Rated R for a graphic pregnancy scene
Okay. So this isn't all of #4. But I felt something about Eva's c-section/labor was false, so I decided to take it a step up. Also, the fact that in #4 the police shoot up the hospital is a little unrealistic. The police will confront Booker, but later and at his apartment.
Those of you who know anything about hard labor, please, please, please, point out anything that rags on the ear.
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“Push!” the doctor screamed, his hands deep between Eva's thighs; latex slippery with blood and placental fluids. “Godssakes, you gotta push! Harder! You've crowned Eva, you've crowned. You just gotta shove!”
A titanic roar from Eva, her nails digging trenches in Booker's wrists as he tried to get her breathing easier. Her back arched in pain and her eyes crumpled shut, exquisite crystalline pain bleeding from under her eyelids with the tears. Strands of hair hung plastered against her face by sweat and veins pulsed in her forehead like worms.
From where Booker was, she looked like some kind of demon.
Possessed by a gift from the stork in her birth canal.
“Come on, Eva. Breath easy. Quick breaths. In and out, in and out, in and out,” he said softly.
“Push!”
Crushing his bones, grinding them down, her eyes ripped open and she swore, her neck pulsing. “You bastards, stop telling me what the hell to do!” Her face was sunset red, as if a million crimson blood vessels had ruptured underneath her skin, blooming flushed roses across her cheeks. Booker ignored her. He had been told to ignore her. Just tell her to keep breathing. Tell her to keep calm. Tell her things will be fine.
Another roar, ripping at Booker's emotions like snapping violin strings.
The doctor was motioning for the nurse to push down on Eva's stomach. Gasping – staccato, helpless breaths that were stolen from her chest – Eva's grip tightened on Booker's arm and he saw blood pool around her fingernails. He inhaled shakily.
“Breath deep.”
The nurse's mask was wilting limply from her face as she pressed firmly on Eva's stomach. His wife's eyes bulged and her mouth ruptured, screaming at the doctor and Booker and the nurse like something caged. Something feral and frothing at the mouth. Every vein in her body jumped to the surface of her skin, boiling it.
Booker glanced over and saw the bald head of his daughter appear through the introitus, her features obscured by globules of blood and dripping mucus. Painting over scrunched eyes and a nose the size of his thumbnail.
A lot of blood.
Booker shut his eyes and exhaled heavily.
He desperately needed a cigarette.
Eva pushed again and the doctor nodded, motioning forward as the nurse pushed down on her bulging stomach, swollen to the size of a boulder. Booker didn't know why the blood was bothering him. He'd seen plenty of it before. Pooling on the ground, smeared on his hands, on alley walls. This was different for some reason. Every ounce of blood from Eva's vagina was like a pair of iron knuckles to his stomach. He supposed it was because here – now – the blood, the pain being painted in screams across the walls, was not from some gang member or dealer lying prostrate on the ground. It was from his wife.
And the bond between them was something Siamese.
Empathy was hell, he decided.
Booker reached for a damp towel draped over a basin beside the hospital bed and dabbed at Eva's forehead gently – he had to be doing something – breathing deeply, and setting the example. As the doctor yelled and the nurse shoved and Eva snarled, Booker was surprised at how calm he was. How collected he was remaining. He was going to be a father, for God's sake! Within an hour, a pinpoint of human life would be in his hands, gasping for air, drinking it in like water. Sanguine with blood.
The doctor swore.
Eva gasped.
“Hell,” he hissed again, checking the monitor to his left. “Hell. Eva, Eva, you're going to have to stop pushing. Stop pushing.”
“Stop pushing?”
“The baby has the umbilical cord wrapped around it's neck. She's got nuchal cord.” He nodded to the nurse who whipped around and snatched a pair of forceps and operating scissors from a surgical tray behind Booker. Displaced blades clattered to the ground like shattered glass.
“Stop pushing!”
Eva's mouth was torn open and she crumpled under the pressure of the baby lodged in her birth canal. Her screams, her sobs, saturated Booker's ears and put holes in his heart like bullets. She clenched her teeth and groaned loudly, as if she was reversing the pull, pushing the baby towards her mouth now, instead of out between her thighs.
Booker's glanced at the doctor and at the surgical scissors in his hands, which seemed to grin with malicious intent, positioned above Eva and the baby. He heard blood pulsing in his ears. He felt his heart punch swinging punches at his rib cage, prying the bones apart, searching for escape.
