Alchemist by Peter James

obstetrician said quietly to Alan. ‘Have you been abroad somewhere?’
    â€˜No one’s identified it yet,’ Alan Johnson said. ‘The Centre for Tropical Diseases thin –’
    His voice was cut short as his wife’s belly seemed suddenly to stretch in three different directions at once; for an instant the bare skin looked like molten lava bubbling in a volcano. The obstetrician stepped back to her side and the team of medics closed in around Alan’s wife, blocking his view.
    He still stood at the back of the small theatre, fearfullyscanning the readouts on the digital gauges. He identified the pulse monitor, watched with sickening despair as the orange waves and troughs seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. He pressed his hands together and closed his eyes, whispering quietly: ‘Please God, don’t let her die, don’t let my darling Sarah die, let her live, please let her live.’
    Then he said the Lord’s Prayer, followed by more prayers, then the Lord’s Prayer again. Prayer sustained him during the next few minutes, then he swayed giddily, and had to steady himself against a tiled wall.
Can’t pass out
,
not
now
,
can’t
.
    There was a sudden flurry around the operating table. Two orderlies had wheeled in a large box of apparatus on wheels. He heard the sharp hiss of compressed air. Then again, then a silence. He opened his eyes and the room slid past him as if he were viewing it through a train window. A hand took his arm, he heard the obstetrician’s voice, gentle but weary.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Mr Johnson.’
    He looked down at his wife through tear-filled eyes. One of the nurses was already turning off the drips that had been sustaining her. Another was disconnecting the wires from a monitor. Her belly still thrashed wildly and Alan found himself having to comprehend in a single moment that his wife was dead but that their child was still alive inside her.
    Then the surgeon made an incision down Sarah’s navel. A band of blood followed the blade’s path.
    â€˜I –’ Alan mouthed. ‘I – she’s – she’s –?’ His voice trailed and no one noticed that he had spoken; they were all concentrating now, two nurses clamping back the cut skin, the surgeon pushing his gloved hands inside the opening, a third nurse swabbing. His view became blocked.
    Then a surgically gloved hand raised into the air a tiny, wriggling creature trailing a long white cord.
    Alan Johnson’s spirits lifted a fraction. The creature was moving. Sarah’s baby!
Their
baby. Their baby was born! God had made this bit go right!
    He pushed his way through the forest of green gowns, barely registering the sudden eerie silence, not seeing the frowns above the masks.
    Then he froze. Stared in disbelieving horror. At the creature. The child. His and Sarah’s child.
    No. Oh God, please
no
.
    The tiny human shape coated in wet blood and vernix was thrashing like a hooked fish. He made himself study the head, where the face should be except there was no face; just a mass of hideously twisted and misshapen flesh; blank skin; no nose, no mouth; just one eye at an odd angle in the centre of what might be the forehead.
    â€˜Jesus,’ someone behind him said.
    â€˜It’s alive,’ someone else said. ‘It’s alive.’
    â€˜Male.’
    Alan stood transfixed; a cowl. He had read somewhere that babies were sometimes born with one; they would take the cowl off in a moment and it would be fine.
He
would be fine;
their son
would be fine.
    The surgeon turned the baby round; its back was dark. As Alan looked closer he realized the skin of the baby’s back was covered in thick matted hair.
    He let out a moan. Someone caught him as his legs buckled. Two nurses helped him towards the door. He tried to walk but his legs would no longer support him. They helped him sit on a chair in the corridor. He saw a fire extinguisher