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Show CHRYSALIS PAGE 26 dash into the elevator. With my robe on and my wood-and-stainless steel bionic arm covered up, no one will know. They'll think I'm one of the mothers. Newborn babies look like Woody Woodpecker. From one of the labor rooms I hear a woman crying for a drink of water. I pass her door quickly, but I notice her hair is wild and her eyes are frightened. At least she'11 have something to show for this visit. She'll have a baby and I'll have a 6-inch scar. "They all look like Woody Woodpecker to me," Mark had said the night our first son was born. The contractions came at increasingly frequent intervals, my abdomen hard, then soft again. Between times I tried to read from a book I had brought: "Three or four days after birth, a fluid called colostrum comes from the breast. It differs from the real milk which usually appears. ..." I closed the book and held my breath against the pain that began again in my back and crawled up and over the mountain in the middle of me. "Is it bad?" Mark asked, slipping a pillow under my back. "What's a little excruciating pain?" I tried to laugh, thinking never, never again will I repeat this performance. it |