...
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around
That I could think there trembled through
His happy goodnight air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I ...
The bell rang with a harsh, metallic sound that punctured whatever profound thoughts Thomas Hardy might have begun to cultivate in their minds. In rote response, the class gathered up their books and papers, and with the teacher's voice rising above the noise of their shuffling feet, imploring them to be prepared to discuss the poem on Wednesday, the students filed from the classroom in snake-like fashion. Once out in the hallway, they fanned out in every direction, some in chatty groups of two or three, others in solitude, heading off to their next classes in various parts of the building.
Eppie emerged from the main flow of bodies moving through the hallway and walked over to her locker along the wall. The black plastic dial spun easily under her fingertips as she turned the three-number combination and opened the door. She deposited her English textbook and her book bag into the locker and withdrew her jacket before flipping the door closed again. By the time she reached the school's main entrance, she had slipped both of her arms into the sleeves and had zippered the jacket up to her neck.
Cool, clean air filled her lungs immediately as she stepped outside into the bright mid-morning sunshine. She spotted the green Chevrolet that sat parked along the curb of the circular driveway in front of the building, and she walked along the concrete walkway in that direction. When she reached the car she opened the passenger side door and lowered herself slowly onto the seat.
"Hi, Mr. Applebaum," she said with a smile as she closed the door behind her.
"Good morning, Eppie," Mr. Applebaum replied. He shifted the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. "You seem happy today."
"I'm always happy when I can get out of third period Phys Ed," Eppie said. "It's my least favorite class. I'm so glad I was able to schedule my appointment for ten o'clock today."
"Really? I thought you enjoyed gym class."
"I used to. Last year it was fun. But this year they won't let me participate because of my condition, so I have to sit there like a misfit and just watch everyone else. I hate it."
"Oh, I see," said Mr. Applebaum.
"And they won't let me do anything else for third period either, like go to the library or something. At least then I could study or do some homework for that hour. But they have some stupid rule that says I have to be in Phys Ed class whether I can participate or not." Eppie shook her head forlornly. "It's so dumb."
"Anyway," she continued, tossing off the unpleasant subject, "I really appreciate your taking the time to drive me to the clinic. This is a big help for me."
"Oh, please, don't mention it," said Mr. Applebaum. "It's my pleasure. I have to run some errands anyway, so this really isn't a bother at all. I'll drop you off at the clinic and take care of my other errands, then I'll come back and pick you up again. You said your appointment should take about an hour, right?"
"That's what Doctor Wheelan said. Hopefully she's not running behind schedule."
"Well, if I get back there before you're finished, I'll just wait for you. Otherwise you can meet me in front of the building."
"Sounds good," said Eppie.
Traffic was light at that hour of the morning, and the car moved easily toward the center of town.
"Your first ultrasound test today, isn't it?" Mr. Applebaum said.
"Yeah," replied Eppie, a bit hesitantly.
"Are you excited about it?"
"A little, I guess." She stared straight ahead at the car in front of them.
"Don't worry," the old man said, sensing the change in her mood. "I'm sure everything will be fine."
"Yeah, I know," Eppie said. "I guess I'm just a little nervous about seeing my baby for the first time, even if it is just on a video screen. I mean, I know it's just going to be a fuzzy picture and everything, and it may not even look like a real baby, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It seems sort of eerie to me."
Mr. Applebaum thought for a moment. "You mean that your baby somehow won't seem real until you see him with your own eyes?"
Eppie looked at Mr. Applebaum with fascination. "Yes," she said, impressed by the insight of his question. "Yes, that's exactly what I mean."
Mr. Applebaum smiled wisely. "I know the feeling," he said. "I felt the same way when my daughter was born. Helen and I didn't know anything about our child until the day she came into the world. We didn't know whether we were having a boy or a girl, or even if we were going to have twins. In those days they wheeled your wife into the delivery room without you, and a few hours later they brought your child out to you, all cleaned up and wrapped snug in a blanket, with a cute little cap on her head." The old man's eyes grew moist with the recollection.
"I still remember the feeling I had when I first set eyes on my daughter," he said wistfully. "Until that moment I suppose I had never really convinced myself of what was happening. It all seemed to be, well, artificial, I guess. In a way, it didn't quite seem real. The whole experience felt like I was watching a movie, like it was all make-believe. But when I held my tiny daughter in my arms and I looked down into her face, then it all became very real for me. It was a warm, wonderful feeling." The old man breathed in deeply, then let out a long sigh of reminiscence. He turned and looked at Eppie. "I'll never forget it."
