It's Alive!

by Richard Woodley

  Lenore stared at the ceiling, her eyes wide. “I’m glad we decided to have this baby after all,” she heard herself saying. “It wouldn’t have been right to stop it. It would have been so easy and legal, but so selfish. It’s right to have the baby . . .”

  “Lenore sweetheart,” Frank nuzzled her ear, “don’t even think about that. It’s going to be wonderful. We both want it.”

  “. . . I’m going to have it after all, the baby. It won’t tie you down, Frank, I’ll take care of everything . . .”

  Frank stared after her as the nurse wheeled her bed out and down the corridor.

  He stood watching her wheeled away, until he felt the intern’s impatient stare at the back of his neck. “The fathers’ room. Okay?”

  Three other fathers, or potential fathers, sat in the room, smoking cigarettes, staring at the floor and their knees and their hands, shaking their heads from time to time. Frank stood in the middle of the room, gazing blankly out the window into the blackness.

  One of the fathers had the hiccups. Frank walked out.

  He looked at his watch, lit a cigarette, and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. He began walking casually up the corridor in the direction of the maternity viewing room.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” called a nurse dulcetly from her station, “but you’ll have to go back in the fathers’ room. The babies are out.”

  Frank looked at his watch again without noticing the time, calmly lit another cigarette, shrugged, and went back into the fathers’ room.

  The three other fathers were behaving as a team. Now each was filling a Styrofoam coffee cup from the glass pot on a hot plate.

  “Is there anything to stir this sugar with?” asked the tallest one.

  “Here, use this,” said a sturdy man with a crew cut, handing the other a pencil. “I’ve been using it for the past three hours. After a while, you get to like the taste of lead in your coffee.”

  The third—a chubby, balding man who had apparently been summoned from a convocation of some sort, since he was wearing a lapel sticker that announced, “Hi! I’m Dave Bloomgarden”—stared into his steaming coffee. “I suppose you think you’re joking, but there is an overabundance of lead in all the foods we eat nowadays . . .”

  Frank sat down in the plastic chair opposite Bloomgarden.

  “. . . The fact is, we’re slowly but surely poisoning ourselves, you know that?”

  The other two shook their heads as they paced.

  “Fine world to bring a kid into,” Frank said, smiling.

  “Oh, the buildup of toxic materials in our food substances is frightening,” Bloomgarden went on, fixing his gaze now on Frank. “I could cite you instances of—”

  “You don’t have to lecture us,” said the tallest man, who was dressed in a white turtleneck shirt and green slacks. “Just look out the window every day—get a load of that smog. What’s the difference if we breathe it or eat it?” He did not smile.

  “Maybe we’ll learn to adapt to it,” said the man with a crew cut. His chin was covered with stubble as was Frank’s. “I’m an exterminator.” He stopped pacing and looked at each of the others. “We service the Beverly Hills and Westwood area. Here’s my card.” He held his business card up to the tall man and Frank, then handed it to Bloomgarden, who studied it. “I’m not trying to drum up business or anything.” Bloomgarden started to put the card into his jacket pocket, but the exterminator snatched it back. “The point is, years back we developed this spray to kill roaches and other household pests. But all it ended up doing was creating a new breed of roaches. Bigger and stronger and harder to kill.” He nodded rapidly at his own words.

  “Yeah,” Frank remarked, smiling, “so maybe we’ll all thrive on smog and mercury poisoning and all the rest.” He looked absently at his watch. “Jesus, what’s taking so long?”

  The others nodded and shook their heads in chorus.

  The exterminator pulled a deck of cards from the inside pocket of his plaid sports jacket. “Anybody want to join in a little game of gin?”

  Nobody answered.

  “I hope she’s not having any trouble,” Frank said softly. “She gave birth to the last one in about forty minutes. I thought they said the second one came faster.”

  “What are you complaining about?” said the exterminator, grinning proudly. “My wife’s been in labor for six hours.”

  “Yeah,” the other two nodded.

  A baby’s cry sounded down the corridor. They all turned toward the door for a silent moment, then shook their heads.

