Only Children by Rafael Yglesias Page B

mouth. Her skin was white, absent of the color of life; her muscles were dead, helpless against gravity; only her chest rose and fell slowly to indicate her continued existence.
    Now he hung on to her hand because he needed to feel her presence, to know she lived. There was still warmth in the delicate fingers and narrow palm. Around him many people made noise, hustling about frantically, but a silence enveloped him. He felt the center of his head yawn queasily from fatigue. He was exhausted by the fight to get to this finish, a climax he had assumed would be triumphant, beautiful, ecstatic. Eric looked at her destroyed body and he knew he was looking at death.
    “Okay, I’m cutting,” he heard Ephron say, and he winced.
    The monitor’s numbers were unforgiving: 32, 40, 33, 31.
    “Baby’s down. We won’t do a section. I’ll use forceps.”
    A nurse approached with enormous metal hands; they stretched from her arms like the grotesque fingernails of a monster robot. He realized only a second before Ephron put their wide scoop-shaped ends into his wife that they were the forceps. Surely they would tear Nina to shreds and squash his infant’s head. Why were they killing them?
    He closed his eyes, finally unable to look, beaten even in his passivity as an observer.
    “Head’s out!” someone yelled.
    He looked. Growing out of Nina like a melon was a huge, slimy skull. Around its neck, thick as a hangman’s noose, and just as tight, was the umbilical cord.
    “Cord! Cord!” Ephron screamed as though it were a ghastly creature. “Clamp! Clamp!” Someone instantly put a metal clamp on the umbilical cord. “We’ll cut now!” Ephron was handed what looked like shears, and she angrily cut the umbilical cord right behind the baby’s neck, freeing it of the stranglehold.
    “We’ll clear the shoulders.”
    “Left,” said someone.
    “Right,” said Ephron, and the baby was out. Two huge testicles, discolored and explosive, dominated Eric’s vision. It is a boy, he thought, utterly unexcited by the fact.
    “Baby’s out!” someone said.
    Others, who had been standing behind Ephron like spectators at an accident, grabbed his son and rushed over to a table at the rear. Ephron and the rest turned to watch. He couldn’t see, couldn’t imagine what so many people could even do to a tiny thing like that. It must be dead, he thought. Of course, it’s dead, he argued.
    A fragile wail, a squeak of discomfort broke the suspense. He sighed, but Ephron and the others showed no relaxation; they continued to look over.
    The cries got louder. He saw two of the people move away, tossing cloths into pails. A glimpse of his son: skin bluish, face distorted with pain, a huge, distended belly overwhelming tiny limbs.
    There’s something wrong with him. He’s crippled. He’s brain-damaged. I have a broken son.
    “Placenta,” a nurse said. Ephron returned her attention to forgotten Nina, her body dead, her mouth violated by the medical equipment.
    “Baby’s good,” a man at the table said. “Six, ten.”
    “Your baby’s fine,” a nurse repeated to Eric.
    Eric nodded. Ephron looked at him. Her eyes peered into Eric’s. He tried to smile at Ephron, thinking she needed a sign of his gratitude, but then he realized his mask covered his mouth. Ephron continued to stare at him. She pulled her mask off. Her mouth opened. Then closed. Around him the others seemed embarrassed, lowering their eyes. “What are you doing here?” Ephron asked sharply.
    The question baffled Eric with its existential possibilities. He didn’t know what he was doing there. He was holding Nina’s hand, clutching the narrow palm and long fingers, stuck to its weakness in the hope it could give him strength.
    Ephron’s face changed from irritated surprise to her professional manner. “You’re not supposed to be here when the mother is under total anesthesia.” He didn’t answer. Ephron relaxed some more, coming close to her office manners. “Now