The Cider House Rules (26 page)

So what's wrong? thought Wilbur Larch. Or if not wrong, different?

So what if the mail was late and the dining hall said there'd been no milk delivery? Larch didn't know— and wouldn't have cared—that the train station had been more than usually disorganized in the stationmaster's absence; he didn't know that the stationmaster was missing. Wilbur Larch had noticed no disturbance among the souls crowding the sky above St. Cloud's. With the work he felt was his calling, Dr. Larch could not afford too rigorous a contemplation of the soul.

Previous to this morning, Homer Wells had not been presented with an occasion to contemplate the soul. A study of the soul had not been a part of his training. And since there were no windows in the room where Homer conducted his studies of Clara, it was not the stationmaster —or his soul—that suddenly presented itself to Homer Wells.

Dr. Larch had asked Homer to prepare a fetus for an autopsy.

A woman from Three Mile Falls had been stabbed, or she had stabbed herself; this was not unusual in Three Mile Falls but the pregnancy of the woman was nearly full-term—and the possibility of delivering a live baby from the dead woman had been unusual, even for Dr. Larch. He had attempted to rescue the child but the child—or, rather, the embryo, nearly nine months— had not escaped one of the stab wounds. Like its mother, the child (or the fetus, as Dr. Larch preferred) had bled to death. It would have been a boy—that much was clear to Homer Wells, or even to the untrained eye; whatever one called it, it was very nearly a fully developed baby. Dr. Larch had asked Homer to help him {214} determine (more exactly than 'bled to death') the source' of the fetus's bleeding.

Homer Wells borrowed Dr. Larch's sternum shears before he realized that a pair of heavy scissors was all he needed to open the fetus's sternum. He cut straight up the middle, noticing immediately the slashed pulmonary artery; to his surprise, the wound was less than half an inch away from a wide-open ductus—in the fetus, the ductus arteriosus is half the size of the aorta, but Homer had never looked inside a fetus before; in the
born,
within ten days, the ductus becomes nothing but a ! fibrous thread. This change is initiated not by any mystery but by the first breath, which closes the ductus and opens the lungs. In the fetus, the ductus is a shunt—the blood bypasses the lungs on its way to the aorta.

It should not have been a shock for Homer Wells to see the evidence that a fetus has little need for blood in its lungs; a fetus doesn't breathe. Yet Homer was shocked; the stab wound, at the base of the ductus, appeared as a second eye alongside the little opening of the ductus itself. The facts were straightforward enough: the ductus was wide open because this fetus had never taken its first breath.

What was the life of the embryo but a history of development? Homer attached a tiny, needle-nosed clamp to the severed pulmonary artery. He turned to the section in
Gray's
devoted to the embryo. It was another shock for him to remember that
Gray's
did not begin with the embryo; it ended with it. The embyro was the last thing considered.

Homer Wells had seen the products of conception in many stages of development: in rather whole form, on occasion, and in such partial form as to be barely recognizable, too. Why the old black-and-white drawings should have affected him so strongly, he could not say. In
Gray's
there was the profile view of the head of a human embryo, estimated at twenty-seven days old. Not quick, as Dr. Larch would be quick to point out, and not {215} recognizably human, either: what would be the spine was cocked, like a wrist, and where the knuckles of the fist (above the wrist) would be, there was the ill-formed face of a fish (the kind that lives below light, is never caught, could give you nightmares). The undersurf ace of the head of the embryo gaped like an eel—the eyes were at the sides of the head, as if they could protect the creature from an attack from any direction. In eight weeks, though still not quick, the fetus has a nose and a mouth; it has an expression, thought Homer Wells. And wüth this discovery—that a fetus, as early as eight weeks, has an
expression
—Homer Wells felt in the presence of what others call a soul.

He displayed the pulmonary artery of the baby from Three Mile Falls in a shallow, white enamel examining tray; he used two clamps to hold the chest incision open, and one more clamp to lift and expose the lacerated artery. The baby's cheeks appeared deflated; someone's invisible hands appeared to press its small face at its sides; it lay on its back, resting on its elbows—its forearms held stiffly perpendicular to its chest. The tiny fingers of its hands were slightly open—as if the baby were preparing to catch a ball.

