John Irving - The Cider House Rules

Homer was obliged to hold back the infant's head in order to protect the perineum from tearing; the mediolateral incision, which Homer elected to perform, was made at a point corresponding to seven on the face of a clock. It was a safer episiotomy, in Homer's view, because the cut could, if necessary, be carried back considerably farther than the midline type of operation.

Immediately after the birth of the head, Homer slipped his finger around the neck of the child to see if the umbilical cord was coiled there, but it was an easy birth, both shoulders emerging spontaneously. He applied two ligatures to the umbilical and cut the cord between the two. He still had his surgical gown on when he went to the dispensary to see how Dr. Larch was recovering from his Thanksgiving Day champagne. If Larch was familiar with the transitions he encountered in moving from a {517} world of ether to a world without anesthesia, he was unfamiliar with the transition between drunkenness and hangover. Seeing Homer Wells in the bloody smock of his business, Wilbur Larch imagined he was saved.

'Ah, Doctor Stone,' he said, extending his hand to Homer with a self-congratulatory formality famous among colleagues in the medical profession.

'Doctor Who?' said Homer Wells.

'Doctor Stone,' said Wilbur Larch, withdrawing his hand, his hangover settling on him-a dust so thick on the roof of his mouth that he could only repeat himself. 'Fuzzy Stone, Fuzzy Stone, Fuzzy Stone.'

'Homer?' Candy asked, when they lay together in one of the twin beds given them in their room in the girls' division. 'Why would Doctor Larch say that you don't need to go to medical school to be a doctor here?'

'Maybe he means that half the work here is illegal, anyway,' said Homer Wells. 'So what's the point of being a legitimate doctor?'

'But no one would hire you if you weren't a legitimate doctor, would they?' Candy asked.

'Maybe Doctor Larch would,' said Homer Wells. 'I know some things.'

'You don't want to be a doctor here, anyway-do you?' Candy asked.

'That's right, I don't want to,' he said. What is all this about Fuzzy Stone? he was wondering as he fell asleep.

Homer was still asleep when Dr. Larch bent over the Thanksgiving woman and examined the episiotomy. Nurse Angela was telling him about it, stitch by stitch, but although Larch appreciated the description, it wasn't really necessary; the look and feel of the woman's healthy tissue told him everything he wanted to know. Homer Wells had not lost his confidence; he still had the correct touch.

He also possessed the self-righteousness of the young and wounded; Homer Wells had no doubts to soften his contempt for people who'd bungled their lives so badly {518} that they didn't want the children they'd conceived. Wilbur Larch would have told him that he was simply an arrogant, young doctor who'd never been sick-that he was guilty of a young doctor's disease, manifesting a sick superiority toward all patients. But Homer was wielding an ideal of marriage and family like a club; he was more sure of the Tightness of his goal than a couple celebrating their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary.

He must have imagined that the sacredness with which he viewed his union with Candy would hover like a halo above the young couple and shed a conspicuously forgiving light upon them and their child when they returned to Heart's Haven and Heart's Rock. He must have thought that the goodness of his and Candy's intentions would glow with such a powerful radiance that Olive and Ray and the rest of that all-knowing, say-nothing community would be blinded. Homer and Candy must have envisioned that their child-conceived in a moment of love that overshadowed Wally's being lost or dead or 'just missinG'-would be greeted as a descending angel.

And so they enjoyed the life of a young married couple that winter in St. Cloud's. Never had being of use been such good fun. There was no chore the lovely and growingly pregnant young woman thought herself to be above; her beauty and her physical energy were inspiring to the girls in the girls' division. Dr. Larch devoted himself to teaching Homer more about pediatrics-since he could find no fault with Homer's obstetrical procedure and since Homer was emphatic about his refusal to participate in the abortions. The rigidity of this latter position perplexed even Candy, who was fond of saying to Homer, 'Just explain it to me again-how you're not disapproving of the procedure, but that you will not yourself be party to what you feel is wrong.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells; he had no doubts. 'You've got it. There's nothing else to explain. I think an abortion should be available to anyone who wants one, but I never {519} want to perform one. What's hard to understand about that?'

'Nothing,' Candy said, but she would keep asking him about it. 'You think it's wrong, yet you think it should be legal-right?'

'Right,' said Homer Wells. 'I think it's wrong, but also think it should be everyone's personal choice. What could be more personal than deciding whether you want a child or not?'

'I don't know,' Candy said, although it occurred to her that she and Homer Wells had 'decided' that Wally was dead-which seemed especially personal to her.

In her fifth month, they began sleeping in separate beds, but they drew the beds together and attempted to make them up as if they were one big bed-a problem, since there were no double-bed sheets at St. Cloud's.

Mrs. Grogan wanted to make a present of double-bed sheets to Homer and Candy, but she had no money of her own to buy them and she wondered if purchasing them for the orphanage would seem strange. 'Very strange,' Larch said, vetoing the idea.

'In other parts of the world, they have double-bed sheets,' wrote Wilbur Larch in A Brief History oj St. Cloud's. 'Here in St. Cloud's we do without-we just do without.'

Yet it was the best Christmas ever in St. Cloud's. Olive sent so many presents, and Candy's example-as the first happily pregnant woman in any of their memories -was a present to them all. They had a turkey and a ham, and Dr. Larch and Homer Wells had a carving contest, which everyone said Homer won. He finished carving the turkey before Larch finished carving the ham.

'Well, turkeys are easier to cut than pigs,' Larch said. Secretly, he was very pleased with Homer's knife work. That Homer had learned his touch for cutting under circumstances different from Mr. Rose's was often on Homer's mind. Given certain advantages of education, {520} Homer thought, Mr. Rose might have made an excellent surgeon.

'Might have made,' Homer mumbled to himself. He had never been happier.

He was of use, he was in love-and was loved-and he was expecting a child. What more is there? he thought, making the daily rounds. Other people may look for a break from routine, but an orphan craves daily life.

In midwinter, in a blizzard, when the women were having tea in the girls' division with Mrs. Grogan and Dr. Larch was at the railroad station, personally accusing the stationmaster of losing an expected delivery of sulfa, a woman arrived at the hospital entrance, bent double with cramps and bleeding. She'd had the D without the C, as Nurse Caroline would have observed; whoever had managed the dilatation appeared to have managed it safely. What was required now was a completion curettage, which Homer performed alone. One very small piece of the products of conception was recognizable in the scraping, which caused Homer Wells a single, small thought. About four months, was what he estimated-looking quickly at the piece, and quickly throwing it away.

At night, when he touched Candy without waking her up, he marveled at how peacefully she slept; and he observed how life in St. Cloud's seemed timeless, placeless and constant, how it seemed grim but caring, how it seemed somehow safer than life in Heart's Rock or in Heart's Haven-certainly safer than life over Burma. That was the night he got up and went to the boys' division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy a late good night. Homer imagined then that Dr. Larch had kissed him like that, when he'd been small; Homer could not have imagined how those kisses, even now, were still {521} kisses meant for him. They were kisses seeking Homer Wells.