©1995
by JJPP69
by
1
Balance. It was almost as if it was the very glue
that held the universe together, keeping all of the pieces from spinning off
into infinity and leaving only a black hole in it's wake. Balance.
As old as Mother Nature, perhaps what she really was herself. The mercurial flow of events that prevented
both predator and prey from ever inheriting the earth.
There were temporary deviations in the equation of
course. A river temporarily dammed by a
landslide of mud and debris would soon overcome the obstructions and return to
it's trek towards the sea, and balance.
Up and down. East and west. Male and female. Action and reaction. Good
and evil. Yin and Yang. They were all just opposing sides of this
phenomenon known as balance.
Nineteen-Fifty-Five was a year not unlike any other before it, with the struggle for balance occurring thousands of times every nanosecond. The forces of good ended up a little ahead of the legions of evil by the end of the year though, for reasons unknown and probably unquestioned by mere mortals. But that was all to change, and in an attempt at achieving balance, evil would gain momentum and overshoot the null mark by quite a large margin. At one minute after midnight, on the first day of the year nineteen hundred and fifty-six, Edward Eugene Engelhart was born, and the pendulum began swinging in the opposite direction.
2
1956 Thomas Eugene Engelhart paced the gray and white
speckled tiles of the waiting area adjoining the delivery room, leaving a
trail of spilt coffee behind him as he reached in his pocket for another Camel
cigarette. He fumbled around in his
coat for his old and worn Zippo lighter, again spilling coffee on the floor
next to the overflowing chrome ash tray stand.
These shiny spots of brown overlapped the already dried dull ones from
the previous fifteen cups, and if connected dot to dot would complete a trail
from the coffee machine, past the ashtray to the steam heat radiator and window
overlooking the parking lot and back again.
His wife Edwina had been in labor for over fifteen hours. He had been in this very room twice before
with the births of Janice two years ago, and Jonathan eighteen months before
that. Neither delivery, from the first
contraction to the last push, had taken more than six hours. They had said they would get easier and
shorter each time, he thought to himself as lit his fiftieth smoke since
arriving at the hospital. He looked up
at the round Bulova wall clock for the millionth time. Eleven fifty nine. Any second now, the horns would begin to honk. The banging of pans and the shouts of the
inebriated would begin to permeate the air, only to be overridden by the
occasional leftover fireworks from the Fourth of July. And he was stuck in this shit hole of a
hospital, with a third child he couldn't really afford on the way, with only
the smell of Lysol and faded out Christmas decorations to keep him
company. What he wouldn't do for a
drink right now. Hell, a dozen drinks,
it was supposed to be New Year's Eve, right?
An adult Engelhart hadn't had a sober New Year's Eve in at least five
generations to be sure. Shit. So much for the rhythm method. The thought reminded him of a joke he had
once heard at the local barber shop.
"What do you call a couple of people that uses the rhythm
method?"
"Got me Charlie", someone had replied while thumbing
through a Look magazine.
"Parents."
No more sex with the ol' lady without a raincoat, that was for
sure, no matter what. He would swear to
God on that one right now. Little did
he know he was soon to get his wish.
As Thomas Engelhart was pacing around in his pity pot,
chain-smoking months off his life, a doctor and a team of nurses were trying to
save his wife's. Dr. James D. McNally
had been delivering babies for nearly 30 years, and never had he seen anyone
hemorrhage so much, so fast. No one had
expected to have to give transfusions during what should have been a regular,
on schedule delivery. Especially to a
healthy mother, who had given birth twice before without any complications.
By the time they could start giving her whole blood, her blood
pressure was down to 65 over nothing, and she was losing it twice as fast as
she was taking it in. It was too late
for a Cesarean birth, the babies' head was already crowning. Mrs. Engelhart was nearing unconsciousness
from loss of blood, but was still screaming non-stop between contractions. The doctors shouted for her to push again, just
one more time, one really big
push. She did as she was instructed,
although she had never heard the doctor over her own screams and the pain.
It was as if she wasn't giving birth at all, in the normal
sense of trying to expel something that would just as soon stay in it's
comfortable surroundings of the womb.
What ever was inside her, she had ceased to think of it as a baby,
seemed to be trying to kick and claw it's way out, and only roughly in the
direction of her vagina. She pushed and
screamed, unaware that she was burying her fingernails into the back of the
nurse's hands, drawing blood and actually snapping off some of the fingernails
in the process. Even though parts of
her had begun to pale from the loss of blood, capillaries in her face began to
burst as she let out the end of her breath in one last primeval scream. The baby's whole body was pushed out into
the doctor's hands, along with what must have been two pints of blood.
There was a short moment of eerie silence, as the doctor
stared down at the seemingly normal newborn awash in a sea of crimson. The two nurses who had been holding Mrs.
Engelhart down began to realize their patient was no longer trying to rip their
hands off at the wrist. The silence was
soon broken as the assitant who's duty it was to keep track of the pulse and
breathing looked up and slowly shook her head.
As if on cue, without any assistance from the doctor, the baby began to
wail.