by Chad Kultgen
A minute later Dr. Gibson entered the room and said, “Okay, you ready to do this?”
Karen said, “I want an epidural.”
Dr. Gibson said, “Are you sure?”
Karen said, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Dr. Gibson told the nurse to get the anesthesiologist. Karen could feel the baby’s head descending, putting an almost unbearable amount of pressure on her vagina and anus. She started breathing through her gritted teeth, emitting an audible hiss as spit trickled out of the corners of her mouth. She said, “I need those fucking drugs right fucking now.”
Another contraction made her entire body tense up as the anesthesiologist entered the room and told her that she’d have to sit up and relax her back so the needle could be correctly inserted into her spine. Paul and Lynn helped prop her up and Karen felt a cool liquid on her lower back where the anesthesiologist was sterilizing the injection point. Without warning, Karen felt a sharp stabbing pain in her spine as she was told not to move, and then it was over. She lay back down on the bed and Dr. Gibson said, “Okay, you should be pretty numb from the waist down within a minute or so, but hopefully you’ll still be able to feel the contractions. On the next one, I want you to start pushing when you feel it coming on, all right? And if you can’t feel them, that’s fine. Nothing to worry about. It just means the epidural worked a little too well, and I’ll have to tell you when to push.”
Karen nodded in agreement, still holding on to Paul and Lynn with all her strength as Robert stood in a corner watching. He was in the room when Lynn gave birth to Karen, and he realized he had forgotten how gruesome a scene childbirth could be.
As the drugs started to take effect, Karen was both relieved and scared. Her legs felt paralyzed. She knew this effect was temporary, but losing the ability to move didn’t exactly put her at ease. She could definitely feel her next contraction, but it was an ambiguous feeling—not necessarily painful, just kind of unpleasant. So she pushed, and as she did, she defecated all over herself and the table. The smell of feces was strong and immediate. She was embarrassed, and she felt like vomiting, but the trauma she was suffering during childbirth was more immediate to her than the need to feel any shame or even disgust.
She said, “Sorry, guys.”
Dr. Gibson said, “No need to apologize. This is very common when you’re trying to pass a baby through your body.”
The nurse was already changing the pads under Karen and wiping her down. Even after the cleaning, the smell of feces remained throughout the rest of the event.
With the next contraction, Karen pushed even harder. She wanted this entire thing to be over with as soon as possible. The physical and psychological trauma was more profound than she had ever anticipated. She wondered how the human race survived after the invention of birth control. Had she known how painful the act of giving birth was, she never would have decided to keep the baby.
After two hours of pushing with every contraction, defecating all over herself one more time, urinating on herself, bleeding from her vagina, and sweating, the baby was still not born. Dr. Gibson said, “Okay, I think the epidural may have limited your ability to push with enough force to get her out. So we’re going to give you a little help.”
Another nurse came in with a small device that looked like a suction cup with a vacuum attached to it. Dr. Gibson said, “Every time you push, I’m going to use this to pull, all right?”
Karen nodded in agreement. For the next two contractions, they attempted this method of joint effort, but the baby still would not emerge. Dr. Gibson said, “Well she’s certainly got a big brain, because her head just does not want to come out. So we’re going to make the opening a little larger.”
Karen said, “Sorry, what? How?”
Dr. Gibson said, “Just a tiny cut right at the back of the vagina. You won’t feel it at all because of the epidural, and the baby should come right out. We’re almost there. I promise.”
Karen said, “Are you fucking serious? You’re going to cut my vagina?”
Dr. Gibson said, “It’s an episiotomy, yes. It’s pretty standard procedure when we’re at this point but the baby still isn’t coming out. We don’t have to do it, but I’ve delivered a few babies, and I can tell from our situation, here, that if we don’t do it, your vagina is likely to rip anyway.”
Karen wanted to vomit again. She was sitting on a table covered in her own urine, blood, and feces, in alternating states of agonizing pain and discomfort, and now she had to have her vagina surgically altered. She knew she had no choice, though, and she wanted the process to be over, so she nodded in agreement. She saw her father look away as Dr. Gibson cut her vagina, and she felt Paul’s grip on one of her hands weaken as he looked down and saw blood rushing out of her vagina where the incision was made. He staggered and turned white. Dr. Gibson said, “If you need to sit down, there’s a chair behind you.”
Paul looked away from the blood-soaked pad under Karen and said, “I’m fine. I just didn’t really expect it to be that much blood.”
