John Irving - The Cider House Rules

'Here in St. Cloud's,' Dr. Larch wrote, 'we treat orphans as if they came from royal families.'

In the boys' division, this sentiment informed his nightly blessing-his benediction, shouted over the beds standing in rows in the darkness. Dr. Larch's blessing followed the bedtime reading, which-after the unfortunate accident to the Winkles-became the responsibility of Homer Wells. Dr. Larch wanted to give Homer more confidence. When Homer told Dr. Larch how he had loved reading to the Winkles in their safari tent-and how he thought he had done it well, except that the Winkles had fallen asleep-the doctor decided that the boy's talent should be encouraged.

In 193-, almost immediately after seeing his first fetus, Homer Wells began reading David Copperfield to the boys' division, just twenty minutes a crack, no more, no less; he thought it would take him longer to read it than it took Dickens to write it. Faltering at first-and teased by the very few boys who were near his own age (no boy was older)-Homer improved. Every night he would murmur aloud to himself that book's opening passage. It had the effect of a litany-on occasion, it allowed him to sleep peacefully.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own

life, or whether that station will be held by

anybody else, these pages must show.

'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life,' {98} Homer whispered to himself. He remembered the dryness in his eyes and nose in the furnace room at the Drapers' in Waterville; he remembered the spray from the water that had swept the Winkles away; he remembered the cool, damp, curled-in-ori-itself beginning that lay dead in his hand. (That thing he had held in his hand could not have been a hero).

And after 'lights out,' and Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela had asked if anyone wanted a last glass of water, or if anyone needed a last trip to the potty-when those dots of light from the just-extinguished lamps still blinked in the darkness, and every orphan's mind was either sleeping, dreaming, or lingering with David Copperfield's adventures-Dr. Larch would open the door from the hall, with its exposed pipes and its hospital colors.

'Good night!' he would call. 'Good night-you Princes of Maine, you Kings of New England!' (That thing Homer had held in his hand was no prince-it hadn't lived to be king).

Then, bang!-the door would close, and the orphans would be left in a new blackness, Whatever image of royalty that they could conjure would be left to them. What princes and kings could they have seen? What futures were possible for them to dream of? What royal foster families would greet them in sleep? What princesses would love them? What queens would they marry? And when would they escape the darkness left with them after Larch closed the door, after they could no longer hear the retreating squeaks of Nurse Edna's and Nurse Angela's shoes? (That thing he had held in his hand could not have heard the shoes-it had the smallest, most wrinkled ears!)

For Homer Wells, it was different. He did not imagine leaving St. Cloud's. The Princes of Maine that Homer saw, the Kings of New England that he imagined- they reigned at the court of St. Cloud's, they traveled nowhere; they didn't get to go to sea; they never even saw the ocean. But somehow, even to Homer Wells, {99} Dr. Larch's benediction was uplifting, full of hope. These Princes of Maine, these Kings of New England, these orphans of St. Cloud's-whoever they were, they were the heroes of their own lives. That much Homer could see in the darkness; that much Dr. Larch, like a father, gave him.

Princely, even kingly behavior was possible, even at St. Cloud's. That seemed to be what Dr. Larch was saying.

Homer Wells dreamed he was a prince. He lifted up his eyes to his king: he watched St. Larch's every move. It was the astonishing coolness of the thing that Homer couldn't forget.

'Because it was dead, right?' he asked Dr. Larch. 'That's why it was cool, right?'

'Yes,' said Dr. Larch. 'In a way, Homer, it was never alive.'

'Never alive,' said Homer Wells.

'Sometimes,' Dr. Larch said, 'a woman simply can't make herself stop a pregnancy, she feels the baby is already a baby-from the first speck-and she has to have it-although she doesn't want it and she can't take care of it-and so she comes to us and has her baby here. She leaves it here, with us. She trusts us to find it a home.'

'She makes an orphan,' said Homer Wells. 'Someone has to adopt it.'

'Someone usually adopts it,' Dr. Larch said.

'Usually,' said Homer Wells. 'Maybe.'

'Eventually,' Dr. Larch said.

'And sometimes,' said Homer Wells, 'the woman doesn't go through with it, right? She doesn't go through with having the baby.'

'Sometimes,' said Dr. Larch, 'the woman knows very early in her pregnancy that this child is unwanted.'

'An orphan, from the start,' said Homer Wells.

'You might say,' said Wilbur Larch.

'So she kills it,' said Homer Wells. {100}

'You might say,' said Wilbur Larch. 'You might also say that she stops it before it becomes a child-she just stops it. In the first three or four months, the fetus-or the embryo (I don't say, then, “the child”)-it does not quite have a life of its own. It lives off the mother. It hasn't developed.'

'It's developed only a little,' said Homer Wells.

'It hasn't moved, independently,' said Dr. Larch.

'It doesn't have a proper nose,' said Homer Wells, remembering it. On the thing he had held in his hand, neither the nostrils nor the nose itself had developed to its downward slope; the nostrils pointed straight out from the face, like the nostrils of a pig.

'Sometimes,' said Dr. Larch, 'when a woman is very strong and knows that no one will care for this baby if she has it, and she doesn't want to bring a child into the world and try to find it a home-she comes to me and I stop it.'

Tell me again, what's stopping it called?' asked Homer Wells.

'An abortion,' Dr. Larch said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. 'An abortion.'

'And what you held in your hand, Homer, was an aborted fetus,' Dr. Larch said. 'An embryo, about three to four months.'

'An aborted fetus, an embryo, about three to four months,' said Homer Wells, who had an irritating habit of repeating the pigtails of sentences very seriously, as if he were planning to read them aloud, like David Copperfield.

'And that's why,' Dr. Larch said patiently, 'some of the women who come here don't look pregnant…the embryo, the fetus, there's just not enough of it for it to show.'

'But they all are pregnant,' said Homer Wells. 'All the women who come here-they're either going to have an orphan, or they're going to stop it, right?'

That's right,' Dr. Larch said. I'm just the doctor. I {101} help them have what they want. An orphan or an abortion.'

'An orphan or an abortion,' said Homer Wells.

Nurse Edna teased Dr. Larch about Homer Wells. 'You have a new shadow, Wilbur,' she said.

'Doctor Larch,' Nurse Angela said, 'you have developed an echo. You've got a parrot following you around.'

'God or whatever, forgive me,' wrote Dr. Larch. 'I have created a disciple, I have a thirteen-year-old disciple.'

By the time Homer was fifteen, his reading oit David Copperfield was so successful that some of the older girls in the girls' division asked Dr. Larch if Homer might be persuaded to read to them.

'Just to the older girls?' Homer asked Dr. Larch.

'Certainly not,' said Dr. Larch. 'You'll read to all of them.'

'In the girls' division?' Homer asked.

'Well, yes,' Dr. Larch said. 'It would be awkward to have all the girls come to the boys' division.'