Homer Wells did not care for the tattered appearance of the stump of the umbilical cord, which was also too long; he clipped it again, and tied it off neatly. There wa's a little caked blood on the tiny penis, and Homer cleaned this away. A spot of old blood on the bright white edge of the enamel tray came off easily with just a cotton swab dabbed with alcohol. The color of the dead baby, especially against the whiteness of the tray, was of something sallow-going-gray. Homer turned to the sink and vomited rather deftly in it. When he ran the faucet to clean the sink, the old pipes pounded and howled; he thought it was thepipes, or his dizziness, that made the room—thewhole building—tremble. He wasn't thinking about the wind from the coast—how strong it was!

He wasn't blaming Dr. Larch, either. Homer felt there {216} was nothing as simple as anyone's fault involved; it was not Larch's fault—Larch did what he believed in. If Wilbur Larch was a saint to Nurse Angela and to Nurse Edna, he was both a saint and a father to Homer Wells. Larch knew what he was doing—and for whom. But that quick and not-quick stuff: it didn't work for Homer Wells. You can
call
it a fetus, or an embryo, or the products of conception, thought Homer Wells, but whatever you call it, it's alive. And whatever you do to it, Homer thought—and whatever you call what you do—you're killing it. He looked at the severed pulmonary artery, which
was so
perfectly displayed in the open chest of the baby from Three Mile Falls. Let Larch call it whatever he wants, thought Homer Wells. It's his choice—if it's a fetus, to him, that's fine. It's a baby to me, thought Homer Wells. If Larch has a choice, I have a choice, too.

He picked up the spotless tray and carried it into the hall, like a proud waiter carrying a special dish to a favorite guest. Curly Day, forever snot-nosed, was cruising in the corridor between the dispensary and Nurse Angela's office. He was not allowed to be playing there, but Curly Day had a bored-every-minute look about him; he had the attention span of a rabbit. At the moment, Curly was dragging a cardboard carton through the corridor. It was the carton the new enema bags had come in; Homer recognized the carton because he had unpacked it.

'Whatcha got?' Curly Day asked Homer, who held the tray and the dead baby from Three Mile Falls at shoulder level; Curly Day came up to Homer's waist. When Homer got close to the carton, he saw that it was not empty; David Copperfield, Junior, was in the bottom of the carton— Curly Day was giving him a ride.

'Get out of here, Curly,' Homer said.

'Comer!' cried David Copperfield.

'It's
Homer,
you idiot,' Curly Day said.

'Comer!' David Copperfield cried.

'Get out of here, please,' Homer told them. {217}

'Whatcha got?' Curly asked Homer, He reached upward, for the edge of the tray, but Homer picked off his dirty little hand; he grabbed Curly at the wrist and twisted Curly's arm behind his back. Homer balanced the tray and its content expertly; Curly Day tried to struggle.

'Ow!' Curly cried. David Copperfield tried to stand up in the bottom of the carton, but he lost his balance and sat down.

Homer lifted Curly Day's arm behind his back—just slightly higher than the right-angle mark—which caused Curly to bend over and rest his forehead on the edge of the enema-bag carton. 'Cut it out,' Curly said.

'You're leaving, Curly—right?' Homer asked.

'Yeah, yeah,' Curly said, and Homer let him go.

'Tough guy,' Curly said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

'Comer!' David Copperfield managed to say.

Curly Day wiped his nose on his disheveled sleeve. He jerked the carton so suddenly that David Copperfield rolled on his side. 'Ack!' little Copperfield cried.

'Shut up,' Curly said to his cargo. He shuffled away from Homer Wells, to whom he gave a look of peevish sorrow, of aimless complaint—nothing more. His body bobbed from side to side as he made his way with the carton containing David Copperfield. Homer noted that Curly's shoes were on the wrong feet, and one of them was untied, but he decided it would be unworthy criticism to mention this to Curly, who was as buoyant as he was messy—and wasn't his buoyancy more important than his carelessness, especially since he
was
an orphan?

'Good-bye, Curly,' Homer said to the boy's slouched back; Curly's untucked shirt hung to his knees.

'See ya, Homer,' Curly said, keeping his face turned away. When he passed the dispensary door, Nurse Edna appeared and scolded him,

'You're not supposed to be playing here, Curly,' she said. {218}

'Yeah, yeah,' Curly said. I'm going, I'm going.'

'Medna!' David Copperfield cried in a muffled voice from the bottom of the enema-bag carton.

'Its
Edna,
you little scum,' Curly said.

