The Fall of Never(56)

Marie said, “He’s been having nightmares.”

Chalmers laughed in his deep-belly way. “You’re about to be a father, Carlos,” Chalmers said. “I’ll grant you some nervousness. But don’t overdo it. You should be calm, like Marie here.”

“She’s a tough one, all right,” he said, smiling at his wife. But all he could see was blood. “I’m very proud of her.”

“She’s doing great,” Chalmers agreed. He adjusted two suctions on the side of Marie’s belly and clicked on a small machine mounted on the wall. The sound of a washing machine heard from some great distance away filled the room. “You hear that? There’s your baby’s heartbeat.”

“Oh,” Marie managed, a loss for words. “Oh-oh-oh…”

“It’s fast,” Mendes said.

“It’s perfectly normal,” Chalmers assured him.

“It sounds fast,” Mendes repeated. Chalmers gave him a sideways glance.

The examination lasted roughly one hour, after which Bruce Chalmers assured the couple that he could find no cause for alarm, and that everything was fine. “You’re like a clock, Marie,” Chalmers told her. “Everything’s running on time.”

“Maybe poor Carlito can sleep now,” she joked.

Chalmers laughed. “Maybe. What do you think, Carlito?” he said, causing Marie to giggle at Chalmers’s use of her husband’s pet-name.

“I think I’m fine,” he told them both. Then as an afterthought: “Could you tell us what the baby’s sex is at this point?”

“No!” Marie nearly shouted. “No, Carlito, we agreed, remember?”

“I know, I’m just curious, sweetheart.”

“I could tell you, yes,” Chalmers said. “If you wanted to know…”

“No,” Marie insisted, “we don’t.”

In the hallway, as his wife filled out medical papers, Mendes thought, If I knew the sex of the baby and the baby turned out to be a girl, I could rest easy. Then I’d know what Nellie Worthridge said was just a bunch of nonsense and I could rest easy. If only I knew…

A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked into the smiling face of Bruce Chalmers. “Can we talk just for a minute?”

“All right.”

Mendes followed Chalmers down the hallway. They paused just outside the men’s room. Chalmers tapped a pen against his left index finger as he spoke.

“Carlos, what’s bothering you?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“It’s something. Tell me. You’re having trouble sleeping? You’re worried about the baby? Well, that’s normal. But you can tell me if it’s something else, you know. Is it something else?”

Yes, Doctor, I’m afraid that our baby will be born dead just like the old crippled woman predicted, and I’m also afraid of these dreams I’ve been having where my wife gives birth to a bloody, pulsating mutant.

“There’s nothing,” he told Chalmers. “Just sleep. I’ve been working too hard lately.”

Chalmers nodded. “I know how it is downtown. You should take some time off, relax, spend it with your family. You’re going to be a father soon, Carlos. You’re about to face a lifetime of difficulties, but also a lifetime of some pretty great stuff too. You work too hard, Carlos. You always have. You need to take some time for yourself.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t just lip service.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re right.”

“I am. Listen to me, then, all right? Do me a favor here? It’s not doing Marie any good for you to be working yourself into the ground. Now, if you want, I can give you something for those nightmares. I can have you sleeping through the night like a baby, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m good.”

“Suit yourself. But my primary concern here is Marie and that baby. So I don’t want you driving that pretty little wife of yours crazy.”

“You’re right,” he said, suddenly anxious to get home. “Thank you.”

When they arrived home, Mendes’s mother had prepared a stew for them. “Everything is good?” she asked her son.

“Good, Mamma. The baby’s fine.”

“This is good,” his mother said, hobbling around the table and taking a seat by the window. Frost had formed on the pane. “And you?”

“Me?”

“Why you’re not sleeping.”

“Mamma,” he said, “Bruce Chalmers is an obstetrician…”

“He said Carlito is working too hard, Mamma,” Marie said while filling their bowls with stew.

“This I knew,” his mother said. She hooked a crooked finger in his direction. “You see what I’ve been saying? Maybe you don’t listen to your mother, Carlos, but maybe now you listen to a doctor, eh?”

“I’m all right,” he insisted. It had become his own personal litany.

“All this work is not for good,” his mother continued. “You work so hard and you forget to remember the important things. You have the stress.”

“I’m not forgetting anything, Mamma.”