Free Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson Page A

hypodermic is enough, and that I am actually being innoculated with some useless, although probably harmless, concoction.
    â€œYou won’t even notice,” she said enigmatically, and left.
    The hypodermic hit me suddenly, and I began to giggle about five minutes after she left. I was alone in the room, lying there giggling to myself, when I opened my eyes and there was a woman standing beside the bed. She was human, not a nurse; she was wearing a baggy blue bathrobe. “I’m across the hall,” she said. “I been hearing you.”
    â€œI was laughing,” I said, with vast dignity.
    â€œI heard you,” she said. “Tomorrow it might be me, maybe.”
    â€œYou here for a baby?”
    â€œSomeday,” she said gloomily. “I was here two weeks ago, I was having pains. I come in the morning and that night they said to me, ‘Go home, wait a while longer.’ So I went home, and I come again three days later, I was having pains. And they said to me, ‘Go home, wait a while longer.’ And so yesterday I come again, I was having pains. So far they let me stay.”
    â€œThat’s too bad,” I said.
    â€œI got my mother there,” she said. “She takes care of everything and sees the meals made, but she’s beginning to think I got her there with false pretences.”
    â€œThat’s too bad,” I said. I began to pound the wall with my fists.
    â€œStop that,” she said. “Somebody’ll hear you. This is my third. The first two—nothing.”
    â€œThis is my third,” I said. “I don’t care who hears me.”
    â€œMy kids,” she said. “Every time I come home they say to me, ‘Where’s the baby?’ My mother, too. My husband, he keeps driving me over and driving me back.”
    â€œThey kept telling me the third was the easiest,” I said. I began to giggle again.
    â€œThere you go,” she said. “Laughing your head off. I wish I had something to laugh at.”
    She waved her hand at me and turned and went mournfully through the door. I opened my same weary eye and my husband was sitting comfortably in his chair. “I said,” he said saying loudly, “I said, ‘Do you mind if I read?’” He had the New York Times on his knee.
    â€œLook,” I said, “do I have anything to read? Here I am, with nothing to do and no one to talk to and you sit there and read the New York Times right in front of me and here I am, with nothing—”
    â€œHow do we feel?” the doctor asked. He was suddenly much taller than before, and the walls of the room were rocking distinctly.
    â€œDoctor,” I said, and I believe that my voice was a little louder than I intended it should be, “you better give me—”
    He patted me on the hand and it was my husband instead of the doctor. “Stop yelling,” he said.
    â€œI’m not yelling,” I said. “I don’t like this any more. I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want any baby, I want to go home and forget the whole thing.”
    â€œI know just how you feel,” he said.
    My only answer was a word which certainly I knew that I knew, although I had never honestly expected to hear it spoken in my own ladylike voice.
    â€œStop yelling,” my husband said urgently. “Please stop saying that.”
    I had the idea that I was perfectly conscious, and I looked at him with dignity. “Who is doing this?” I asked. “You or me?”
    â€œIt’s all right,” the doctor said. “We’re on our way.” The walls were moving along on either side of me and the woman in the blue bathrobe was waving from a doorway.
    â€œShe loved me for the dangers I had passed,” I said to the doctor, “and I loved her that she did pity them.”
    â€œIt’s all right, I tell you,” the doctor said. “Hold your breath.” “
    â€œDid he