Like a long-clenched fist that has suddenly relaxed, Eppie felt a great tension unwind within her. Her appointment with Doctor Wheelan that day had represented in her mind a high hurdle that she had to overcome. Although she had been feeling her baby grow inside of her for several months now, and had even felt it move and kick recently, she still felt that she did not know her baby yet—as though the two of them had not yet been properly introduced, as strange as that notion might sound to others. She and her child were still strangers to each other, and she did not yet think of it as having an identity of its own.
After today, she had thought, her child would have an identity. She would no longer be able to refer to her baby as "it." "It" would become "him" or "her" from now on. She would soon be shown a moving picture on a video monitor, and an image of another human being—a small, fragile piece of herself that was heretofore completely alien to her—would press itself into her conscience. And she would see that image over and over again in her thoughts, every day, every hour, until the very moment that she gave birth. It was a prospect that weighed heavily on her mind. She worried about how she might react to this image, equally real and artificial, that was soon to be presented to her. Would it strengthen her desire to carry onward, or would the experience only leave her feeling empty and unconnected? Would her child even look like a real person? Would it look like her? Or would it look like ... someone else? Would she like what she was about to see? Would she love it? Indeed, was it even possible to love a gray and blurry shape formed from nothing more substantial than sonic echoes? But she was required to love her child—at all times, in all its forms and images, regardless of whatever distortions those echoes might produce—was she not? She dreaded the thought of going on without that feeling to support her.
Mr. Applebaum, in his loving, sentimental way, had taken the worst of her worries away. His misty-eyed memories were infectious, and Eppie blinked back the moisture that accumulated in her own eyes. She saw now that her relationship with her child should not begin before its time. She would come to know her child when her child was ready to be known, and not one moment earlier.
Her deepest fears were unjustified, she convinced herself, and she now felt that she was able to put them aside. Her child would be no guarantee of happiness, but rather an opportunity for such, perhaps the best opportunity that she would ever have. How had Thomas Hardy put it? Some blessed Hope? Mr. Applebaum, she was sure, gave voice to that hope in his fond recollections of his first encounter with his daughter, saw not only the emotion of that one moment, but from the corner of his memory perceived all of the moments that came afterward—the first steps, the first day of school, the skinned knees and broken hearts, the birthday parties and family gatherings and countless hugs and kisses that filled the life that began with that first moment. Neither would Eppie's happiness live or die in that first moment alone. From its humble beginnings, like any living thing, it would grow or wither in the years to follow, depending, primarily, upon how well she tended it.
With her greatest worries behind her, Eppie felt a new confidence in herself, reinforced by her relationship with the Applebaums, and Father Andrew, and Shelley and Jonathan, that she was capable of caring not only for herself but for her child as well. It would be okay, she reassured herself. She would make it okay.
The car cruised easily along the last few blocks of the trip and soon turned onto the driveway in front of the Heritage County Medical Clinic.
* * *
Doctor Wheelan extracted a pair of latex gloves from their cardboard dispenser and pulled them over her hands. "So, Eppie, how are you feeling today?" she asked her young patient.
"Fine," Eppie replied in a quiet voice. She sat on the examination table with her feet hanging down on one side. She wore white painter's pants with an aproned front and suspenders that crossed in the middle of her back. The pants were two sizes too large for her frame, and she thought they made her body look disproportionately bottom-heavy, but they provided ample room in front and that had become an unignorable requirement for her. None of her jeans fit her anymore, so she was reduced to wearing such oversized outfits during the week and sweatpants on the weekends.
"Do you remember what we talked about two weeks ago?" Wheelan asked. "About how the ultrasound test works?"
Eppie nodded.
"Do you have any questions?"
"No," Eppie replied, with a quick shake of her head.
Wheelan looked at her patient suspiciously. "It's okay, Eppie. You can ask me if there's anything that's troubling you."
Eppie looked down at her feet for a few seconds. "Can you really see very much with this machine?" she asked. "I mean, can you really tell if everything is normal?"
"Well, we certainly won't be able to see everything," Wheelan said, "but you may be surprised at how much we can see. A lot of it depends on whether or not the baby wants to cooperate. If it's in the right position, and if it's willing to spread its legs for us just a little bit, then we'll be able to tell if you're carrying a boy or a girl."