“What's happening?”
“You gotta stop, Eva. I know it's hard, but you gotta stop!”
“I can't stop!” she screamed. “Godssakes, I can't stop!”
“Your gonna kill it. You're gonna choke it. Just hold still, and try to hold back.”
Baptized in tears, eroding into tears, Eva shook her head and moved her grip from Booker's wrist to his hand, where she clutched tightly, slippery with sweat. Gasps were thrust from her throat. Thrown from her lungs like hand grenades. You gotta stop pushing. You gotta hold it in. You gotta breath, Eva. You gotta give this baby life.
Like a hangman's noose.
Roped around it's neck, strung up by a tree limb.
Natal execution.
“What's happening to her? What's wrong?”
The nurse pulled a syringe away, tossed in a garbage can, and the doctor leaned forward with the scissors. His eyes were iron with tension.
“The baby has the umbilical cord wrapped around it's head multiple times. Gotta do an episiotomy and clamp down the cord, get her out. Just tell her to keep breathing.”
Booker gritted his teeth and turned back to Eva. Keep breathing. I can only tell her so many times! he wanted to scream. There came a point anyway when desperation would overcome good sense and whispered instructions, anyway. The way Booker saw it, Eva was going to do whatever she wanted to.
Panting, sweat mixed with tears, and practically bleeding from every pore.
“That's good, Eva. Just keep it up. We're almost clear.”
Eva howled.
Booker tried to see what the doctor was doing, but the nurse was blocking his view. Scissors flashed. He knew that. Forceps yawned like the mouth of some mechanical beast. More misery for Eva. Just pile it on. Little blades causing explosions of pain like pumping pistons.
“Gently,” the doctor hissed. Booker closed his eyes and began dabbing Eva with the towel again as she hyperventilated. Twitching, writing, moaning. Deep breaths and leveling emotions had been tossed by the wayside. Booker just wanted to get through the whole ordeal. He wanted Eva to get through it. He wished he had a cigarette, a bottle of scotch, and loud music, some other sound to concentrate on. Something other than his wife's childbirth dissonance.
“Okay. Let's clamp her down.”
The nurse groped behind her for a pair of clips and Eva started shaking her head, stringy hair whipping from side to side like the snakes on Medusa's head.
“I can't hold it anymore! I need to push! I need to – ”
“Five seconds, I swear, Eva. Just count to five.”
Booker leaned forward and gripped her hand, “Let's breath, hon. In and out. Five seconds.”
One.
Eva strained, her face gaunt and withdrawn in her absorption, focusing every shred of energy on holding that God-awful, seven pound of unborn flesh lodged inside of her like a bullet in a chamber. Putting pressure on every limb, every finger, every inch of skin. Building up armies of stifled contractions and grunts and muscle spasms, all to hold a asphyxiated foreign object.
One with a tight knot and a short drop.
Two.
“Hurry, you bastard!”
“Almost got it.”
Three.
Blotting away perspiration. Pushing strands of tangled hair from her face. Feeling useless and hopeless and cemented in place. For God's sake, he needed action! He needed to be doing something. To be at the nucleus of some kind of consummation. Booker couldn't stand sitting at Eva's side, watching her suffer, watching her die.
Four.
He was going to have to deal with it.
He was going to have to wait.
And watch.
“I'm pushing! I'm pushing!” Eva bellowed, pounding a corrugated fist against her bed.
Five.
The doctor sighed – a hiss of relief – and nodded. “Go ahead! Push her out!”
The nurse moved a fraction and Booker could see their child's head – wrinkled and old and a throbbing purple, spattered with light pink – her shoulders, her chest. The forceps and surgical scissors lay forgotten on the the table, rusted over with blood, oiled down with it. The doctor's chin was pressed firmly against his chest, his eyebrows were raised, and he held the baby gently with latex hands. Coaxing her out.
Booker felt a strange cocktail of awe and ecstasy.
Here was his daughter.
Waist, pelvis, thighs, calves. Agonizingly slow, punctuated by the percussion of Eva's pain, swollen life, emerging into a hospital room lit by smoldering incandescent lights.
And then feet.
Then, the baby was out.
The nurse was ready with a blanket, the doctor wrapped her in it dexterously, and – smiling, grinning and sweating – he held her up for Eva and Booker to see.
For Booker, the room rippled slightly and he suddenly felt incredibly light-headed.
Eva was crying.
Crying tears laced with joy and pain and salt.
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