The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(4)

Her labor lasted thirty-two hours, a number she would remind me of whenever I acted up. Still, the wait turned out to be nothing compared to the stir my arrival caused. “You emerged with your eyes shut tight,” my mother would say, speaking in a hushed whisper that mesmerized me. In hindsight, I wondered if my entering this world with my eyes shut tight was a genetically predisposed instinct.

My father, who’d chosen to remain down the hall in the hospital’s waiting room, would at this point resume his narrative, explaining how the young doctor entered the room looking more perplexed than tired. “He said, ‘It’s a boy,’” but the doctor’s rote proclamation did not temper my father’s paternal instinct that something was amiss. “I sprinted down the tile linoleum into that room,” he’d say. “And when I entered, I found a crowd of nurses and hospital staff hovering around your mother’s bed like she was Marilyn Monroe.”

But my mother was not the object of their interest. It seemed that when the doctor had placed me upon my mother’s stomach to cut the umbilical cord, I’d finally opened my eyes. And that’s when the euphoria became bewilderment. The doctor froze, slack jawed. The attending nurse let out a yip, which she belatedly tried to cover by placing her hand over her mouth.

“Give me my son,” my mother had said amid the silent stares, whereupon the nurse had swaddled me in a blanket and handed me to her.

This was how my father found us when he waded through the crowd for a closer inspection and looked me in the eyes for the first time.

“What the Sam Hell?” he whispered.





3

My father turned quickly to the obstetrician, who had entered the room and retaken his position at the foot of my mother’s bed. “His eyes are red. Why are his eyes red?”

“I don’t know,” the doctor said.

“Will they stay that color?”

But back then the doctor didn’t know, and he had little ability to research the question. He could only shrug. Another silence ensued, those present holding their collective breath, uncertain what to say or what to think of me. That’s when my mother again took over. “Out,” she’d ordered. “I would like everyone to please leave.”

“That was our first private moment together as a family,” she’d say when recounting the story. “Just you, me, and your father.”

Finally alone, my father started to ask the pertinent question. “Why are—”

But my mother was not interested in why my eyes were red, and she put up a hand to stop him. “I don’t care why,” she’d said.

Several more minutes passed before my father, ever pragmatic, said, “Well then, what shall we call him? We don’t have a name.”

Because of my premature arrival, they’d failed to reach a consensus. My mother suggested Maxwell, but my father had never cared for his name. He’d lobbied for William.

“But we do have a name,” my mother said. “A beautiful name. A name his father has given him. Samuel. We’ll call him Samuel.”

And so, my father being Maxwell James Hill, I became Samuel James Hill.

Sam Hill. Or, as I would soon become known, Sam Hell.





4

My mother wasted no time doting on me and recording every detail of my life, as evidenced by the dozens of scrapbooks and photo albums she filled and kept on the mahogany bookshelves in our living room. When it came to my life, my mother acted as if she were preserving the legacy of a future president for his presidential library. Even before cameras digitally recorded the date on individual photographs, she would write the day, month, and year on the white borders to note such momentous occasions as my first bath, my first meal in a high chair, and the obligatory first potty-training session. I also possess the hospital beanie and ankle bracelet I wore home from the hospital, as well as every report card I earned and every high school newspaper article I wrote. Whether my mother’s diligence was intended to document the extraordinary life she was convinced I was destined to lead or simply the result of her having too much time on her hands, I cannot say, but this meticulous recording of my life, along with the extended hours I would later spend with my father under the shade of that retirement center oak tree, allowed me to piece together much of these first years of my life.

My mother, of course, deemed my red eyes to be “God’s will.” And so, when some hospital administration types advised that hospital policy dictated I be examined by a specialist before I could be discharged, she turned them down cold. She suspected the hospital was more concerned with their potential legal liability than my health. “I’ll sign a waiver,” she’d said. “And we’ll be out of your hair.”

My mother’s suspicion was only partially accurate. It seems word of the child with red eyes traveled quickly through the hospital corridors and surrounding medical community, and there was no shortage of doctors eager to examine me. My mother brushed them aside as “charlatans.” “They were only interested in being published in the New England Journal of Medicine,” she’d told me.

My father, not a man to rock the boat, had suggested a compromise. “Perhaps we can allow one doctor to examine Samuel, just to be certain.”

My mother reluctantly consented, and both sides agreed upon Dr. Charles Pridemore, an ophthalmologist at the Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto.