with every step. Her cry grew louder. Something broke inside her; not David's grip, but at a deeper level. She gritted her teeth and felt the warm tears streaking down her cheeks, and she knew it was over with Doug.
'There, there,' Red Car said, and mopped her cheeks. 'You're doing just fine, don't you worry about a thing.'
'All right, take it easy.' Dr. Bonnart patted her shoulder in a fatherly fashion, though he was about three or four years younger than she. 'We've got the top of his head showing, but we're not quite ready. Relax now, just relax.'
Laura concentrated on getting her breathing regulated. She stared at the wall as Red Car mopped her face, and the time alternately speeded up and crawled past on the clock, a trick of wishes and nerves. At ten o'clock, Dr. Bonnart asked her to start pushing again. 'Harder. Keep going, Laura. Harder,' he instructed her, and she gripped Red Car's hand so tightly she thought she might snap the woman's sturdy fingers. 'Breathe and push, breathe and push.'
Laura was trying her hardest. The pressure between her legs and in the small of her back was a symphony of excruciation. 'There you go, doing fine,' another nurse said, looking over Red Car's shoulder. Laura trembled, her muscles spasming. Surely she couldn't do this by herself; surely there was a machine that did this for you. But there was not, and surrounded by monitors and high-tech equipment, Laura was on her own. She breathed and pushed, breathed and pushed as she gripped Red Car's hand and the sweat was blotted from her cheeks and Dr. Bonnart kept encouraging her to greater effort.
Finally, at almost twenty to eleven, Dr. Bonnart said, 'All right, ladies, let's take Mrs. Clayborne in.'
Laura was helped onto a gurney, with what felt like a fleshy cannonball jammed between her thighs, and she was rolled into another room. This one had green tiles on the walls and a stainless steel table with stirrups, a bank of high-wattage lights aimed down from the ceiling. A nurse covered the table with green cloth, and Laura was positioned on the table on her back, her feet up in the stirrups. Light gleamed off a tray of instruments that might have found a use during the Inquisition, and Laura quickly averted her gaze from them. She was already feeling exhausted, with about as much strength as a wrung-out washrag, but she knew the most strenuous part of the birthing process still lay ahead. Dr. Bonnart sat on a stool at the end of the table, the tray of instruments close at hand. As he examined her and the position of the baby inside her, he actually began to whistle. 'I know that song,' one of the nurses said. 'I heard it on the radio this afternoon. You hear it and it really gets in your mind, doesn't it?'
'Guns and Roses,' Dr. Bonnart said. 'My son loves 'em. He walks around wearing a baseball cap turned backward, and he's been talking about getting tattoos.' He shifted the position of his fingers. Laura felt him prodding around inside her, but she was as numb down there as if she were stuffed with wet cotton. 'I told him one tattoo and I'd break his neck. Could you lift your hips just a bit, Laura? Yes, that's fine.'
Red Car turned on a videotape camera on a tripod, its lens aimed between Laura's legs. 'Here we go, Laura,' Dr. Bonnart said as the other nurse put a fresh pair of surgical gloves on his hands. 'You ready to do a little work?'
'I'm ready.' Ready or not, she thought, she would have to do it.
The nurse tied a surgical mask over Dr. Bonnart's nose and mouth. 'Okay,' he said, 'let's get it done.' He sat down on the stool again, Laura's gown folded back over her knees. 'I want you to start pushing, Laura. Push until I say stop, and then rest for a few seconds. He's crowning very nicely, and I believe he wants to come on out and join us, but you're going to have to give him a shove. Okay?'
'Okay.'
'All right. Start pushing right now.'
She began. Damned if she didn't have that Guns and Roses tune snagged in her brain.
'Push, push. Relax. Push, push.' A cloth mopped her face. Breathing hard. David wasn't coming out. Why wasn't he coming out? 'Push, push. That's good, Laura, very good.' She heard the silvery click of an instrument at work, but she could feel only a slight tugging. 'Push, Laura. Keep pushing, he wants to come out.'
'Doing just fine,' Red Car told her, and squeezed her hand.
