When you see someone dying, it’s hard to know what to do. The hardest part of the whole experience is that you have to confront your own mortality, that’s why we cry. At least that’s why I do. I had spent years numbing my own emotions, pretending none of these things actually exist, but one day I had enough. There was a child born two months early, his heart was born outside.
He was quite ugly, as most babies are. Hairy, small and frail. His skin was wrinkled. You know, when you tell people you’re a pediatrician they expect you to be good with kids. Which I am, but only when I’m operating them. Outside the context of the hospital, I find them to be quite annoying, really. I don’t have that maternal instinct people would expect from me. But I’m also protective of the future. I know I am going to die someday, and the world needs to keep on living.
Anyway, this child was born to a sixteen year old girl. She had planned on giving him up because he was unwanted. I had learned all of this because she constantly interrupted the radiologist in charge of her ultra-sounds with sordid details about her boyfriend, how he forced her to have sex without a condom, how he would beat her when he was drunk, and how he left her when she announced her pregnancy. I normally only nodded whenever I heard a patient talk, I knew it was the only way to help them relax sometimes. If you’ve ever been pregnant, you know that pediatricians normally don’t oversee pregnancies, but I work in Compton, and we are understaffed. Most patients here don’t know the difference between a pediatrician or an OB/GYN, they don’t know that anesthesia is actually so difficult that one surgeon studies that as their specialty while others may operate in various parts; they’re just happy someone is attending them.
Numb as I was about my feelings most of the times, I always had a queasy feeling whenever I helped the OB/GYN nurses deliver a child. I had learned a bit under some of the other doctors that usually delivered children, but since this wasn’t my specialty, I always worried about whether or not I would cause any complications for the child. This girl… I forgot her name, Patricia? Something like that, I don’t really take the time to learn patients’ names. I remember her birth was quite complicated, she screamed a lot, even after we gave her medication to ease the pain. As soon as she saw her son, she screamed.
“Get it away from me! I don’t want it! I don’t want it!”
We took care of her, cleaned her and her child, and took him away as she had requested. The entire process was odd. I never thought of having a child, I thought they were annoying, but I never thought that people who had them actually hated them. I even thought abusive parents had to love their children, I just thought they didn’t know how to express their love.
I was checking the charts of a woman sharing a room with this girl, she was lovingly breast-feeding her child while this Patricia girl sulked. She looked tired and half-dead. ”Ma´am,” she looked like she was in another world, “I need you to sign this. It’s for your child. I have to operate on him today. It could get complicated because of the condition in which he was born.”
“I don’t have a child,” she said softly.
“Legally you do. Whether you like it or not. You said you would give him up after his birth, and you can, when we fix him.” I passed the authorization papers to her and she turned away. ”Ma’am? I’ll let you think about it for a bit. But only for a bit.”
I went to babies´ward to check up on the other children. This young boy was in an incubator. I had seen complicated cases before but they had never really meant anything except a chance to practice my skills in the operating room. I finished all my routine check-ups and then went home, as my shift was done. I found a nurse, “Please go into room 312, and have Patricia sign this. Page me if there are any complications.”
I went to sleep and did not receive an expected page. The next day the baby was gone.
“What happened?” I asked the head of the Pediatrics.
“He’s gone. We tried to save him but we couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you page me? His mother was my patient.”
“We had it all under control, poor kid wouldn’t have made it long anyway, with a mother like that,” she turned around and continued to check up on the other children. I began to do my job, but there was a lump on my throat for several weeks every time I heard a child cry.
The voice in this piece is such a powerful, raw, and beautiful one and really, to me anyway, makes it so tangible – I feel like I’m reading a confessional. I love the irony of the narrator: she is a pediatrician and knows quite a lot and yet, she has the most to learn throughout the piece.
This is such an amazing example of flash fiction because it draws the reader in swiftly, strums their heartstrings and leaves them wanting more yet feeling satisfied – I feel like your stories always do this so well.
