Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [5]
She groaned.
Leon returned, out of breath, with a stack of newspapers. The doctor opened them out and started spreading them under Emily and all around her. “Now, these,” he said conversationally, “will grant us some measure of antisepsis.” Leon didn’t seem to be listening. The doctor wrapped two newspapers around Emily’s thighs. She began to blend in with the car. He hung a sports section down the back of the seat and anchored it to the window ledge with the track shoe she’d been holding all this time.
“Next,” he said, “I’ll need two strips of cloth, two inches wide and six inches long. Tear off your shirttail, Leon.”
“I want to quit,” Emily said.
“Quit?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
The cook came out of Maria’s Home-Style. He was a large man in an apron stained with tomato sauce. For a moment he watched Leon, who was standing by the car in nothing but his jeans, shakily tugging at his shirttail. (Leon’s ribs showed and his shoulder blades were as sharp as chicken wings. He was much too young for all this.) The cook reached over and took the shirt and ripped it for him. “Thanks,” said Leon.
“But what’s the use of it?” the cook asked.
“He wants two strips of cloth,” said Leon, “two inches wide and six inches long. I don’t know why.”
The cook tore again, following instructions. He gave the shirt to Leon and passed the strips to the doctor, who hung them carefully on the inner door handle. Then the cook propped a wide, meaty hand on the car roof and bent in to nod at Emily. “Afternoon,” he said.
“Hello,” said Emily politely.
“How you doing?”
“Oh, just fine.”
“Seems like he wants to come on and get born,” the cook said, “and then he wants to go back in a ways.”
“Will you get out of here?” Leon said.
The cook let this pass. “Those two girls you sent are calling the ambulance,” he told the doctor. “They’re using my free phone.”
“Good,” the doctor said. He cupped the baby’s head in his hands—a dark, wet, shining bulge. “Now, Emily, bear down,” he said. “Maria, press flat on her belly, just a steady, slow pressure, please.”
“Soo now, soo now,” the cook said, pressing. Leon crouched on the curb, gnawing a knuckle, his shirt back on but not buttoned. Behind them, a little crowd had gathered. The teenaged girls stood hushed, forgetting to dip into their fudge sack. A man was asking everyone if an ambulance had been called. An old woman was telling a younger one all about someone named Dexter, who had been a breech birth with multiple complications.
“Bear down,” said the doctor.
There was a silence. Even the traffic noises seemed to have stopped.
Then the doctor stepped back, holding up a slippery, bleak lump. Something moved. There was a small, caught sound from someplace unexpected. So fast it seemed that everyone had been looking away when it happened, the lump turned into a wailing, writhing, frantic, indignant snarl of red arms and legs and spiraled telephone cord. “Oh,” the crowd said, breathing again.
“It’s a girl,” said the doctor. He passed her to the cook. “Was a girl what you wanted?”
“Anything! Anything!” the cook said. “So long as she’s healthy. Soo, baby.”
“I was talking to Emily,” the doctor said mildly. He had to raise his voice above the baby’s, which was surprisingly loud. He bent over Emily, pressing her abdomen now with both palms. “Emily? Are you all right? Bear down again, please.”
While he pressed, she couldn’t get air to speak, but the instant he let up she said, “I’m fine, and I’d like my daughter.”
The cook seemed reluctant to hand her over. He rocked the baby against his apron, thought a moment, and sighed. Then he gave her to the doctor. The doctor checked her breathing passages—the mashed-looking nose, the squalling cavern of a mouth. “With such a racket how could she not be fine?” he asked, and he leaned in to lay her in Emily’s arms. Emily nestled the baby’s head against her shoulder, but the wailing went on, thin and passionate, with a hiccup at the end of each breath.
“What’d you do with those cloths?” the doctor asked Leon.
Leon was standing up now,