Read Online Consumption by Kevin Patterson - Free Book Online

and heaved. Robertson blanched. The nurse called for help then and, when the second nurse arrived, hissed “shoulder dystocia” to her. The new nurse gripped Victoria’s other leg and pressed likewise upon her, as Balthazar desperately fumbled.
    When a baby’s shoulders are too large to clear the mother’s pelvis, there are ten minutes to act and only ten minutes. The umbilical cord is squeezed closed in the birth canal and the child cannot expand his chest enough to breathe, and grows steadily more blueuntil he is delivered, whole and in time—or in parts. Bringing the knees to the chest is the first move, hanging the buttocks off the end of the bed is the next—these change the relevant angles favourably. When this does not work, the physician can twist the baby around in the birth canal, in the aptly named “corkscrew” manoeuvre. When this does not work, sometimes fracturing the child’s collarbones will allow the shoulders to roll in enough to be delivered. By this stage, all measures are desperate. In a city hospital, with an anaesthetist standing in the next room, and a surgeon right there, a Caesarean section can be life-saving. But ten minutes goes fast.
    Blood ran from Victoria in a steady stream; she grew paler and paler, and the child, the grapefruit-sized ball of his head just poking from her, grew bluer and bluer until he was almost the colour of an aubergine. No operation was possible there, and when the sequence of relevant steps pursued methodically did not work, Balthazar became frozen with grief, moving more slowly not less, and what happened was, the baby died.
    When her son had finally been pulled from her, Victoria held out her arms and Balthazar, weeping, placed the dead baby in them. She put the baby to her breast, shuddering and whispering, “Eat, baby. Please eat…” Tears ran steadily down her cheeks and off her chin and onto the baby’s head. Robertson stroked her hair, whispering, “Shhhh, Victoria, you’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” His relief that she had survived, to continue to tend to him and his other children, struck her at that moment as inconceivably self-absorbed. With her last bit of strength she hissed at him, “Get out of here!”
    His head flew back with a snap.
    When he did not immediately move, she shrieked, “ GET HIM OUT OF HERE! ” And he rose from his position hunched on the father’s stool and left the room, under the gaze of the horrified nurses and the doctor, himself paralyzed with grief and shame.
    When Balthazar visited her a few hours later, Robertson had not returned. “Victoria,” the doctor began. “I did not act as quickly as Iought to have…” But she did not have enough energy to assuage his guilt and turned away from him on her stretcher. “It’s no one’s fault,” she said. And until much later, when she knew him better, she believed that.
    Victoria’s parents and the priest and the other mothers in the hamlet attributed the death of her son to, variously, God’s will or Victoria’s excessive pride. But it wasn’t fated that her boy should die. Her boy was meant to grow up strong and handsome. He was supposed to have married Faith Nakoolak’s oldest daughter, who was not born either, as a consequence of the frayed strands of fortune. Faith was meant to have survived, and so was Victoria’s boy. They were supposed to live, and be happy. He was to have been Victoria’s favourite child, and this would have been apparent, though she would have denied it. He was also supposed to have been Robertson’s son in a way that Pauloosie could never be. He was supposed to have been the child that held them all together.
    In dying, he ruptured Victoria from Robertson, flaked her away from him like a leaf of shale. Robertson was attentive enough when Victoria returned home the next day. He had sent the kids to neighbours, and had cooked a meal. But the truth was Victoria’s intuition had been right—he was relieved