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6.2
Recovery
Spencer Hyde

The Doctor stands by the monitor and watches the contraction line go up and the heart line go down and says Up the Pitocin and the Mother looks worriedly at the Father but the Father can only see the Baby’s vitals and the Mother heaves in pain and the parabolas offset, mirror, and the epidural isn’t working. And the Doctor says It has to be now and he pushes a button and five nurses show and wrap the Doctor as he pirouettes and gloves-up and looks at the Mother and she stirrups her feet and the nurses say It’s okay we are right here on repeat. The Father says No tears it’s going to be all right you’ll see you’ll see and the Doctor says Push and make it count. The Mother screams and the scream stands in the room and becomes a constant the Doctor must move around to get at the Baby and he says I see hair and the Father sees the black hair and emits a guarded laugh and he thinks Wow it’s a real living thing not just those small bumps in the stomach, those small kicks, the hiccups, the imprint of a hand slowly moving over the ribs and showing for the Father to say Hey little guy, you ready to meet mommy and daddy, buddy? The Mother grabs the Father by the shoulder and says I can’t believe the Baby has hair and they both look through wet eyes and hurried smiles and the Doctor yells for more fluid for the stress on the Baby and the Mother yells and the Doctor pulls and holds the Baby in the crook of his arm and the nurses spin as the Doctor holds the cord and pushes hoping to get blood into the Baby, the blood that wasn’t there because the head is blue and the eyes are closed and the room holds no more screams. The Mother says What is happening and the Doctor is hurried and the Father looks over shoulders and the cord is still connected to Mother and the Doctor isn’t offering the Father scissors or saying Go ahead dad, cut it right here and the Mother isn’t saying Look at those eyes and the Baby isn’t making a fist the size of its own heart, curling, re-curling his fingers in and out and moaning and coughing and working out those lungs and tightening his toes and curling, curling. The Doctor says Dammit and Hurry and mumbles about oxygen levels. The Father holds the Mother’s hands tight and looks her in the eyes and says We got this and I’m right here and she doesn’t smile and somewhere in the skyline periphery of the Father’s mind the clouds are forming and rolling in with distant but deep and lasting thunder. The Doctor cuts the cord without asking and it hangs below the Mother’s feet like a gleaming telephone wire and the Father is angry for the discussions about fingernails growing in the womb and measuring the fetus by the size of a different fruit each week. The Doctor wraps the Baby and it is quiet and it is still and the face is not very warm and the hands are not clutching and the mouth is not rooting and the small sighs are not repeating. The floor is covered in afterbirth and the cord is hanging and the Doctor pulls out the rest slithering into a shiny silver bin and says You need to decide if you want to hold the Baby. The placenta, membranes, and umbilical cord are tested and later the Mother tapes the box and writes Winter Baby Stuff and folds tiny hats and the Father opens a large bill. The autopsy and needing to know only, only he wonders if part of the cost is for the set of smaller tools for the internal anatomy, this cramped universe in its becoming, the Baby’s anatomy a horoscope dimly lit with the afterimage of stars already exploded, sewn up and placed in a pocket of black bag. 97 ounces. The sun will go up and down and up and down and the Father’s mind will storm and the snow will snow and the Mother will feel this phantom weight in her stomach, in her arms, rocking back and forth, back and forth.

Spencer Hyde is an MFA candidate at BYU in Utah, and editor of fiction at elsewhere journal. His work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and Inscape: A Journal of Literature and Art.