Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

Nadia howled and stretched herself taut as a piano wire. He snatched his hand away and fresh blood poured out.

'I know, I know! Stop moving!' Amazingly, she swung her hand around and clutched his forearm, her grip fierce. That was something, wasn't it?

'Easy, easy, I have to stop it.'

She gritted her teeth.

Conrad wadded the end of the second towel to a conical point and pushed it in. She opened her mouth to unleash another scream and nothing came out. Her circuits overloaded as her face went ash-gray and her breath locked up. She blinked through tears for a long silent spell. When it broke, the hot gust of her sour breath poured over him without a sound. Then she started panting, everything on autopilot.

Now she was in shock.

He had pushed the towel under the flap of skin. It went sideways, a tear in her outer fabric. He lifted the towel again and fresh blood flowed once more, but not before he saw that the core of her navel was intact. The bullet had not gone in. It had gone across shallowly, sideways through her belly flesh, entering at the navel and exiting three inches closer to her hip. It was possible that the curvature of her belly had prevented Eddie from getting a direct shot, and in doing so saved the child. Her skin under the blood was stained gray with either gunpowder or the first bruising. Underneath the ripped exit wound he saw yellow fatty tissue made pink with her blood.

No sirens. What are you waiting for, asshole?

The saner voice in his head screamed at him to call an ambulance and get the girl to a hospital. Yet he hesitated. This wasn't his fault, but there would be many questions. What made Eddie go off? What had you two been doing before this happened? How could you let this happen to our daughter? Our grandchild? Gail and John would rush home. Nadia would make the news. Jo would never return, or kill him when she did.

They would blame him. Tell the truth - you shot Eddie, didn't you? You wanted him out of the picture. Well, now he's out of the picture!

'Oh fuck, oh fuck . . .' Panic was setting in.

Wait. The phone. Eddie killed himself. His suicide note was on Nadia's phone!

Fine. Let Eddie be Eddie. But Nadia needs an ambulance - now.

But still he hesitated. Needed to get his story straight. He couldn't think it through, and the longer he sat there the more frightened he became. He just wanted to go home. The sane voice was losing the battle, being drowned out with each passing second by another voice, the one that had been there as his hand healed from the dog bite and been there still as the dogs themselves healed.

This is a healing place.

Was this what it wanted? The house and the things connected to the house? To make life out of life?

He imagined it was so.

He parked behind the garage and carried her up the backyard, over the deck, into the house. He had to set her down in the kitchen to catch his breath and she almost fell down, but he caught her. After more screaming and coughing, he got her up the stairs and into bed, carrying her like a bride. It took another twenty minutes to stop the bleeding, and he held the towel on her, offering her water she could not swallow without coughing and shaking and reopening the wound.

He went through the motions of doctors he'd seen on TV, in films. He cleaned and semi-sealed the borders of the bullet-torn flesh with Neosporin before applying butterfly bandages from the first aid kit they'd moved from Los Angeles. He cleaned, dabbed and staunched it with more ointment and clean gauze, taping her waist all the way around with more of Luther's flex-bandage. It held. Outside, the wound was the shape of a question mark. Whatever the damage on the inside, it would have to take care of itself.

Finally, half an hour later, her breathing slowed and she whimpered one last time before dozing off. She was tougher than he would have guessed, maybe tough enough to have made it in Seattle. A granite slab of guilt pressed down on him. That he had pushed Eddie to do this to her; that she was here at all.

He held her hand and thought about the baby inside. The life between them they had discussed only in vague questions and long silent stares now seemed enormous, everything. A bullet had grazed its soft thin shell and what was inside was now a little hero.

This is a healing place. If she does not get better in a day or two, I will take her to a doctor.

He didn't think anyone had seen them come home.

The afternoon and evening passed. Conrad awoke just before dawn with a pounding headache, convinced this was the day the Grums were coming home. He counted back, ticking off days that had become a frightening blur, until he realized Nadia's parents were not due for two or three more days. Perhaps.

He did not call to alert them to Nadia's condition, and she had not asked him to before the double-dose of Tylenol PM took her under for the night. He'd also slipped her two of Alice and Luther's Baytril tablets, a broad-spectrum antibiotic he knew from working with Dr Hobarth to be mild and safe for human consumption. She did not question the pills - she was just out.

The Doctor. You're playing Doctor.

He did not answer the phone when it had rang just before midnight. He doubted Jo would call so late. He had no idea what he would have said to his wife, and did not have the energy to pretend everything was fine.

Early the next morning there was a knock at the door. By the time he'd gotten up and pulled the curtain aside, they had gone. If they had found Eddie, the police would have come in a car, or three. He saw no police cars. Another UPS shipment from Jo? He did not see or hear a truck. Still, he remained at the window, waiting for Steve Bartholomew or the mailman or someone to reappear in his front yard, looking up at the second story, pointing an accusing finger. No one materialized and he did not linger.

Through the morning Nadia was in and out of it, but stable. The wound had reddened, puffed, cracked and seeped blood, and he changed her bandages. The bleeding had stopped. He brought her orange juice. Nadia swallowed more Baytril but did not speak. She fell into a long afternoon nap. He stretched out and lay beside her, careful not to disturb her.

Twenty-four hours had passed since Eddie went Eddie on them.

The second time the doorbell rang, he was awake and assumed his post at the window. It was nearly dark. No cop cars. Just as he dropped the curtain aside, he saw a figure step back in the yard and look up. Conrad could not make out a face. Might be Steve Bartholomew, their trusty neighbor. He dimly recalled how just a few weeks ago he'd thought Steve was the kind of man with whom he might strike up an easy friendship. Maybe be more than just neighbors, borrowing each other's tools and drinking beer during the annual neighborhood water-balloon fight in the street on the Fourth of July. But that window of opportunity had passed.

The figure on his lawn paced like a tiger in the zoo, peering into the front parlor windows, searching for an opening. The tiger planted his hands on his hips.

Conrad whispered into the curtain. 'Go home or pounce, buddy.'

The figure disappeared and Conrad lost the line of sight through the thick leaves of his one-hundred-and-forty-year-old maple tree. He relaxed.

Dong-dong-dong! The doorbell.

'Fuck.'

Nadia stirred in the bed. 'What's going on?' She squinted at him in the dark, her hair matted, eyes crusty with sleep. 'Are my parents home?'

'Nothing, it's fine. Stay there.'

The doorbell rang again, setting the dogs off.

Conrad slipped out of the bedroom. He left the lights off as he padded to the door - no use backlighting himself before he knew who was there. He stopped and grabbed a knife from the block on the kitchen counter. It could be the police. He left the knife in the kitchen and headed for the door.