A puzzled look came over Eppie's face. "You mean you can't always tell?" she asked.
"Not always," the doctor explained. "A lot of times it's hit or miss. You see, we can only aim the device from the front of the abdomen in. Maybe a little bit from the sides as well, but we can't see anything from the top or the bottom or the back. The instrument just isn't good enough to see through your other organs, like your kidneys or your bladder. It's kind of like looking into a house through just one window—we only get to see the furniture in that one room, from that one angle."
"So what can you see?"
Wheelan smiled. "As funny as it may sound, what we usually wind up seeing first is a straight-on picture of the kid's butt."
Eppie put a hand to her mouth to stifle her laugh. "You're kidding," she said, outwardly amused.
"Nope, not at all. The way a baby normally rests in the uterus, that's the part that faces forward. Of course, we can usually see somewhat more than that. The legs, the feet, most of the back typically comes into view also. If the baby has squirmed around a bit, we may also be able to see the hands and even the face, but that's not always possible."
"So you're just looking at the baby from the back and the bottom."
"That's right. I know they're not the parts that you're most interested in seeing. You probably want to see your baby's face and hands, but believe me, at this point it's much more important for us to get a good look at the back and the lower extremities, especially the spinal column. A lot of potential problems can be diagnosed there."
Eppie was silent for a moment. "So what happens if you see problems?" she asked.
"Well, if I see anything that doesn't look normal, then we'll do some more tests to confirm what we see, just to be sure. And then, once we know what we're dealing with, then we talk about our options."
Eppie became quiet again. She looked down at her abdomen and ran her hand lightly across the front of it.
"Is there anything else you want to know, Eppie?"
The girl seemed reluctant to speak. "I wish we didn't have to go through with this," she said finally.
The doctor looked at her closely. "You mean the ultrasound?" she asked, in need of clarification.
"Yes," Eppie said. "I don't think I want to see my baby until it's born. It doesn't seem right to be looking at it now. I don't know why, it just doesn't seem natural."
Wheelan looked at her patient sympathetically. "In the literal sense of the word, you're absolutely right. Ultrasound technology is not natural at all. It's completely unnatural. I guess I tend to take it for granted since I see so many of these things, but I suppose they can be kind of spooky-looking if you're not used to them.
"I'll tell you what, Eppie," Wheelan continued. "How about if I turn the monitor around to face the other way so that you can't see it while I perform the test. That way I'll be able to see what I need to see and you won't have to see anything. The machine will record everything for us, so if you should happen to change your mind between now and your delivery date, you can come back in and take a look. How does that sound?"
Eppie nodded her head with relief. "That sounds good," she said.
"Okay then," Wheelan said. "Let's get this test over with. Why don't you unfasten your suspenders and lie back on the table. Then pull the top of your pants down a few inches and lift up the bottom of your shirt for me."
Eppie did as she was instructed, and soon her enlarged mid-section was completely exposed. Wheelan rolled her chair up to the edge of the table near Eppie's hip. She picked up a plastic tube and squeezed a small handful of clear gel onto her palm.
"This will feel a little cold at first," she warned, before gently applying the gel to Eppie's lower abdomen, then spreading it evenly upwards across the bulge of her belly and along both sides. She pulled the monitor cart around to face her directly, then picked up a hand-held plastic device that was connected to a larger machine by a thin cable and placed it gently against Eppie's abdomen.
Eppie looked up at the ceiling while the doctor slid the plastic device slowly across her body, stopping every few inches to let the device rest in one spot or another. After a couple of minutes, Eppie let her gaze drift down from the ceiling to the doctor's face. She tried to read the doctor's expressions as she went about her work, but Wheelan's face reflected nothing of the images that only she could see. She wore neither a smile nor a frown as she studied the moving images on the screen before her.
Eppie did notice tiny movements in the doctor's eyes as she focused first on one area of the screen and then another. Occasionally her eyes squinted ever so slightly, or she would tilt her head to the left or the right to get a better perspective on the image she was studying. But try as she might, Eppie could not interpret anything from the doctor's facial expressions. Whether they were indications of some strange anomaly in her child's form, or whether they were merely the outward signs of a deep concentration on the task at hand, Eppie was unable to determine.
