Aaaiiieee

out five dollars. “Expensive.”

“Well, there are four pay-per-view movies on every day, honey.” While the woman made notations on her clipboard Devin turned the dial through the small offering of stations. The woman said, “When I get home tonight I’ll watch the midnight mass. You should, too, hon…it will make you feel more at peace, y’know?”

I doubt that, Devin thought, so devout an atheist that she doubted even the historical existence of Christ, let alone the son of God part. “What is this?” she asked, coming to one channel. “Is this where they show the mass?”

The woman leaned over Devin to peek. “Oh no, I mean on regular channel Five. That’s hospital channel Eight—Chapel. That’s the chapel right here in the hospital. Right down at the end of maternity, here, past the cafeteria. They’ll have a service tomorrow, but not tonight.”

“Five dollars, and one out of what—eight? ten?—stations is a security camera view of an empty church.” Devin snorted a tired little laugh.

“Chapel,” the woman corrected her. She clicked her pen point in. “A lot of people who can’t get out of bed rely on Chapel, honey. It gives them comfort.”

To be so simple a soul, Devin thought. She smiled at the woman. “Merry Christmas. Nice to talk to someone. You seem to be the only person working tonight.”

The woman drew closer conspiratorially. “Don’t get sick on a weekend or Christmas eve, hon. I feel bad for you that tonight it’s both. Not even a room-mate, huh? What are you in for, honey?”

“My baby died.”

“Aww. Oh, poor kid. I had a miscarriage once. How far along? Few months?”

“Yeah. Few.”

“It’s hard, honey, but it’s God’s will. We don’t understand His plan, but…maybe the baby wasn’t forming right. Most miscarriages are because of that. Or maybe he would have died some terrible way when he was older, and God spared him worse. It’s a mystery.”

“Yeah.”

The woman squeezed Devin’s foot through the blanket. “Be tough, hon. And merry Christmas.”

“Thanks.”

The woman took Devin’s hand and pushed her five dollars back into it. She winked, and left the room at that same hurried pace. Devin almost felt the urge to call her back, and a moment later she began to sob quietly but heavily, as if she had been abandoned. She felt not only physically hollowed out inside, with her baby gone, but that her very spirit had been hollowed out as well.

Few months? No. Devin had been full term. Her due date had been next Tuesday.

Intrauterine strangulation. Her child had been killed with his very own life line. Not even two weeks before, a nurse practitioner upon examining Devin had told her everything was okay. The baby’s heart had sounded strong. Devin had heard it herself. “Slow,” the nurse had said. “Could be a boy.” She had been right. Devin had picked the name Christopher, if it were to be a boy.

Should she call Christopher’s father? Peter was way out in sunny California these days. He didn’t even know that she’d been pregnant. First the good news…now the bad news. But to Peter, which would be the good news and which the bad news? Would the death of his son be a tragedy, or a relief?

How could Devin know, when she had struggled with such questions herself these past months? Was it a folly, going through with this pregnancy? Was this really what she wanted…to be a single mother?

Maybe I should have had an abortion after all, Devin thought now. It would have been the same result. Only, she wouldn’t have had to go through twelve hours of labor had he only been two months old. Twelve hours of agony. Women coped with the pain because they knew there was a reward at the end. But Devin had suffered those many long hours already knowing that in the end only a different kind of agony would be her prize.

I’m sorry, Christopher, she thought. I should have killed you a long time ago. I would have saved us both the pain…

She couldn’t afford a plot for him, a coffin. Some people did that. But in her customer service job she made barely enough to scratch by. What would they do with him? She had to ask them…but at the same time she didn’t want to know.

She had held him. They encouraged that, thought it helped with the coping. His face had looked so tired, so unhappy, as if he had merely been disturbed from his peaceful slumber within. Devin didn’t think it helped her to have seen him. She wished she had never seen how beautiful he was. Had never smelled his wispy fine hair, making a spiral on the back of his head as if God had left his thumb print there.

Keep Your hands off my kid, asshole, Devin thought, unbeliever though she was. You condemned my son and hung him. Even if I did believe in You, I’m through believing now.

How could that stupid old woman believe? How could she think that Devin could find comfort in the empty dronings of some sexually repressed priest? “God’s will.” Devin would have resented the woman for that, if she weren’t feeling so very tired. Tired and unhappy. Just like Christopher.

*     *     *

How often did it actually snow on Christmas eve? Well, it was snowing out there now, but she was in here. Not home. But what was home these days? Peter long gone. Her father dead and her mother remarried to that dick Phil, both in Florida for the winter. She hadn’t called her mother. Didn’t want to spoil her holiday. Didn’t want to talk about Christopher. This was her private ordeal. She was glad all the doctors were gone, all the nurses inattentive. She wanted to be alone. Still, she saw colored lights glowing out there beyond the dozing dark parking lot with its few cars, shrouded like old furniture. There were children in those homes, dreaming of the morning.

She missed that stupid little TV lady. TV. That’s what she needed—distraction. Hopefully something really mindless; a Kung Fu flick, a Godzilla movie. She pulled the hovering set down closer to her, turned up the volume a bit. Six-twenty; early enough for some dumb old Christmas cartoon, maybe. Ah; on the special movie station they were playing a Christmas movie starring that redneck Ernest guy. Perfect.

A nurse brought dinner. It was better than she would have thought. Another nurse came to read her blood pressure, take her temperature. Devin told her she was fine, just to get rid of her, but afterwards regretted that she’d forgotten to ask what would be done with her baby. She considered buzzing, decided not to. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She hadn’t wanted to know what became of her cat Sting last year after he had to be put to sleep. If only she had him to come home to. Not even      that…

After the Ernest movie, Devin clicked through the channels again, and paused out of mild curiosity when she reached channel Eight. Taped religious music played softly as a background to the one static camera angle of the St. Andrew’s Hospital chapel. The camera was apparently close to the ceiling, pointing down toward the altar. No lights were on in the chapel, but for one candle just to the left edge of the screen, its glow more visible than the flame itself. The scene was so dim, so grainy, that Devin watched it a few moments if only to discern what she was seeing. She saw the first two or three pews at the bottom of the screen but had no idea how many there might be altogether. An aisle between them led to a slightly raised dais, where a block shape must have been the draped altar table. In back of that were three thrones, as Devin thought of them, the one behind the table particularly tall. That was all she could be sure of. There seemed to be a podium set off to one side and a door in the corner, but it was just too murky. It was as lonely a place as this hospital room with its one occupied bed.

Though she was not religious, and though her musical tastes ran more toward The Cure, Devin liked Gregorian chants and medieval music, so the background of very old Christmas music was agreeable to her. She left Chapel on while pulling toward herself a rumpled woman’s magazine someone had left in the top drawer of her side chest.

*     *     *

Devin awoke to silence. A glance to the wall clock; it was ten-fifty. She’d slept for hours, but given her day, she was surprised it hadn’t been longer. The lack of music finally registered, and she looked to the TV. Chapel was still on, but the taped music had ceased. No sound came from the television.

Off down the hall somewhere, a baby cried. This was postpartum recovery, and a woman must have had her baby brought to her for nursing. The nursery was down the hall, but the babies in there were few tonight and quiet behind their glass wall. Devin was glad for that.

Out the window, the snow had become thick, muffling the world under a caul.

Devin was thirsty, and buzzed the nurse’s station. No reply after five minutes. She didn’t ring it again,