Free The Cider House Rules by John Irving

After washing the baby himself and giving the mother some ergot, he bowed a wordless goodbye. Leaving the apartment, he was surprised to hear a commotion almost the instant he closed the door: the grandmother, the iced patient, the husband—all shouting in Lithuanian—and the baby giving forceful voice to its first family quarrel. It was as if the delivery, and Dr. Larch's entire appearance, had been only a brief interruption to a life of unintelligible turmoil.
    Larch navigated the dark stairs and groped his way outside; he stepped on a rotting head of lettuce, which gave under his foot with the disquieting softness of a newborn baby's skull. This time he did not confuse the cat's terrible yowl with the sounds a child can make. He looked up in time to see the object flying through the window of the Lithuanian apartment. He was in time to dodge it. It had clearly been hurled at him, and Larch wondered what particular, perhaps Lithuanian, offense he had caused these poor people. Larch was shocked to see that the object thrown from the window—and now dead on the ground at his feet—was the cat. But he was not that shocked; for a passing second, he feared it might have been the child. He had been told by his professor of obstetrics at Harvard that 'the tensile strength of the newborn' was 'a marvel,' but Larch knew that the tensile strength of a cat was also considerable and he noted that the beast had failed to survive its fall.
    'Here in St. Cloud's,' Dr. Larch would write, 'I am constantly grateful for the South End of Boston.' He meant he was grateful for its children and for the feeling they gave him: that the act of bringing them into this world was perhaps the safest phase of their journey. Larch also appreciated the blunt reminder given him by the prostitutes in the South End. They recalled for him the painful gift of Mrs. Eames. He could not see the prostitutes without imagining their bacteria under the microscope. And he could not imagine those bacteria without feeling the need for the giddy warmth of 65 ether—just a sniff; just a light dose (and a light doze). He was not a drinking man, Dr. Larch, and he had no taste for tobacco. But now and then he provided his sagging spirits with an ether frolic.
    One night, when Wilbur was dozing in the South End Branch of the Boston Lying-in, he was informed by one of the doctors that there was an emergency arrival, and that it was his turn. Although she had lost a lot of weight and all of her youthfulness since Larch had last seen her, he had no trouble recognizing Mrs. Eames. She was so frightened, and in such intense pain, that she had difficulty catching her breath, and more trouble telling the nurse-receptionist her name.
    'Rhymes with screams,' said Dr. Larch helpfully.
    If Mrs. Eames recognized him right away, she didn't let on. She was cold to the touch, her pulse was very fast, and her abdomen was as hard and white as the knuckles of a tight fist; Larch could detect no signs of labor, and he couldn't hear the heartbeats of the fetus, which Larch couldn't help imagining as having features similar to Mrs. Eames's sullen teen-age daughter. How old would she be now? he wondered. Still about his own age —that much he had time to remember before attending to his diagnosis of Mrs. Eames: hemorrhage within the abdomen. He operated as soon as the house officer could locate the necessary donors for the transfusion.
    'Missus Eames?' he asked her softly, still seeking some recognition from her.
    'How's your father, Wilbur?' she asked him, just before he operated.
    Her abdomen was full of blood; he sponged away, looking for the source, and saw that the hemorrhage issued from a six-inch rupture in the back of the uterus. Larch performed a Caesarean section and delivered a stillborn child—the pinched, scornful face of which forcibly reminded him of the cigar-smoking daughter. He wondered why Mrs. Eames had come here alone. {66}
    To this point in the operation, young Larch