C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

In the birthing room, the questions came furiously: Were you having contractions for the last few days? Mild ones? Are you sure your water didn’t break? Bloody show? Is the father on his way?

But Henrietta remained clamped in the vise of her pain, sweat tracking down her red, brutalized face — and bland tears too — as the contraction refused to release her. Pain was a hideous symphony, every note sounding at once, and it didn’t matter if every pitch was labored, slaved over, overwrought, caressed, or hated. I don’t care whether you can detect the fruits of my labor! I can’t hide anything, birth is breaking all of me. Sounds emerged from the deepest part of her.

Henry’s face was close to hers, almost against hers, almost kissing her cheek, saying, “The doctor’s here,” and then the man was gently prying apart her clamped legs.

“Should it be this hard?” she cried out in bewilderment. “Should it be this hard?”

“Goddammit,” hissed Henry. “Give her something!”

The doctor dispensed his obfuscations: “Dilated to five, but hypertonic uterus.” Henrietta interrupted: “I’m peeing.” The seep of warmth turning instantly cool in the mortuary chill of the room.

The doctor placed a gloved hand on her knee. “Miss Forge, your water just broke. I’m concerned, because there’s too much blood in your fluid, and you’re just starting to spike a fever, which we want to contain. Your uterus is hyperstimulated; that’s why you’re not coming down off these contractions. We’re not going to use an epidural, because—”

Henry’s eyes were wild and he gripped the plastic edge of the bed rail. “Why on earth?”

A nurse’s voice then and a whirling from the periphery: “Flat strip—”

“What is that? What is that?” Panic made its own contractions on Henry’s heart.

The doctor remained maddeningly calm. “It means there’s minimal variability in the fetal heart rate. I suspect abruption. This is something that requires immediate intervention. But there’s no need to panic.” He turned to Henrietta. “Miss Forge, we’ll need to give you general anesthesia, because I’m concerned about your baby and need to expedite the delivery. Placement of a spinal will just take too long. We’re going to move you into the pre-op room now.”

To a nurse, he said, “I want Miss Forge hooked up as well as the baby.”

Henrietta nodded weakly with a face that looked like doubt but was all pain. Why were they breaking into her private world? She was busy with her hurting, which was immutable and constant, pain breathing in, pain breathing out, pain eclipsing her mind.

Her eyes were glassy, and they were instantly moving again, the ceiling passing her, this must be the operating room; she knew because she recognized the many-bulbed lamps like blinding, wide-mouthed carp. Her father’s face — comfort, intrusion, her everything — interrupted the light. Someone said, “Sir, you can’t be in here,” and yet he remained. Henrietta’s eyes focused suddenly with a consternation so savage that Henry felt her pain move all along the length of his body like a lightning strike. For a brief moment, she abandoned her struggle. She said, “You never loved me.”

All he could do was stare at the garrulous shock of red on her cheeks. He struggled for language. “How can you say that?” he whispered. “Everything I’ve ever done is for you.”

“Lou said…” Her words drifted, evanesced, vanished into pain.

“What?” he said. “Lou the vet? What did she say?”

She could hear someone speaking to her father, but she was sunk down into her body again, any words elongated into wails by the pain wracking her, pressing her with the weight of oceans and mountains. Her face grew hideously pale, even her eyes appeared blanched. The relentless contractions were reshaping her into something foreign and alone.

The tenor of the room changed. She had no words now, all of herself concentrating on this pain. Language was done. The anesthesiologist was wrestling with the IV catheter as she made deep, guttural wounded sounds. But under it all she felt — far beneath the wretched pain and the fear — a deep and primitive excitement. It came from her bedrock self. Soon her child would appear, and everything would begin again.

In the first miracle, the universe created itself out of nothing. So there is always hope.

When the anesthesiologist moved in with the oxygen mask, she gripped his arm to stay him. Her voice was barely recognizable now, chafed and roughened by labor. She gestured, rolling her hand, so her father leaned in, and she laid her hand against his beautiful, weathered, beloved cheek. “Father…”

“What, darling?”

She grinned an ugly grin. “Every animal knows more than we do.”

“Someone get him out of here,” said the anesthesiologist, but Henrietta was already drawing her hand back to her chest, and because she needed to release the burden, she said, “Quick. Quick!”

The mask was fitted to her face, and she drew deeply from its clean breath. Perfect. Her eyes were washed with calm, it was effacing her now. Henry could see she was still speaking under the mask, but he couldn’t hear her words. He leaned in as though they were still conversing, but then her mouth stopped moving, and they only looked at each other gently before she closed her eyes.

Then she was drifting, the anesthesia washing in like a low and lovely tide. The lines on her brow eased and her mind softened, and her hands were very comfortably arranged like weights under her breasts. A wave came and she sensed it pulling her in deep, like an undertow, but it was pleasant and she didn’t mind. She smiled. She felt as though she were saying words, but it was more like dreaming in her mouth. They were going to free the child from her any moment, and she was so grateful. The child needed to be free. Deep in the water she could see a light, and that seemed no contradiction at all, only a curiosity. It was marvelous.

“Flatline!” The nurse’s voice, a crashing cymbal. “The mother has flatlined!”

There was a bustling in the world that Henry didn’t understand, and someone was gripping him by both shoulders, trying to pull him from the room, but, suddenly realizing, he flung them off with a ferocious strength, unable to take his eyes from his daughter’s face, which was changing and emptying as a room is emptied. The change was subtle but sure; all the minute and incessant activity of life ceased suddenly. Some old bitterness slid from her as her muscles went slack and her lips parted without emotion or word. There was nothing there. Henry could not move, he remained where he stood, gazing upon her in horror until horror was replaced by a grief so entire, so absolute, that he could think of no other option but to die himself, to lie down next to his daughter’s body and end entirely and perhaps would have tried, except they were yelling, were placing the paddles on his daughter’s naked chest as a new doctor labored and tried to break the hold of death with useless and violent electricity, so her dead, absented body convulsed violently, horribly again and again until the truth was called a fact: she was dead, and the obstetrician, who had labored on her behalf while they strove mightily with her body, held a brand-new baby aloft and in a voice strained with shock said, “He’s alive. He’s perfect. He’s perfect.” The words — so impossible — broke through the brilliant white light of Henry’s horror. He turned in confusion, having forgotten a child was being born, and with convulsive, confused motions, he moved down the side of the bed where the exhausted body of his daughter was exposed, where he could smell the private blood of her belly, where her lifeless limbs were slack. The nurses were an agitated stream rushing past him toward something he had left behind, and again someone was trying to wrestle him away, but again he shook them off with unnatural strength. His daughter was gone; she would never speak again. He barely sensed the tumult and noise now as he turned to the child. At first he recoiled, his mind rearing like a frightened horse. Then, with shaking hands, Henry drew the tiny, perfectly formed brown baby to his chest and looked in astonishment at the only family he had left.