Charles tore pages in the waiting room magazines. When he noticed pointy women staring at him (who were, truthfully, wondering why he was allowed to do that and they weren't) he stopped and scratched the stubble around his neck and chin. He swallowed some mucous building up in his throat before it grew big enough that he'd have to spit. He didn't see any trash cans around and didn't want to ask where the bathrooms were, so he needed to hold the snot in his throat at bay until he could leave. He said something to himself quietly to see if his voice was slimy or not. It was. Asking the nurse or the receptionist or whatever she was was out of the question. He fell uncomfortably asleep with his feet pushing the magazine table away and his shoulders leaning back over the wooden frame of his chair. When he woke up his back hurt like hell and his throat and nostrils were totally full of mucous. He ripped a page out of a magazine and snorted his nostrils, hocked his throat and spit into the page. A small yellow speck struck his thumb. He folded up the page and dropped it under his chair and wiped his thumb on his pants. His neck itched. He noticed that he'd begun to stink, needed a shower. He spoke to himself again and now his voice was scratchy, so he walked to the desk and asked the nurse if the baby had been delivered yet. She looked at him with clinical contempt, her throat dry and sticky. According to her, she had called for him an hour ago because the delivery had ended then. She walked like her feet hurt to somewhere behind the desk and brought back a clipboard with some paper on it that had a lot of little boxes and lines. She told him to sign somewhere and he did. He felt hungover though he hadn't had a drink in 9 months. He didn't want his boy to have an alcoholic father. But right now he felt as bad a hangover as he'd ever had when drinking. The cruel nurse lead him through a bunch of cold hallways and doors that flapped carelessly open and shut to another waiting room. She would not tell him where his wife was staying because she said she didn't know. She asked him why he had not been present at the delivery and he said he wasn't qualified. She left and twenty minutes later a skinny doctor with a fat beard appeared from somewhere in the room and apologized to Charles, very emotionally, like he felt really bad for making him wait this long. Charles asked where his wife was and the doctor said she was recuperating so she shouldn't have visitors. Charles asked where his son was and the doctor stumbled some words to the effect that the child had been stillborn. The doctor and an assistant or two lead him to where the baby was being beaten up with machinery in hopes of making it breath. The boy was lying on a pillow in a plastic bubble, looking very unclean. Charles wondered if they had washed it off. Though there was still a great deal of blood and slime all over its body, Charles could tell its skin was very beautiful, shiny and moist. Its head was shriveled more than anything else, and Charles named it Frank, after his father. The doctor had multiplied into several doctors and they all wanted him to sign more pieces of paper on various lines and in various boxes. He scrawled the first letter of his name and then made weak lines across the rest of the spaces. He wandered out of the automatic doors at the front of the hospital after wondering around the labyrinth for twenty minutes, and walked into the parking lot. He got into his car, drove to his old favorite bar, and drank tequila and brandy in alternating hits. He saw people looking disgustedly at him each time he changed his order; mixing tequila and brandy; it was unheard of, what he was doing. He drank against the law until he was kicked out of the bar at closing time and wandered the streets for an hour in the night; a mugger tried to take his wallet and he fought to keep it and was stabbed in the left lung and he lay gasping for air with his head cracked on the sidewalk. Somehow blood seeped up into his mouth and he lost the sweet taste of the liquor in his mouth; he died tasting his own filthy poison. The sun came up later and his skin was as beautiful as his baby boy's, covered with dew, sparkling in the dawn.
Back.