Different Seasons(187)

I was on my feet again without even knowing it. I raced down the icy steps, slipped again, caught at the railing, and kept on. I was only aware of Miss Stansfield lying in the uncertain shadow cast by that hideous statue of Harriet White, some twenty feet from where the ambulance had come to rest on its side, flasher still strobing the night with red. There was something terribly wrong with that figure, but I honestly don’t believe I knew what it was until my foot struck something with a heavy enough thud to almost send me sprawling again. The thing I’d kicked skittered away—like the young woman’s purse, it slid rather than rolled. It skittered away and it was only the fall of hair—bloodstreaked but still recognizably blonde, speckled with bits of glass—that made me realize what it was. She had been decapitated in the accident. What I had kicked into the frozen gutter was her head.

Moving in total numb shock now, I reached her body and turned it over. I think I tried to scream as soon as I had done it, as soon as I saw. If I did, no sound came out; I could not make a sound. The woman was still breathing, you see, gentlemen. Her chest was heaving up and down in quick, light, shallow breaths. Ice pattered down on her open coat and her blood-drenched dress. And I could hear a high, thin whistling noise. It waxed and waned like a teakettle which can’t quite reach the boil. It was air being pulled into her severed wind-pipe and then exhaled again; little screams of air through the crude reed of vocal cords which no longer had a mouth to shape their sounds.

I wanted to run but I had no strength; I fell on my knees beside her on the ice, one hand cupped to my mouth. A moment later I was aware of fresh blood seeping through the lower part of her dress ... and of movement there. I became suddenly, frenziedly convinced that there was still a chance to save the baby.

I believe that as I yanked her dress up to her waist I began laughing. I believe I was mad. Her body was still warm. I remember that. I remember the way it heaved with her breathing. One of the ambulance attendants came up, weaving like a drunk, one hand clapped to the side of his head. Blood trickled through his fingers.

I was still laughing, still groping. My hands had found her fully dilated.

The attendant stared down at Sandra Stansfield’s headless body with wide eyes. I don’t know if he realized the corpse was still breathing or not. Perhaps he thought it was merely a thing of the nerves—a kind of final reflex action. If he did think such a thing, he could not have been driving an ambulance long. Chickens may walk around for awhile with their heads cut off, but people only twitch once or twice ... if that.

“Stop staring at her and get me a blanket,” I snapped at him.

He wandered away, but not back toward the ambulance. He was pointed more or less toward Times Square. He simply walked off into the sleety night. I have no idea what became of him. I turned back to the dead woman who was somehow not dead, hesitated a moment, and then stripped off my overcoat. Then I lifted her hips so I could get it under her. Still I heard that whistle of breath as her headless body did “locomotive” breathing. I sometimes hear it still, gentlemen. In my dreams.

Please understand that all of this had happened in an extremely short time—it seemed longer to me, but only because my perceptions had been heightened to a feverish pitch. People were only beginning to run out of the hospital to see what had happened, and behind me a woman shrieked as she saw the severed head lying by the edge of the street.

I yanked open my black bag, thanking God I hadn’t lost it in my fall, and pulled out a short scalpel. I opened it, cut through her underwear, and pulled it off. Now the ambulance driver approached—he came to within fifteen feet of us and then stopped dead. I glanced over at him, still wanting that blanket. I wasn’t going to get it from him, I saw; he was staring down at the breathing body, his eyes widening until it seemed they must slip from their orbits and simply dangle from their optic nerves like grotesque seeing yo-yos. Then he dropped to his knees and raised his clasped hands. He meant to pray, I am quite sure of that. The attendant might not have known he was seeing an impossibility, but this fellow did. The next moment he had fainted dead away.

I had packed forceps in my bag that night; I don’t know why. I hadn’t used such things in three years, not since I had seen a doctor I will not name punch through a newborn’s temple and into the child’s brain with one of those infernal gadgets. The child died instantly. The corpse was “lost” and what went on the death certificate was stillborn.

But, for whatever reason, I had mine with me that night.

Miss Stansfield’s body tightened down, her belly clenching, turning from flesh to stone. And the baby crowned. I saw the crown for just a moment, bloody and membranous and pulsing. Pulsing. It was alive, then. Definitely alive.

Stone became flesh again. The crown slipped back out of sight. And a voice behind me said: “What can I do, doctor?”

It was a middle-aged nurse, the sort of woman who is so often the backbone of our profession. Her face was as pale as milk, and while there was terror and a kind of superstitious awe on her face as she looked down at that weirdly breathing body, there was none of that dazed shock which would have made her difficult and dangerous to work with.

“You can get me a blanket, stat,” I said curtly. “We’ve still got a chance, I think.” Behind her I saw perhaps two dozen people from the hospital standing on the steps, not wanting to come any closer. How much or how little did they see? I have no way of knowing for sure. All I know is that I was avoided for days afterwards (and forever by some of them), and no one, including this nurse, ever spoke to me of it.