chapter 1 (cont.)

     The doctor removed the last wrapping of intestine from around the baby�s neck and held him up for the medical team to see. �This is quite remarkable,� he said perplexed. �Look at how healthy he looks for a six-month preemie. He looks as healthy as a full-term baby.� He lowered the infant and looked at his face. �A miracle child,� he said.

     The baby glared at him with a furrowed brow and sadistic eyes that sought revenge. The doctor blinked long and hard, contributing his apparent hallucination to fatigue, anxiety, and stress. In addition to the pressures of delivering a baby to a dying mother, he was pulling double-duty after having filled in for a colleague.

     Dr. Rudison handed the baby to Josh. �It�s a boy,� he said. �I could�ve sworn he just looked at me with a bizarre frown on his face. I�ve never had a baby look at me like that before. I must be really tired.�

     �Yeah, you should be,� said Josh. �With all that�s happened, I wouldn�t be surprised if we both saw him get up and run out of here.� Both men would have chuckled had there not been a dead mother lying before them. Instead, they shook their heads and lowered their eyes in accord.

     Josh cupped his hands under the baby�s head and bottom and then carried him gingerly to the other side of the room like a soap bubble he didn�t want to pop. He handed the infant to the pediatrician waiting with a receiving blanket draped across her outstretched arms.

     Dr. Rudison stood up and looked at Clair�s still, ash-gray face for the first time since he had delivered her baby. Her mouth hung partially opened and her eyes looked sealed. The sickness of her pregnancy had sucked in her cheeks from a convex of health to a concave of death. Her hair was tussled about in a disorderly array.

     The doctor widened his scope and took in the sight of a defeated wife and mother lying motionless, her innards settling in a pan of blood and afterbirth on a pushcart at her side. Her legs were hoisted and spread apart with her feet bound to stirrups by leather restraining straps. Her brown and red vital fluids soaked the foot of the bed. Dr. Rudison asked the bedside nurses to release Clair�s legs immediately.

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