Karen said, “Can you not say shit like that right now, please?”
Paul said, “Sorry.”
Dr. Gibson said, “Once we get the baby out, we’ll stitch it back up and you’ll be good as new. Okay, now, one more good push should do it. You ready?”
Karen nodded her head, and on the next contraction, she pushed as hard as she could, screaming through the entire process. Dr. Gibson used his suction assistance, and the baby was delivered. Karen was immediately relieved in a way she had never felt before. The pressure that had been building daily in her body for nine months was just gone. There was no scaling it down or slowly tapering it off. It went from being unbearable to nonexistent in a matter of seconds. And more than just a physical relief, Karen felt like the journey she had been on was over. It had come to a conclusion, and she felt good about that.
The nurse stitched the cut at the back of Karen’s vagina. Dr. Gibson took Karen’s daughter, cleaned her, sucked the mucus from her nose and mouth, and a few seconds later Karen, still covered in her own filth, heard her daughter crying. Dr. Gibson laid the baby on Karen’s chest and said, “Congratulations. You have a brand-new healthy baby girl.” Karen looked at her as Paul and her parents leaned in close. It was strange to see this tiny person on her chest, this person who would depend on her for the rest of its life, this person she would worry about for the rest of hers.
Paul said, “This is so weird. I never believed anyone when they said this moment changed the way they felt about kids, and that it was beautiful and all that, but here we are in a room that smells like your crap. You’re covered in sweat and pee and whatever else. And it really is beautiful. She’s beautiful.”
Paul leaned in and kissed his daughter on the forehead as she cried and snuggled against her mother. Lynn said, “I’m so happy.” She looked at her husband and said, “We’re grandparents now.”
Robert said, “I know. It’s good. I feel really old, but it’s good.”
The nurse then moved up to Karen’s stomach and told her that she needed to push a few more times to deliver the placenta. As Karen pushed, the nurse pulled on the umbilical cord that was hanging out of Karen’s vagina and simultaneously massaged her stomach moving the mass of tissue out of her uterus and eventually through her vagina. This was not as traumatic as giving birth, but to Karen it was equally disgusting.
Dr. Gibson said, “We’re going to take her now and put her in observation for a few hours just to make sure everything is all right, which it looks like it is, and we’re going to get you to recovery. You all are welcome to be wherever our new mom feels comfortable having you.”
The nurse took Karen’s daughter away, and another nurse wheeled her into a recovery room. Paul, Lynn, and Robert went out into the waiting room. In the recovery room, the nurse explained to Karen that it was pretty important to try to urinate to get things moving again. So Karen sat on a toilet and forced herself to urinate to the best of her ability, the
epidural still having some effect. When she looked in the toilet, there was some urine, but most of what was in the toilet was blood. The nurse assured her that this was normal and the bleeding would subside in a few days.
Karen remained in the hospital for the next twenty-four hours, per Dr. Gibson’s recommendation, and her daughter spent most of those twenty-four hours nestled in her arms. Paul stayed by Karen’s side the entire time.
The following morning, Tanya arrived with balloons and flowers and Karen’s parents brought some breakfast. They all talked about what name should be given to this little girl who was the center of so much attention for the past months, but Karen had made no decision on the matter. Lynn said, “So you never even thought a little bit about what you might want to call her?”
Karen said, “I thought a lot about it, actually, but nothing ever seemed right.” Then to Paul she asked, “Have you thought of any names?”
Paul said, “I’ve thought of a million names, but I’m with you. It’s such a big thing, I don’t know. We don’t have to name her right now, do we?”
Robert said, “Well, you have to have something on the birth certificate.”
Karen said, “But we have time. We don’t have to do that right away. I kind of want to hang out with her. See what she’s like. You know?”
Paul said, “I couldn’t agree more.”
Tanya said, “You’re going to give the press a conniption if your baby doesn’t have a name.”
Karen said, “Who cares?”
Tanya grabbed the baby’s finger and said, “I’m with you. I think it would be great to keep them guessing, but there are a whole bunch of photographers and press people outside. They have them roped off, kind of out of the way, but they’re definitely going to be getting a bunch of pictures when you come out and they’ll want to know what her name is.”
Paul said, “Isn’t there some back way we can take or something?”
Robert said, “Yeah, do we really have to deal with them?”
