Dr. Baird delivers a baby boy on a Thursday in November, his fourteenth baby that month. Baird catches him, gloved hands moving entirely on muscle memory. His thoughts are elsewhere, flitting between the leaking shower head in the guest bathroom and the lingering lisp on his daughter’s tongue that will require speech therapy and the encroaching in-laws that will soon be on his doorstep for Thanksgiving and the odd noise coming from his car’s back—
His hands stumble, drawing him back to the delivery, alerting him that something about the baby in his hands is different. It’s a sensation of liquid barely contained, as if the new mother, now gratified and panting on the bed, has birthed a full bladder or a pneumonic lung rather than a child. Through the pains of his mother’s labor, through the constricting hug of the birth canal, the baby’s amniotic sac has remained intact.
For a moment, Baird and the child stare at each other through the translucent membrane. The baby’s fingers move in the liquid, a soft wave hello. He has seen pictures in medical textbooks, and the phrase en caul bubbles from the depths of his memory. In person, though, the creature in his hands is stunning. It is something descended from another planet, or perhaps ascended from the depths of the oceans, undeniably alive but still a violation of the order of things. The baby’s eyes open, and he is reminded of his father, stricken dumb by Alzheimer’s years before he died.
Seeing everything and seeing nothing.
A nurse appears at his side, handing him a scalpel, and he slices automatically. The sac parts in silence, and the fluid escapes to splash on the floor.
“What was that?” the mother asks.
“Nothing important,” the doctor replies. “Congratulations, it’s a boy!”
Dr. Baird departs the birthing suite to change his scrubs, the musk of amniotic fluid lingering in his nose. Refreshed, he turns to return to his patients; the baby’s eyes have not left his mind, floating blue orbs that call him back. He needs to linger in their light, bathe in them, see if there are more memories of his father to be pulled from their depths.
A TV in the physician’s lounge stops him.
Across an ocean, hammers have begun to swing, pushing at chisels eager to dine on graffitied concrete. The clamor of metal on stone is drowned amidst a cacophony of cheers. Little bits of wall are pried loose and handed to the waiting crowd, and then the sledges come out. Slabs of wall topple over, and crowds of people reach to each other through the gaps, fistulas forming and breaking open spaces between two worlds.
He stands still for a moment, watching, feeling the world shift beneath his feet. The baby lets out a cry, and he moves back to his work.
M.R. Lehman Wiens is a Pushcart-nominated writer and stay-at-home dad living in Kansas. His work has previously appeared, or is upcoming in, The Wild Umbrella Literary Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Metaworker Literary Journal, and others. He can be found on Threads as @lehmanwienswrites.