Editing wise, I really appreciate the opening paragrah because it does entices the reader in, however I feel like it doesn’t quite align with the rest of the piece. I mean, obviously it does match the tone of the piece of immortality and whatnot but perhaps during editing making it more personal to the story? Maybe that is the writer’s point, but I feel like the rest of the piece has this confessional tone and to really capture that more in the opening paragraph would be splendid! Also, are babies usually born with enough hair to deem them “hairy”?
Phrases I adore: “There was a child born two months early, his heart was born outside” – I absolutely appreciate how this sentence just flows and that it’s the ending sentence of the opening paragraph; so bold and graphic. “I know I am going to die someday, and the world needs to keep on living” – just beautiful. “I even thought abusive parents had to love their children, I just thought they didn’t know how to express their love” – so honest and just plain good.
Initially, I saw this story as a means of dispelling myths about childbirth. “He was quite ugly, as most babies are” seems contradictory to what most people believe. But since she’s a doctor (who works with OB/GYN), I suppose she has an unbiased view of babies. She must see a lot of them that aren’t hers.
Then there’s the idea that we only cry because we are confronting our own mortality, not because we are crying for the loved one. This too is a major social contradiction. It sets up that this character is really rooted in reality, and we find this established further when we find out where she works and lives.
This makes it all the more powerful when she gains an attachment for the child at the end. I love this part. She’s so shocked that a mother could be so repulsed by her child. Because she herself is so objective in her view of children (“There was a child born two months early, his heart was born outside.”), I guess she can’t understand how a mother can be so repulsed by her own child, because she thinks objectively like a doctor and her mind is not clouded by the myths that mothers have about their pregnancies. I suppose (and this is not entirely clear) she decides that nobody would love this child and she becomes attached to it. It’s a child only a doctor could love.
Though I love the Hell out of this story, I would like a stronger voice from the Head of Pediatrics. I can’t imagine this person or their voice. Some part of me thinks that this person is lying, that maybe they didn’t try to save this kid because they, too, were so repulsed by it. But then, the “with a mother like that” makes me think that maybe this person shared some of the objectivity of our narrator. However, unlike our narrator, this person did not become emotionally attached. It’s the ending, the most, that could use a little revising. Good luck and thank you for this story!
Various of folks write about this matter but you wrote down really true words!
My opinion, your best work to date. The narrator seems pretty cold, but after a while, after getting to know her, I realize, the reader realizes, the reasons why she is the way she is. Not that it’s good or bad, or excuses, but the reasons. Professionals who have jobs that deal with life and death, doctors, soldiers, morticians, nurses, all seem to have this ability to become emotionless which helps them with their work. But not even they can ever escape the fact that they are human. And they continue with that psychological dance.
You captured it here, in this piece. At least, that’s what I got out of the piece. The reason why I think it’s one of your better works is because is usable for a lot of different stories. It opens up a lot of directions for you to go, while at the same time, being precise, self-sufficient, and concise like flash.
there was an unnoticed efficiency to the piece, which, is what good art is. unnoticeable. The reader, me, listens because the writing is presented in such a way.
Well done.
Love your stories and your voice. I agree that this was the strongest your voice has been.
“There was a child born two months early, his heart was born outside.” Beautiful imagery. I wanted to know more about this. At first I thought it was metaphorically born outside.
I liked that we got to know the narrator more and in the end, she doesn’t seem as cold as the other character who shrugs off the baby’s death.
as others have said, i do really like the narrator’s inner voice.
i love the set up of her being a pediatrictian, but not liking kids outside of that. it’s a rare one, i think. or, at least, one that is rarely highlighted.
i think, if you were to edit this piece at all, i would work on the dialogue just a little. although her inner voice is great, i think her speech is a little bit stiff. she comes off as very matter of fact, but i think she’d be a little softer with her words…when talking to the woman, about her baby. but other than that, great story.
“We had it all under control, poor kid wouldn’t have made it long anyway, with a mother like that.” So very true!
What I liked most about the piece was how you squeezed in character change connected to external change from beginning to end: doctor doesn’t like children, doctor witnesses a tragic case in which others too do not care, doctor starts to feel for children. Bravo!