the sight of Diane’s body. Toward the end, a glimpse of her nakedness could almost stop his heart with fright. And the fantastic growth within seemed to have taken its energy from her brain, drained her of the light in her eyes, of the desire to talk or even the capacity to think. Her personality became nothing but complaints, yearnings, and moody silences. When she moved to embrace him, he instinctively shied away from her size and awkwardness, as though a city bus had come too close to his position on the curb.

It was then he first slept with Rachel and converted their friendship into an affair. He knew now that had been a mistake, but he didn’t regret it. In human relations, Peter believed, error and failure were unavoidable.

I won’t sleep with her tonight, he decided.

“THIS IS … ”—an unintelligible name followed—“the anesthesiologist.”

The narrow face of an Asian woman loomed in Eric’s way. Her eyes had a lifelessness that seemed hostile. “When did the patient last eat?”

Eric looked down at Nina, her skin bleached by the bright operating-room lights. Although her eyes were closed, she gripped his hand with unrelenting force and her legs shifted uneasily from side to side. When did she last eat? That soup.

“Soup,” he said. His mouth worked slowly pronouncing the word.

“ When? ”

“Oh,” he said. He tried to look backwards through the night, rewind to their arrival at the hospital, but the tape got stuck and froze the images. He looked at the wall clock. Six-fifty. In the morning? No, night.

“Was that more than twenty-four hours ago?”

“Yes,” he said.

All around the room there was activity. They had been wheeled from the labor room to the operating room so rapidly that Eric had no memory of the move, except that with each step they were joined by someone else, dressed, as he was, in a gown and mask.

“Another one’s starting,” a nurse said. Eric followed Ephron’s glance to the two monitors, one counting the baby’s heartbeats per minute, the other measuring Nina’s contractions. The red digital numbers of his child’s heartbeat flashed: 80, 65, 77, 58. He knew, although no one had said anything, that they were too low. All through the long labor those numbers had been much higher, 150, 166, 188 during one powerful contraction. Nina and he, before she completely lost the ability to notice details, had commented on it and the nurse had reminded them that a fetal heartbeat was supposed to be between 150 and 180 beats per minute. Eric had known that, but only as a fact. To hear the wild, rushing noise of the amplified heart, pounding on the door, racing to be born, made the fact new. He had been frightened by it, first the sound, then later, when they turned the volume off, the numbers. The sheer speed, the mad rush, the wildness — they implied so much need, so much wanting, so much longing.

Now he wanted that back. His baby was in trouble. He could see in all their eyes (the masks showed nothing else) the concentration of people in crisis.

“Don’t put her under,” Ephron said. “We’ll try one more time.” The anesthesiologist stopped from putting a hypodermic into Nina’s IV. A nurse lifted the upper torso of Nina’s body. They put her feet into stirrups. “Come on, Nina! One more time! We’re gonna push baby out.”

“Baby’s almost out!” the others said, like fans at a ball game.

Eric looked at Nina, her head rolling from side to side, yearning for sleep. She moaned. He knew if she could talk, she’d beg them to let her alone. Does she know that our child may be dying? Her pain was so great she probably wouldn’t care — but later … Nina would never recover from that tragedy.

“One big push! From your rectum!”

“One big push,” others said.

Someone grabbed Nina’s chin and shook her. Her eyes opened; the pupils were blank moons.

“Push, Nina!”

She tried. Dutifully, an exhausted animal, she strained her limp muscles. The baby monitor changed to a steady tone. The red numbers flashed—50, 44, 31.

Stop it, he begged them.

The words were unspoken.

He grabbed their instruments and cut, rescuing his child.

He stood still while the fingers of his left hand turned purple from Nina’s grip.

“Fetal stress,” a nurse said with casual emphasis, ordering a slice of pizza at a crowded counter.

“One big push, Nina!” Ephron pleaded now, panic washing over her authoritarian tone. “Baby wants to come out!”

“Baby wants to come out!” others parroted.

Nina’s eyes focused briefly, her dry, cracked lips came together, and she strained, her neck swollen, its interior anatomy visible, like a snake swallowing an animal whole.

A bell rang from the monitor. The red numbers held steady now: 31, 31, 31, 31.

Breathe my baby, Eric yelled into the corridor of his mind.

“Put her out!” Ephron shouted. There was no pretense of professional calm. “We’ll use forceps!”

The anesthesiologist’s thumb pushed down on the hypo.

“Eric?” Nina whimpered.

He said, I’m here, my darling, I’m with you forever.

But his lips were stuck together with terror.

“Come on!” Ephron yelled to no one and to nothing in particular.

Nina’s legs went first, sagging in the stirrups. Then her shoulders lost the tension of life; her head rolled back; the mouth yawned open. Still, her hand clutched Eric’s; her fingers were rigid and cold, like steel. Her upper arms died. Ephron shouted something and he heard the word “episiotomy.” Nina had dreaded that inevitable nicety, he knew, and no wonder. They were going to cut the tenderest, most private part of her body. They shoved a large plastic funnel into her mouth; it looked so long, Eric thought, it must go all the way down her throat.

Her hand died. The ferocious taut muscles sighed away into a limp stillness.

A hose was put into the funnel in her mouth. Her skin was white, absent of the color of life; her muscles were dead, helpless against gravity; only her chest rose and fell slowly to indicate her continued existence.