Finally, Eppie looked down at the small device in the doctor's hand. Its size and insignificant appearance belied the abilities that it possessed. Eppie understood generally the technology incorporated into the device and the machine to which it was attached. The hand-held instrument emitted sound waves which entered her body, reflected off the fetus in her womb and bounced back to the device, which detected them and transferred them electronically to the larger device. That device, in turn, interpreted those sounds as a visual image and displayed that image on a glass monitor. Yet for all of the acoustical activity that was taking place before her, and within her, to Eppie the device was completely silent. The sound waves must be at a frequency beyond the range of the human ear, she concluded. All the better for her, she thought. In her mind, the silence of the device was strangely reassuring.
She closed her eyes and rested her head back on the table again. She thought once more of the expression on Mr. Applebaum's face as he recalled his first encounter with his newborn daughter, and she was comforted. At that moment she did not care about sounds she could not hear or electronic pictures she could not see. She was concerned only with her child, and no premature, fabricated image would do for a substitute.
* * *
The examination was finished shortly thereafter, and Eppie was soon removing the gel from her midsection with a damp washcloth and drying herself with a towel. As the girl readjusted her clothes, Doctor Wheelan made some notes on her clipboard and placed the sheet of paper in a manila file folder. She removed a video cassette from the machine on the cart and slipped it into its cardboard sleeve. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" she said.
Eppie shook her head. No, she admitted, it wasn't so bad after all.
Wheelan smiled warmly at her. "Everything looks fine, Eppie," she said. "I didn't see any abnormalities, or anything else that causes me any great concern. I know you're not interested in all of the details, but I think you should know at least that much."
Eppie nodded and smiled with relief. "That's good to hear," she said gratefully. "Thank you."
"You're very welcome, kiddo," said Wheelan. "Now, you're sticking to your prescribed diet, aren't you? Lots of fruits and vegetables, right? Spinach, carrots, broccoli. All that good stuff?"
"Yes, mother," Eppie said, rolling her eyes in a playful display of adolescent sufferance. "And milk, and orange juice, and bananas," she continued, reciting from memory the list of foods that the doctor recommended to her at every visit.
"And no alcohol, right?" Wheelan said, not ready to let her patient off the hook so easily. "And light on the caffeine, too."
"No alcohol," Eppie repeated obediently. "Light on the caffeine."
"Okay, young lady," Wheelan said. "I guess I'm done lecturing you for today. Why don't you come back in two weeks and let me see how you're doing then, all right?"
"Sounds good," said Eppie, easing herself carefully off the examination table. "Can we do it at ten o'clock again? I hate third period Phys Ed."
"Of course," said Wheelan, as she opened the door and led Eppie out into the hallway. "Just make an appointment with the receptionist on your way out."
"Thank you, Doctor Wheelan," Eppie said as she turned and started down the hallway toward the receptionist's desk. "I'll see you in a couple of weeks."
"Hey, Eppie," Wheelan said.
The girl turned around and looked at her.
"No curiosity as to whether you're having a boy or a girl?"
Eppie thought for a moment, then she shook her head. "I can wait," she said confidently.
"Okay," Wheelan said. "We'll keep it a secret then."
The doctor watched the girl from behind as she moved away toward the front of the building. She no longer walked like a teenage girl, the doctor observed. Her steps were slower and more labored now, more suggestive of a woman in her seventies than a girl of fourteen, and she waddled a bit from side to side with each step. Wheelan felt a twinge of sadness in her heart for the young girl; she cut such a lonely figure as she ambled her way slowly down the hall in her oversized painter's pants. And Wheelan caught herself thinking, just for a moment, that Eppie looked to be about the same height as her sister had been so many years earlier.
The doctor turned and walked up the hallway in the other direction, headed to a room where her next patient waited.
Eppie stopped at the receptionist's desk and scheduled her next appointment, then she looked around the waiting room for Mr. Applebaum. Not seeing him, she checked her watch. Her examination had not taken the full hour, so she pushed open the front door of the clinic and walked outside to wait for her ride.
She made her way over to the courtyard in front of the hospital where the flagpole stood and she took a seat on one of the benches. Small groups of demonstrators were congregated at each end of the block, and she strained her eyes to see if she recognized any of the faces. Within one group she thought she spotted Allison, but the woman was not looking in her direction and she could not be certain. For a moment she considered walking over to the group, but she let the thought pass. Mr. Applebaum would be arriving shortly and she had to get back to school quickly or she would be late for fourth period.
