Pump Six and Other Stories(98)

Her dark eyes narrow with madness. "You're going to kill it."

Uh-oh. I thumb my belt unit for the orderlies.

She grabs Ben by the shoulder. "Don't let her take it. It's alive, honey. Alive!"

"Honey—"

She yanks him close. "Don't let her take our baby!" She turns and snarls at me. "Get out. Get out!" She lunges for a water glass on her bedside table. "Get out!" She flings it at me. I duck and it shatters against the wall. Glass shards pepper my neck. I get ready to dodge another attack but instead Maya grabs the natal sheet and yanks it down, exposing her nude lower half splayed for birth. She claws at her birth stirrups like a wolf in a trap.

I spin the dials on my belt remote, jam up her Purnate and shut off her Sifusoft as she throws herself against the stirrups again. The birthing table tilts alarmingly. I lunge to catch it. She flails at me and her nails gouge my face. I jerk away, clutching my cheek. I wave to her husband, who is standing dumbly on the opposite side of the birth table, staring. "Help me hold her!"

He snaps out of his paralysis; together we wrestle her back onto the table and then a new contraction hits and she sobs and curls in on herself. Without Sifusoft, there is nothing to hide the birth's intensity. She rocks against the pain, shaking her head and moaning, small and beaten. I feel like a bully. But I don't restart the pain killers.

She moans, "Oh God. Oh, God. Oh. God."

Benjamin puts his head down beside her, strokes her face. "It's okay, honey. It's going to be fine." He looks up at me, hoping for confirmation. I make myself nod.

Another Purnate-induced contraction hits. They're coming fast now, her body completely in the grip of the overdose I've flushed into her. She pulls her husband close and whispers, "I don't want this, honey. Please, it's a sin." Another contraction hits. Less than twenty seconds apart.

Two thick-armed female orderlies draped in friendly pink blouses finally come thumping through the door and move to restrain her. The cavalry always arrives too late. Maya brushes at them weakly until another contraction hits. Her naked body arches as the baby begins its final passage into our world.

"The pretty queen of the hypocritic oath arrives."

Dmitri sits amongst his brood, my sin and my redemption bound in one gaunt and sickly man. His shoulders rise and fall with labored asthmatic breathing. His cynical blue eyes bore into me. "You're bloodied."

I touch my face, come away with wet fingers. "A patient went natal."

All around us, Dmitri's test subjects scamper, shrieking and warring, an entire tribe of miscalibrated humanity, all gathered together under Dmitri's care. If I key in patient numbers on my belt unit, I get MedAssist laundry lists of pituitary misfires, adrenal tumors, sexual malformations, attention and learning disorders, thyroid malfunctions, IQ fall-offs, hyperactivity and aggression. An entire ward full of poster-children for chemical legislation that never finds its way out of government committee.

"Your patient went natal." Dmitri's chuckle comes as a low wheeze. Even in this triple-filtered air of the hospital's chemical intervention ward, he barely takes enough oxygen to stay alive. "What a surprise. Emotion trumps science once again." His fingers drum compulsively on the bed of an inert child beside him: a five-year-old girl with the br**sts of a grown woman. His eyes flick to the body and back to me. "No one seems to want prenatal care these days, do they?"

Against my will, I blush; Dmitri's mocking laughter rises briefly before dissolving into coughing spasms that leave him keeled over and gasping. He wipes his mouth on his lab coat's sleeve and studies the resulting bloody smear. "You should have sent her to me. I could have convinced her."

Beside us, the girl lies like a wax dummy, staring at the ceiling. Some bizarre cocktail of endocrine disruptors has rendered her completely catatonic. The sight of her gives me courage "Do you have any more squeegees?"

Dmitri laughs, sly and insinuating. His eyes flick to my damaged cheek. "And what would your sharp-nailed patient say, if she found out?"

"Please, Dmitri. Don't. I hate myself enough already."

"I'm sure. Caught between your religion and your profession. I'm surprised your husband even tolerates your work."

I look away. "He prays for me."

"God solves everything, I understand."

"Don't."

Dmitri smiles. "It's probably what I've missed in my research. We should all just beg God to keep babies from absorbing their mother's chemical sludge. With a little Sunday prayer, Lily, you can go back to pushing folate and vitamins. Problem solved." He stands abruptly, coming to his full six-and-a-half feet like a spider unfolding. "Come, let us consummate your hypocrisy before you change your mind. I couldn't bear it if you decided to rely on your faith."

Inside Dmitri's lab, fluorescent lights glare down on stainless steel countertops and test equipment.

Dmitri rustles through drawers one after another, searching. On the countertop before him, a gobbet of flesh lies marooned, wet and incongruous on the sterile gleaming surface. He catches me staring at it.

"You will not recognize it. You must imagine it smaller."

One portion is larger than an eyeball. The rest is slender, a dangling subsection off the main mass. Meat and veiny fatty gunk. Dmitri rustles through another drawer. Without looking up, he answers his own riddle. "A pituitary gland. From an eight-year-old female. She had terrible headaches."