John Irving - The Cider House Rules

The assistant saw a white enamel sort of pan, or tray, upon the typewriter, but he was seated so very low that he couldn't view the pan's contents. Two tiny hands reached above the edge of the examining tray, but only the fingertips of the dead baby from Three Mile Falls were visible to the stationmaster's assistant. He h ad never seen a fetus before, or even a newborn baby; he was unprepared for how small the fingers can be. He kept looking around the room, from his sunken and glowingly uncomfortable position, but his eyes kept coming back to the fingertips sticking above the rim of the examining {268} tray. He couldn't believe he was really looking at fingers.

Whatever that is, it looks like fingers, he thought. Gradually, he stopped looking at other things in the room. He stared at the fingertips; a part of his mind said, Get up and see what that is! Another part of his mind made his body feel sunken into the easy chair and held down there by a great weight.

It can't be fingers! he thought; he kept staring, he kept sitting.

Nurse Edna wanted to tell Dr. Larch that he should, for once, let his feelings speak for him-that he should tell Homer Wells what he felt-but she stood quietly listening at the operating room door. The stationmaster's chest cracked a few more times. This didn't discomfort her-Nurse Edna was a professional-and she could tell by the precision of the snaps she heard that Dr. Larch had chosen to occupy his emotions with a task. It's his decision, she told herself. She went outside to see how that nice young couple were doing.

The young man was doing whatever young men do while peering under the hoods of cars, and the girl was resting, semi-reclined in the Cadillac's spacious back seat. The convertible top was still down. Nurse Edna bent over Candy and whispered to her, 'You're as pretty as a picture!' Candy smiled warmly. Nurse Edna could see how exhausted the girl was. 'Listen, dear,' Nurse Edna said to her. 'Don't be shy-if you're worried about your spotting,' Nurse Edna said to her confidentially, 'or if you have any peculiar cramps, speak to Homer about it. Promise me you won't be shy about it, dear. And most certainly, if you run a fever-promise me,' Nurse Edna said.

'I promise,' Candy said, blushing.

Melony was struggling to inscribe the copy of Little Dorrit she had stolen for Homer when she heard Mary Agnes Cork throwing up in the bathroom.

'Shut up!' Melony called, but Mary Agnes went on retching. She'd eaten two jars of apple-cider jelly, one jar {269} of honey and another of crab-apple jelly. She thought it was the honey that did it.

Smoky Fields had already thrown up. He'd eaten all his jars, of everything, and a jar belonging to one of the little Walshes. He lay miserably in his bed, listening to Curly Day crying and Nurse Angela talking on and on.

TO HOMER 'SUNSHINE' WELLS

FOR THE PROMISE

YOU MADE ME

Melony wrote. She glanced out her window, but there was nothing going on. It wasn't dark; it wasn't time for the two women she'd watched arrive in the morning to be heading downhill for their return train-to wherever.

LOVE, MELONY

Melony added, as Mary Agnes groaned and heaved again.

'You dumb little bitch pig!' Melony called.

Homer Wells walked into the operating room when Wilbur Larch had successfully exposed the stationmaster's heart. Larch was not surprised to see no evidence of heart disease, no dead-muscle tissue ('No infarction,' he said to Homer, without looking up at him)-in short, no damage to the heart of any kind.

'The stationmaster had a healthy heart,' Dr. Larch announced to Homer Wells. No 'massive' heart attack had dropped the stationmaster, as Larch had suspected. It appeared there had been a very sudden change in the heart's rhythm. 'Arrhythmia, I think,' Dr. Larch said to Homer Wells.

'His heart just stopped, right?' Homer asked.

'I think that he suffered some shock, or fright,' said Wilbur Larch.

Homer Wells could believe that-just by looking at the stationmaster's face. 'Right,' he said.

'Of course there could be a clot in the brain,' said {270} Wilbur Larch. 'Where should I look?' he asked Homer familiarly.

The brain stem,'said Homer Wells.

'Right,' Wilbur Larch said. 'Good boy.'

When Homer Wells saw the stationmaster's brain stem exposed, he felt that Dr. Larch was busy enough-with both hands-for it to be safe to say what Homer wanted to say.

'I love you,' said Homer Wells. He knew he had to leave the room, then-while he could still see the door-j and so he started to leave.

'I love you, too, Homer,' said Wilbur Larch, who for another minute or more could not have seen a blood clot in the brain stem if there had been one to see. He heard Homer say 'Right' before he heard the door close. In a while, he could make out the brain stem clearly; there was no clot.

'Arrhythmia,' Wilbur Larch repeated to himself. Then he added, 'Right,' as if he were now speaking for Homer Wells. Dr. Larch put his instruments aside; he gripped the operating table for a long time.

Outside, Homer Wells stuck his bag in the Cadillac's trunk, smiled at Candy in the back seat, helped Wally raise the convertible's top; it would be dark soon, and especially cold for Candy in the back seat if they left the top down.

'See you in two days!' Nurse Edna said to Homer, too loudly.

'Two days,' Homer repeated, too quietly. She pecked his cheek; he patted her arm. Nurse Edna then turned and trotted to the hospital entrance; both Candy and Wally appeared impressed that the woman could move so quickly. When she was inside the hospital, Nurse Edna went directly to the dispensary and threw herself on the bed; if she had a soft heart, she had a strong stomach -it hardly mattered to her that the stationmaster's body had spent much of the day on that bed, or that the mud from his boots had soiled the top sheet.

{271}

Dr. Larch was still gripping the operating table when he heard the stationmaster's assistant scream. There was just one scream, followed by a prolonged series of whimpers. Homer and Candy and Wally never heard the scream; Wally had already started the car.

The assistant had waited the longest time before forcing himself out of the deep, low chair. He had not wanted to look more closely at the contents of the white enameled examining tray, but the little fingers had beckoned to him and he had felt himself drawn to the tray, where a full and close-up view of the opened-up fetus had caused him (like Curly Day) to wet his pants. He screamed when he discovered that his legs wouldn't move; the only way he could manage to leave Nurse Angela's office was on all fours; he went whimpering down the hall like a beaten dog. Dr. Larch blocked his way at the operating room door.

'What is the matter with you?' Larch asked the assistant scathingly.

'I brought you all his catalogues!' the stationmaster's assistant managed to say while still on all fours.

'Catalogues?' said Larch, with evident distaste. 'Stand up, man! What's wrong with you?' He seized the quaking assistant under his armpits and drew him, trembling, to his feet.

'I just wanted to view the body,' the assistant protested weakly.

Wilbur Larch shrugged. What is this fascination the world has with death? he wondered, but he stepped aside, ushering the assistant into the operating room where the stationmaster, with his heart and his brain stem very well exposed, was instantly in view.

'A sudden change in the heart's rhythm,' Wilbuir Larch explained. 'Something frightened him to death.' It was not hard for the assistant to imagine being frig;htened to death, although he thought that the stationmaster appeared to have been run over by a train-or else had fallen victim to the same evil responsible for the hideous baby upon the typewriter. {272}