Upsetting the Balance

From the delivery room beyond the swinging doors came a muffled shriek. It made him clench his fists till nails bit into flesh, bite his lip till he tasted blood. That was Barbara in there, straining with all her might to bring their child into the world. Part of him wished he could be in there with her, holding her hand and reassuring her everything was all right(Please, God, let everything be all right!) Another part of him was grimly certain he’d either lose his lunch or pass out if he watched what she was going through.

He paced harder, wishing he had a cigarette to calm him and to give him something to do with his hands. He’d actually smoked a couple of pipefuls up in southern Missouri; they grew tobacco around there. But when word came that Barbara was going to pop any day now, he’d hurried back to Hot Springs fast as horseflesh would carry him. Robert Goddard had been good about letting him go; he owed his boss one for that.

Barbara shrieked again, louder. Sam’s guts churned. For a man to have to listen to his wife in agony just wasn’t right. But the only other things that came to mind were charging into the delivery room, which he couldn’t do, and sneaking off somewhere like a yellow dog and holing up with a bottle of booze, which he couldn’t do, either. He just had to stay here and take it. Some ways, going into combat had been easier. Then, at least, the danger had been his personally, and he’d had some small control over it. Now he couldn’t do anything but pace.

Maybe the worst was that he couldn’t hear anything the doctors or nurses were saying in there, only Barbara’s cries. He didn’t know whether she was supposed to be making noises like that. Were things going okay, or was she in trouble? He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

He sat down in a hard chair and made a conscious effort to relax, as if he were stepping into the batter’s box against some kid pitcher who could fire a fasthall through the side of a barn-if he could hit the side of a barn. He blanked everything but the moment from his mind, took a couple of deep breaths. His heart stopped pounding so hard.That’s better, he thought.

Barbara chose that moment to make a new noise, not a scream exactly, but cry and grunt and moan all mixed together. It was a sound of supreme effort, as if she were trying to lift the front axle of a car off somebody pinned underneath it. Sam bounced out of his seat, all efforts at relaxation out of the park like a line drive off the bat of Hank Greenberg.

Barbara made that appalling noise again, and then once more. After that, for maybe a minute, Sam didn’t hear anything. “Please, God, let her be all right,” he mumbled. He wasn’t usually much of a praying man; when he asked God for something, it was something he really wanted.

Then another cry came through the swinging doors: a thin, furious wail that said only one thing: what is this place, and what the devil am I doing here? Sam’s knees sagged. It was a good thing he was standing next to that chair, because he would have sat down whether or no.

The swinging doors opened outward. A doctor came through them, gauze mask fallen down under his chin, a few splashes of blood on his white robe. In one hand he held a crudely rolled cigar, in the crook of his other elbow the littlest person Sam had ever seen.

He handed Yeager the cigar. “Congratulations, Sergeant,” he said. “You’ve got yourself a fine baby boy here. Haven’t put him on the scales yet, but he’ll be around seven and a half pounds. He’s got all his fingers, all his toes, and a hell of a good set of lungs.” As if to prove that, the baby started crying again.

“B-B-B-B-” Sam took one more deep breath and made himself talk straight: “Barbara? Is she all right?”

“She’s doing just fine,” the doctor said, smiling. “Do you want to see her?” When Yeager nodded, the doctor held out the baby to him. “Here. Why don’t you take your son in, too?”

Your son.The words almost made Sam’s legs buckle again. He stuffed the cigar into a trouser pocket and warily reached out for the baby. Seeing his inexperience, the doctor showed him how to hold it so its head wouldn’t flop around like a fish out of water.

Now he could pass through the doors that had held him back before. The delivery room smelled of sweat and of the outhouse; a nurse was taking a bucket away from the table with the stirrups. Sam gulped. Birth was a process with no dignity to it.

His son wiggled in his hands. He almost dropped the baby. “Bring him here,” Barbara said from the table. “They only showed him to me for a couple of seconds. Let me see him.”