Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Beach Ball Blob

I was brushing my teeth when the cab arrived. It honked, so I hurried; I wiped my mouth, grabbed my purse, and ran downstairs. I checked the front door, then walked out the back and locked it behind me. The cab waited in the grassy alley beyond the back yard.

Inside my friends Kelly and Matt waited with a month-old girl: their (dream-) infant, Mona. I climbed in. Kelly's forehead was set with deep lines. Matt pushed his glasses up on his nose and gave me a half-hearted smile.

As we drove away, Kelly handed me Mona, an angel wrapped in a green & white checked blanket. Her beauty was like a balm, lapping at me, covering me in her glow. She slept in my arms as we bumped down the alley, turned onto the road, and headed into town.

The taxi dropped us in front of the hospital. We took the elevator up to Pediatrics. Kelly sat on one of the hard plastic chairs, her mouth pinched in a line. Matt paced the length of the room. Finally we were called back for Mona’s appointment.

The doctor took Mona out of her blanket and put her into one of the little cart-beds hospital nurseries use: a clear plastic bin on a roller cart with lock-able casters. Then he looked at each of us in turn. My hands were shaking a little. Kelly kept stepping forward and backward, as if she wanted to see, didn’t want to see; wanted to see, didn’t want to see.

The doctor waited, and then suddenly Mona became a blob—a mushy, transparent, gelatinous-but-not-slimy blob about the size of an extra-large beach ball. She was like a giant cell: a clear outer lining protecting a mess of stuff inside. I could see bright bits of her, but it was like a Picasso—jumbled, little in the right place. She was going through a developmental stage all children experienced: necessary for some reason, but dangerous because the infants had to become self-contained for a few moments, receiving no help or care from parents, doctor, or world. It was a transition like the one newborns go through when they stop being kept alive by their umbilical cords and have to survive or die on their own.

We waited.

Then at some signal I couldn't see, the doctor plunged both of his hands into this mass—not hurting Mona—and in so doing effected some sort of medical-magical prestidigitation...and then Mona was just an infant again, perfect and healthy and pristine.

the end.

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