Karen said, “You know what? Let them get their pictures and then this is all over. Once they have a picture, it’ll calm them down and hopefully things can get back to being a little more normal. So let’s go out the front door and let them see what they want to see.”
Paul said, “Are you sure?”
Karen said, “Absolutely.”
chapter
thirty-six
James sat in his car, parked on the street near where the press had gathered outside of Cedars-Sinai. He’d been there as long as they had, for a little more than a day. On the radio, he had listened to coverage of Karen Holloway being admitted to the hospital and speculation on how much the baby would weigh, how long it would be, what color its eyes would be, if it would be born with hair and what color that hair might be, as well as what name the child might be given. This disgusted James. He didn’t understand how the entire world could so quickly be swayed by her tricks, by Satan’s tricks.
James prayed as much as he could in between listening to coverage of the event on the radio, asking God to give him one final sign, some instruction on what was certainly the most important part of the plan. He closed his eyes tight and tried to envision God as he asked him for help. Just then, James’s head lurched forward when a news van pulled in too close behind him and ran into his car. The truck only tapped his bumper, it did no damage, but it was enough to jar James out of his silent meditation to God.
As a camera crew rushed out of the van toward the hospital, a woman with them asked James if he was all right and handed him a business card. She told him to call the news station if he had a claim to file, but she didn’t really have time to stay and deal with it. She had to get to the hospital entrance.
James tossed the business card in the passenger’s seat, and that’s when he saw it: God’s final sign. The news van hadn’t hid his car hard at all, certainly not hard enough for the glove box to pop open, but that’s exactly what happened. The glove box was open, and sitting there inside it was the gun James bought in Arizona. James knew what God was asking of him. Just as Pastor Preston had said, before he was corrupted by Satan: Christians were at war with the forces of Satan, and in war, blood must be shed.
James remembered when he heard God’s voice back in his apartment. God told him that he would be called on to make a great sacrifice. James knew that if he did this, if he did what God was asking, he would be making the greatest sacrifice any person is capable of: sacrificing his own life.
He noticed the group of photographers and press people start to stir. They all looked at the hospital door near where they had been sectioned off. The door opened, and a family emerged, with Karen Holloway at the front, being pushed in a wheelchair holding a baby. The press went into a frenzy, with cameras whirring and reporters shouting things to Karen. The police officers on the scene were doing their best to keep the press at bay, but some of them made their way around the barricades to get microphones closer to Karen. James knew that God had created this confusion specifically for him, specifically to complete his divine purpose.
James opened his car door and casually walked across the street so as not to draw any undue attention to himself. He merged into the throng of reporters and photographers unnoticed, made his way around a barricade, slipped in behind a reporter who was interviewing Karen, removed the Glock 17 from inside his jacket, pointed it at Karen’s baby, and fired seven shots in rapid succession, then dropped the gun, put his hands on his head, and kneeled on the ground.
Paul, Lynn, Robert, and Tanya screamed in horrified shock as the police apprehended James and wrestled him to the ground.
epilogue
James Dobbs refused counsel at his trial and chose instead to represent himself. He told the court that he needed no help from anyone but God, whose law was the only law he followed. The trial lasted only one day. The video evidence, which included news footage shot from several different angles, was more than damning. In James’s closing argument, he urged the jury, all of whom were Christian, to understand that he had merely carried out the will of God in disposing of the Antichrist and the woman who brought the Antichrist into the world, both agents of Satan. He appealed to their faith in God and Jesus Christ. He asked each of them to imagine what it would be like to be commanded by God to perform some act, to carry out some part of his plan. He told them that he saw no choice in the matter because he was a man of faith, and he was doing what was righteous and good. The jury deliberated for less than fifteen minutes before returning a verdict that found James Dobbs guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to death. On the day of his execution, James had only one request. He asked to have a pastor read him a passage from the Bible. The pastor read Deuteronomy 28:1–2: And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. When the pastor finished reading, James said, “Amen,” and he was executed.
About the Author
CHAD KULTGEN is a graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. His novels include The Average American Male, The Average American Marriage, The Lie, and Men, Women & Children, the basis of a feature film by Jason Reitman. He lives in California.
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Also by Chad Kultgen
the average american bundle
the average american male
the lie
men, women, and children
the average american marriage
Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photograph © Anup Shah / Getty Images
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Copyright
STRANGE ANIMALS. Copyright © 2015 by Chad Kultgen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been
granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-0-06-211957-5
EPub Edition July 2015 ISBN 9780062119841
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