  Bloomgarden stepped over to the cigarette machine in the corner and dropped coins into the slot. He waited, looking nervously around at the others, then back at the machine. He rapped it gently. Nothing came out. He slapped it. Then he pounded it, puffing mightily. “Damn thing,” he whined, “stole my fifty cents!” He looked around at the others. “Stole my fifty cents, just like that.” He seemed near tears.

  Frank went over and took him by the shoulders, steering him away from the machine. “Here,” he handed him two quarters, “here’s your money back. And here’s a couple cigarettes. Take it easy. Just sit down and read a magazine.”

  Bloomgarden sat down and shook his head.

  “This everybody’s first?” Frank asked. The three nodded. “My second. It doesn’t help to get rattled.” He smiled. The others looked grim.

  The exterminator dealt a hand of solitaire. “You know what’s the biggest problem in the Beverly Hills area?”

  “Money,” Frank said.

  “Snails. Slugs and snails. They can wipe out a whole lawn in just a few weeks. The folks feel sorry for them. They’re not your usual pest, not like your ants and roaches. Folks just hate seeing all them cute snails lying on their lawn dead.”

  Frank sighed. He walked over and leaned against the door, looking into the corridor. “Isn’t anybody in a happier profession?”

  “Siding,” said the tall man. “Aluminum, plastic brick.”

  “I am,” said Bloomgarden. “Mortician. My job is bringing a ray of happiness to people who are trying to cope.” He smiled professionally, nodding at the others. “What’s yours?”

  “Public relations.”

  “Oh? You mean politics?”

  “No, no,” Frank continued, looking down the corridor, “businesses, all kinds of businesses. Toys, for example. Kids’ toys.”

  “That’s really interesting,” Bloomgarden said. “Why, just think, right here in this room, we represent the care of people from cradle to—”

  “Here’s a magazine,” Frank cut in, handing Bloomgarden a copy of Natural History. “Why don’t you just read for a while.”

  In the delivery room, Dr. Francis worked between the elevated stirrups that held Lenore’s legs. Lenore groaned occasionally, in semi-consciousness. “You’re doing fine,” Francis said. “Just keep breathing evenly. The head’s on its way.”

  A nurse patted Lenore’s brow with a towel.

  “Soon, Dr. Francis?” Lenore mumbled. “Is it soon?”

  “Yes, yes. Just keep pushing, and breathing steadily. Help me, now, if you can. Certainly is a big baby, Mrs. Davis. Do you remember how big Chris was?”

  “Seven something. Oooh, it hurts! I’m sorry.”

  “Seven?” Dr. Francis glanced around at the nurses and interns assisting him. “This one will be at least ten, maybe eleven, or more.”

  He stepped away from Lenore and leaned close to the intern. “Enormous,” he whispered. “Very strange.”

  Suddenly Lenore convulsed in a drawn-out moan. “It wants to be born, doctor, can’t you see? It wants to be born now!”

  Dr. Francis and the intern quickly stepped back to their work. “Head’s coming now, Mrs. Davis, right now. There, I just cut you a little. That wasn’t bad, was it?”

  Her head rocked back and forth.

  “Now, the head, a little more. I’m putting the forceps on the baby’s head now. Help me a little, one more push . . .”

  The inter
n’s eyes widened, and he stumbled back against the wall, staring . . .

  Frank leaned against the fathers’-room door, staring idly down the corridor, at the far end of which he could see the double swinging doors leading to the delivery room.

  A scream came from behind those doors. Then another, many. The delivery-room doors swung violently open, and a doctor staggered out. His green uniform and gauze mask were spattered with blood, and he clutched at his throat with his rubber gloves. He lurched several steps, gargling in his own blood, and fell, still clutching his throat.

  To the screams from the delivery room were added those of the nurses at their station as they gaped, horrified.

  Frank tore down the corridor and dropped to his knees beside the doctor. He carefully pulled down the mask, and saw that it was Dr. Francis. “What, doctor? What?” He sprang to his feet and spun wildly around, looking for help.

  More piercing screams came from the delivery room, then crashes of metal and glass.