Then Homer was at the door of Nurse Angela's office, which was open. He could see Dr. Larch at the typewriter; the doctor wasn't writing; there wasn't even any paper in the machine. Dr. Larch was just looking out the window. In the doctor's trancelike expression Homer recognized the peaceful distance that ether provided in those moments when Homer had found the doctor 'just restinG' In the dispensary. Perhaps the state of mind that ether occasionally allowed Dr. Larch to enjoy was, increasingly, a state of mind that Larch could summon by just looking out a window. Homer assumed that Dr. Larch used a little ether because he was in some kind of pain; he suspected that almost everyone in St. Cloud's was in some kind of pain, and that Larch, as a doctor, was especially qualified in remedying it. The smell of ether was so cloying and nauseating to Homer Wells that it was no remedy he would have chosen. It hadn't yet occurred to him what an addiction was. The state of a dream was so present on Wilbur Larch's face that Homer Wells paused in the doorway before continuing his gruesome presentation; he almost turned around and took the baby from Three Mile Falls away with him.

But no one encounters the presence of a soul so casually that one can permit the accompanying sense of mission to pass without remarking upon it; and a sense of mission usually requires a gesture more demonstrative than a passing remark. In the doorway of Nurse Angela's office, Homer hesitated; then he stepped forward and clunked the metal tray down on top of the typewriter. The dead baby from Three Mile Falls was level with Dr. Larch's throat—it was close enough to bite, as they say in Maine.

'Doctor Larch?' Homer Wells said. Larch looked away from his dream; he stared over the baby at Homer. 'The {219} source of the bleeding was the pulmonary artery, which was completely severed—as you see,' Homer said, as Larch looked down at the display upon the typewriter. He stared at the baby as if it were something he'd written —come to life (and then to death) at his bidding.

Outside the hospital, someone was screaming;, but the wind whipped the words to a muddle; the screamer's message sounded confused.

'Goddamn!' said Wilbur Larch, staring at the severed artery.

'I have to tell you that I
won't
perform an abortion, not ever,' Homer Wells said. This followed, logically, from the severed artery; in Homer's mind, it followed, but Dr. Larch looked confused.

'You won't?' Larch said. 'You
what?'

Outside, the screaming was louder but no more distinct. Homer Wells and Dr. Larch just stared at each other—the baby from Three Mile Falls occupying the space between them.

I'm coming, I'm coming,' they heard Nurse Angela say.

'It's that Curly Day,' Nurse Edna was explaining to Nurse Angela. 'I just had to kick him and the Copperfield kid out of here.'

'Not ever,' Homer Wells said.

'You disapprove?' Dr. Larch asked Homer.

'I don't disapprove of you,' Homer Wells said. 'I disapprove of
it
—it's not for me.'

'Well, I've never forced you,' Dr. Larch said. 'And I never will. It's all your choice.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

A door opened, but what Curly Day was caterwauling about was no clearer. Dr. Larch and Homer Wells heard the test tubes in the rack by the dispensary doer tinkle; over these chimes, and for the first time holding its own with the wind, the word 'Dead!' came through to them.

'Dead! Dead! Dead!' Curly Day was screaming, his announcement punctuated by the unintelligible, {220} monosyllabic utterances of young Copperfield.

'Who's dead, dear?' Nurse Angela asked Curly sweetly.

Curly Day had discovered that the stationmaster was dead; Curly didn't know it was the stationmaster— Curly hadn't taken a long enough look.

'A guy is dead!' Curly said to Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna.

Wilbur Larch, who heard this distinctly, got up from the desk and walked past Homer Wells, into the hall.

'And if it's all the same to you,' Homer Wells said to him, 'I'd like permission to
not
be there, when you do what you have to do. I want to be of use in any other way, and I'm not disapproving of you,' Homer said. 'If it's okay, I just don't want to watch it.'

'I'll have to think about that, Homer,' Dr. Larch said. 'Let's see who's dead, shall we?' As Homer followed Larch down the hall, he noted that the door to the delivery room was closed, and that the door light was on —which meant that Nurse Edna or Nurse Angela had prepared the two women who were waiting for their abortions. The woman from Damariscotta, whose contractions were still slow and regular, probably wouldn't be needing the delivery room until long after Larch was through the two abortions. Homer agreed with Dr. Larch that it was cruel to make the women waiting for the abortions wait any longer than was necessary, especially after they'd been prepared, and so Homer opened the delivery room door and poked his head inside without really looking at either woman. He announced, 'The doctor will be right with you—please don't worry.'