'He's stuck,' Laura heard herself say; a stupid thing. Dr. Bonnart told her to keep pushing, and she closed her eyes and clenched her teeth and did what he said, her thighs trembling with the effort.
Near eleven-ten, Laura thought she felt David begin to squeeze out. It was a movement of maybe an inch or two, but it thrilled her. She was wet with sweat and her hair was damp around her shoulders. It amazed her that anybody had ever been born. She pushed until she thought her muscles would give out, then she rested for a little while and pushed again. Her thighs and back rippled with cramps. 'Oh, Jesus!' she whispered, her body strained and weary.
'You're doing great,' Dr. Bonnart said. 'Keep it up.'
A surge of anger rose within her. What was Doug doing right now, while she was laboring under spotlights? Damn him to hell, she was going to sue his ass for divorce when this was over! She pushed and pushed, her face reddening. David moved maybe another inch. She thought she must surely be about to bend the stirrups from their sockets; she pushed against them with all her strength as Red Car swabbed her forehead.
Click, click went the instrument in Dr. Bonnart's hand. Click, click.
'Here he comes,' Dr. Bonnart said as the clock ticked past eleven-thirty.
Laura felt her baby leaving her. It was a feeling of great relief mingled with great anxiety, because in the midst of the wet squeezing and the beep of monitors Laura realized her body was being separated from the living creature who had grown there. David was emerging into the world, and from this point on he would be at its mercy like every other human being.
'Keep pushing, don't stop,' Dr. Bonnart urged.
She strained, the muscles of her back throbbing. She heard a damp, sucking sound. She glanced at the wall clock through swollen eyes: eleven forty-three. Red Car and the other nurse moved forward to help Dr. Bonnart. Something snipped and clipped. 'Big push,' the doctor said. She did, and David's weight was gone.
Slap. Slap. A third quick slap.
His crying began, like the thin, high noise of a motor being jump-started. Tears sprang to Laura's eyes, and she took a long, deep breath and released it.
'Here's your son,' Dr. Bonnart told her, and he offered her something that was wailing and splotched with red and blue and had a froggish face in a head like a misshapen cone.
She had never seen such a beautiful boy, and she smiled like the sun through clouds. The storm was over.
Dr. Bonnart laid David on Laura's stomach. She pressed him close, feeling his heat. He was still crying, but it was a wonderful sound. She could smell the thick, coppery aromas of blood and birth fluids. David's body, still connected to her by the damp bluish-red umbilical cord, moved under her fingers. He was a fragile-looking thing, with tiny fingers and toes, the bump of a nose, and a pink-lipped mouth. There was nothing, however, fragile about his voice. It rose and fell, an undulation of what might have been adamant anger. Announcing himself, Laura thought. Letting the world know that David Douglas Clayborne had arrived, and demanding that room be made. As the umbilical was clipped off and tied, David trembled in a spite of infant fury and his wailing grew ragged. Laura said, 'Shhhh, shhhh,' as her fingers stroked the baby's smooth back. She felt the little shoulder blades and the ridges of his spine. Skeleton, nerves, veins, intestines, brain; he was whole and complete, and he was hers.
She felt it kick in then. What other women who'd had babies had told her to expect: a warm, radiant rush through her body that seemed to make her heart pound and swell. She recognized it as a mother's love, and as she stroked her baby she felt David relax from rigid indignance to soft compliance. His crying eased, became a quiet whimper, and ended on a gurgling sigh. 'My baby,' Laura said, and she looked up at Dr. Bonnart and the nurses with tears in her eyes. 'My baby.'
'Thursday's child,' the nurse said, checking the clock. 'Far to go.'
It was after midnight when Laura was in her room on the hospital's second-floor maternity ward. She was drained and energized at the same time, and her body wanted to sleep but her mind wanted to replay the drama of birth again and again. She dialed her home number, her hand trembling.
'Hello, you've reached the residence of Douglas and Laura Clayborne. Please leave a message at the tone, and thank you for calling.'
Beep.
Words abandoned her. She struggled to speak before the machine's timer clicked off. Doug wasn't home. He