  Frank was by now surrounded by nurses, standing or on their knees, quaking, crying hysterically. He pushed savagely through them, fighting his way to the delivery-room doors, unable to hear Dr. Francis choke on his last words, “It’s . . . alive . . .”

  “He’s dying!” a nurse sobbed behind him. “The doctor’s dying!”

  Frank burst through the doors and down the short hallway to the delivery room itself.

  And then he stopped, swayed, and groped for support against the door, staring in at a scene of carnage. He slid inside and along the wall of the room, shaking his head slowly in stunned disbelief.

  Interns and nurses were sprawled grotesquely around the floor in pools of blood. Equipment tables were upended, surgical gear scattered around the room. In the middle of it, rising above the massacre on the silver steel bed sheathed in white, lay Lenore, her legs still in the stirrups. She was quiet and still.

  “Lenore, Lenore—” Frank choked and stumbled toward her, coughing. He slipped in the blood and fell over her, clutching her, hugging her. “Lenore—”

  Her eyes opened slowly. “My baby? My baby?”

  “My god, Lenore, what happened? What happened, Lenore?”

  “Where’s my baby?”

  An intern, propped in a corner like a torn rag doll, groaned softly. His eyes opened, then closed. He raised a hand to his ripped throat, then dropped it.

  Other doctors and nurses now raced into the room, stopping short just inside the door when they met the scene. Then they began scrambling over the bodies. The intern in the corner gasped and gurgled. A doctor bent over him.

  “Alive . . . gone . . .” The intern raised his eyes to the ceiling, to the skylight, then fell over on his side, his head thumping onto the floor, his eyes still staring.

  The doctor bending over him looked up into the skylight. A small hole had been broken through it, the jagged edges of glass tinged with blood.

  “Everyone’s dead,” whimpered a nurse, who sank to her hands and knees.

  “Where’s my baby . . .” Lenore murmured.

  “WHERE’S OUR BABY?” Frank screamed. He reached out this way and that, clutching at the doctors and nurses who were slipping and falling in the gore to check the bodies for life. “WHERE THE HELL’S OUR BABY?”

  Two sets of arms clamped him from the rear. He struggled insanely, but they pulled him away from Lenore and pinned him against the wall.

  A doctor hunched over Lenore, examining her quickly. He turned to Frank, his face expressionless, his voice icily calm. “Your wife’s going to be all right. She’s not hurt. She’s all right.”

  “The baby—she had the baby, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. Of course. The umbilical cord has been severed.” Then, low, to one of the interns: “But not surgically. More like it’s been chewed through!” He nodded to the two interns who held Frank. “Better get him out of here.”

  A nurse keeled over in a faint, and an intern toppled onto her, both becoming sick on the floor.

  Frank wrestled with the arms that held him to the wall. “Where’s the baby, for chrissake! What the hell—in God’s name—Jesus Christ, somebody—”

  The doctor motioned toward the door. “Get him outta here, dammit!”

  Frank planted his elbows against the wall and clenched his fists as he strained against the grip of the interns. “You gotta tell me—”

  “You better come with us,” one of them said. “I’ll get you a sedative. You can lie down. Your wife’s okay. Easy now—”

  “TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!” Frank lurched forward and yanked one intern around, sending him slithering to his knees. “YOU GOTTA TELL ME WHERE MY CHILD IS! GODDAM YOU! SOMEBODY’S GOTTA—”

  A third intern grabbed his free arm and twisted it behind him. Frank snapped his head back in pain. They steered Frank out of the room. Tears rolled down Frank’s face as he stumbled along with them, but no more words came. He twisted his head back to see the doctor in the delivery room staring up at the hole in the skylight.

  The first siren howled in the night, then another, and another, as from different points police cars converged on the small hospital.

  Frank felt numb. He was lying on a bed somewhere in the hospital. Horrifying images swept past his closed eyes. The place was alive with strange sounds: feet running, beds being rolled along; voices, some calm, some crying, some pleading, some directing. “. . . Over here, officer, this one . . . Oh my god . . . It looks like it climbed up . . . Please, nurse, just do as I say . . . The skylight . . . I count five, including . . . She seems okay . . . Couldn’t have been more than two minutes . . . Nobody said anything, except that intern there . . . Maybe the wife will be able to . . . Nobody else was in here . . . No, officer, nobody knows anything . . . Headquarters is sending . . . No, the hole’s not big enough for a grown . . . I’m sorry, sergeant, but that’s all we . . . Yes, autopsies . . . Like claws, an animal . . . I don’t care what the press wants . . .”