As she looked in the other direction, she saw two police cars pulling up the driveway to the hospital. They parked, one immediately behind the other, near the walkway that she had just traversed. Two officers emerged from the cars and had a brief discussion. They surveyed both groups of demonstrators, then began striding quickly up the walkway. Eppie thought it very strange that they seemed to be coming in her direction.
* * *
The girl walked, shoulders hunched and head bowed, in the direction she was led by the jail sergeant. She appeared to be even smaller than she was beside the massive frame of the man in uniform, who stood a full twelve inches taller than her and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds.
The man led her by the arm down a narrow corridor and through a set of heavy steel doors, then around a corner and through another steel door. They entered a large room which was partitioned along one wall into five rectangular cells. They looked just like every jail cell she had ever seen on television. A thickly painted concrete wall served as the back of each cell, with the other three sides composed of vertical rows of steel bars which ran from floor to ceiling, each bar spaced only inches from the next and reinforced with horizontal slats which ran across the bars, one at a height of three feet from the floor and another at seven feet. A hinged panel of bars with a lock on one side served as a door at the front each cell.
The jailer walked the girl to the second cell from the end of the row and inserted a large key into the lock. The bolt clacked open with a heavy, hollow sound that echoed off every bare surface in the room. The unoiled hinges squealed their pain as the jailer pulled the door open.
"Stand still," the sergeant ordered. He retrieved a set of smaller keys from his pocket and inserted one of them into the lock on one of the handcuffs on the girl's wrists. With a quick twist the cuff sprang open, freeing her hand from its grip. The officer then repeated the maneuver on her other hand.
The girl slipped into the cell immediately, not waiting for the jailer's hand to push her the final few feet. Her movement was quick and evasive, her body effecting a motion of escape as it gained its freedom from his grasp. The jailer closed the door firmly behind her and shook it once to ensure that the lock was engaged. He then turned without a word and walked idly back along the row of cells toward the exit, twirling the cell door key on its ring around two fingers of his hand. Within seconds he had departed from the room.
Eppie lay down immediately on the bunk and closed her eyes. She was too tired to pace. She was too upset to sit up, too despondent to even keep her eyes open. She rolled onto her side and clutched the thin pillow to her cheek with both arms. She would have liked to roll all the way over and lay face down on the mattress, but her abdomen was by now too far distended for that, so she simply bent her knees and drew her legs as far up as they would come toward her chest and held herself in that position.
The tears that she had cried repeatedly over the past five hours had dried on her cheeks, leaving a faint salty residue. Her eyes were still red and puffy and her nose was so sore that she preferred to just sniffle quietly every few seconds rather than irritate it further with another wipe of a tissue.
She took a deep breath and, in an effort to calm herself, tried to let it out slowly, but her lungs quivered with emotion and her exhalation caught in her throat. She was seized by a fit of coughing and her entire body shook as she struggled to take in small gasps of air, then quickly expelled them again.
The coughing spell passed in a minute or two and she lay motionless on the bed, breathing shallowly and with care. She was emotionally exhausted and she wished that she could take a nap, but it was only late afternoon and she knew that her body was not yet tired enough to allow her to sleep. Nevertheless she unfolded the blanket that lay at the foot of the bed and pulled it up to her shoulders, more for solace than for warmth. She let her eyes drift closed again and tried to draw comfort from the stillness of the empty room.
From the other side of the steel door she could hear the muffled sounds of people talking and going about their business, but nobody entered the room for a long while and eventually she began to relax. She had no idea how long she would remain in this cell, and she hoped that soon she would be released from its confines, but for the time being she was relieved to simply be left alone. At least here she did not have to hear any more accusations of wrongdoing made against her. Whatever forces had conspired to bring her to this place, she thought, they could go on conspiring elsewhere, without her. She did not understand the mechanics of any system by which her behavior could be judged a crime, and until she was forced to do so, she did not want to understand. She only knew that after five hours of being accused and defended, of being counseled and advised, of being scheduled for judgment, and then judged, and then remanded for further scheduling and judgment; of being arrested and handcuffed and searched and booked and fingerprinted and photographed and stripped naked and searched again and redressed in ill-fitting clothes that were not her own—after several hours of such treatment, she was finally being left alone. Alone in an empty room to just lay on a bed and cry. It was not an entirely unfamiliar feeling for her.