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Show occasional cup of stale coffee or a few words of encouragement. Other new fathers have appeared and disappeared throughout the afternoon, passing out cigars as a way to feel a part of things. Cheap tobacco presses against his chest. As a man used to being in charge, only recently released from his tour of duty in Vietnam where he had served as a legal advisor, he does not wait well. He also has an innate distrust of doctors, mostly because they possess a knowledge that he does not. All afternoon he has struggled with himself not to move beyond the swinging doors and see how things are going. While he has delivered calves and colts as a young boy in Nebraska on his family's farm, he knows nothing of delivering a baby. Even given his own ignorance, though, he knows that a wait this long is not good. He considers calling his parents but decides against it. Long distance is expensive; only bad news justifies the cost. Because they haven't lived in Kingsville long enough to make the kind of friends who appear at the hospital with brown paper bags full of food, he rarely looks up when someone enters the room. Instead he rereads National Geographic. Occasionally he walks to the nursery to make sure that his first child hasn't arrived in this world without his knowledge. The same babies sleep there every time, bound tightly in hospital blankets. As afternoon pushes into evening, he stops imagining what his child might look like. A doctor appears. He bursts into the waiting room, having not even taken the time to change his blood-soaked scrubs. Sweating and out of breath, it is as if he has been the one in labor. The young man-stunned by the material fact of his wife's blood-finds himself rehearsing over and over the patterns created by the mint green |