  Frank opened his eyes. “Press?”

  A doctor stood over him, looking closely at a hypodermic needle as he depressed the plunger, sending out a tiny spurt of fluid. “This will calm you for a little while, relax you.”

  “I don’t want to relax! I want to talk to my wife.”

  “Plenty of time.” He wiped Frank’s arm with alcohol and stuck the needle in. “We all want to talk to her. She’s the only one who might be able to tell us what happened.”

  “But our baby, is it dead?”

  “No sir, I don’t think—”

  The other doctor in the room hissed.

  “That’s all I can say.”

  Frank felt the first waves of sleep advancing on him. He struggled to stay awake. “The press, I better talk to the press . . . I can handle them. I know just how to . . .”

  Lenore stared up through the fog at the two heads above her. One had a doctor’s green cap on it. The other was hatless. Gray curly hair. They were not familiar.

  “It hurt,” she said weakly, “it hurt very much. It was coming. The head was coming. Forceps . . . the doctor said. I must have passed out.” The faces stared at her, saying nothing. “Why . . . what’s wrong? Can I see my baby now? Will someone bring my baby?” She tried to rise, but had no strength. “Won’t somebody say something? There isn’t anything wrong with it, is there? Please answer me!”

  “Just be calm, Mrs. Davis. I’m Dr. Norten. This is Detective Perkins. Just tell us whatever you remember.”

  “Detective? Police? Why isn’t Frank here? My husband. He’ll tell me everything. He’ll tell you everything. Will someone—please get my husband?” She closed her eyes and her chest shook with sobs. “Tell me—that—my baby didn’t die! Please tell me it didn’t die!”

  “Mrs. Davis.” Detective Perkins, with his sad, furrowed face, leaned over her. “We believe your baby is very much alive. We need to know what happened to cause—”

  The doctor elbowed him sharply.

  Lenore looked at the detective. “I don’t know. Except I had
my baby. Frank will know everything. Or Dr. Francis. Why isn’t Dr. Francis here?”

  The doctor gently pulled the detective away from the bed, far enough so that Lenore could no longer hear them. “I’m afraid she’s not going to be able to help, just now.”

  “But somebody’s got to—”

  “Lieutenant,” the doctor’s voice rasped impatiently, “we’ve got several people dead here. They are the only ones who would know what—”

  “But this one’s alive, doctor—the mother. And we’ve got another one alive, one ‘something.’ Out there somewhere. I can’t help the dead. I’ve got to know what we’re after.”

  “You’re after a baby, lieutenant, a baby that might have killed five people. That’s all anybody knows.”

  Several confused and alarmed ambulatory patients milled around the night receptionist’s desk. She shook her head and tried to calm them. “I’m sorry. Just our rules for tonight. No one’s allowed in the maternity section. You’ll have to return to your rooms.”

  Nurses had run up to the patients by now, and were leading them back to their rooms.

  A uniformed policeman came through the doors that led into the hallway of the maternity ward and helped the nurses herd away the frightened patients. “Sorry for the noise, folks. There’s been a slight accident. Nothing for you to worry about . . .”

  The receptionist was on the phone. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know exactly what’s going on. I have no information . . . That’s right, they don’t answer my questions either. A scare of some kind. But I’m sure it’s just a precaution. You know how doctors get, about staph infections or such things . . . Later on today, or perhaps tomorrow . . .”

  A set of flashing lights appeared on a car outside. This one was not police, however, but press. White lettering on the door said, “KBOP Radio-TV.” A reporter with a note pad got out and pawed his way against the outcoming crowd of would-be visitors. He was followed by a cameraman lugging his machinery, and a sound man with his audio equipment slung from a shoulder strap. They were stopped at the door by the police officer.

  “Sorry—”