When they were allowed into the room again Harold told the girl what he was doing and she said, Yes, he should please do that, and he touched her on the arm and walked out. Raymond sat down again on the chair near her bed. When the contractions came he offered what encouragement he could think of to give her and she worked hard, and time continued to pass.
Then sometime later they told Raymond to step out into the hall again. He stood and waited for them to finish examining her but it took longer than usual, and then they came out, wheeling the girl on the bed and he saw her and she looked at him and smiled a little, and they took her on down the hallway before he could think to say anything to her at all or even to make some gesture of hope for her sake. One of the nurses informed him that Dr. Martin was giving her oxytocin by i.v. drip to accelerate the labor and they were moving to delivery now. The nurse said he should go outside and get some air, he looked like he needed it. One of them would find him afterward.
Is she going to be okay?
Yes. You mustn’t worry.
He stood outside at the back entrance to the hospital in the fresh air and stood just breathing and waiting, not leaning against anything but simply standing away from the wall and the porch support as if he had been located there by some happenstance and told not to move or to lean against anything that might hold him up or support him until somebody should come and tell him he could do otherwise. No one else was out there. He stared toward the alley and the back parking lot. He stood, and didn’t move. His arms dangled at his sides. An hour later Dr. Martin found him that way, still standing in a kind of rigid isolation on the back step.
McPheron?
Raymond slowly looked at him.
You can see her now.
Victoria?
Yes.
Is she alive?
What? Of course she is.
She’s all right?
She’s awake and she’s talking. But she’s tired. Don’t you want to know about the baby?
What is it?
It’s a girl.
And you say Victoria Roubideaux is all right.
Yes.
Raymond studied him.
And what you say, that’s the truth.
Yes. I tell you, she’s all right.
I didn’t know, Raymond said. I was afraid . . . Then roughly he stooped forward and took hold of old Dr. Martin’s hand and pumped it hard, two times, and let it go, and then he started back inside.
She still had the baby with her in the bed lying on her chest when he entered the room in the maternity ward, and she was gazing at the baby, holding it close. She looked up when he came in, her eyes shining.
He says you’re okay, Raymond said.
Yes. Isn’t she beautiful? She turned the baby toward him.
He looked at it. The baby had a full thatch of crow-black hair and its red face was misshapen a little, pushed out of its true shape, and there was a scratch on its cheek, and he thought in his inexperience that the baby looked like an old man, that it resembled nothing so much as some old wrinkled grandpa, but he said, Yes, she’s a beautiful little thing.
You want to hold her?
Oh, I don’t know about that.
You can.
I don’t want to harm her.
You won’t. Here. You’ve got to support her head.
He took the baby in her white hospital blankets and looked at her, holding her fearfully out in front of his old face as though she were a piece of rigid but delicate kitchen crockery.
My goodness, he said after a minute. The baby’s eyes looked up at him without blinking. Well, my my. My lord almighty.
While he was holding the baby, Harold came into the room. They said I’d find you in here now, he said. You’re all right?
Yes, the girl said. It’s a little girl. You can hold her too.
Harold was still dressed in his work clothes, with hay dust on the shoulders of his canvas chore jacket, bringing with him the smell of the outdoors and of cattle and of sweat. I better not get over-close, he told her. I’m not tidy.
You can just wrap the blanket around her tighter, she said. She’s got to get used to you sometime.