Free Southampton Spectacular by M. C. Soutter Page A

reading each one slowly to her mother, glancing up occasionally to see if there might be some reaction. But Cynthia Hall was unmoved. She continued to stare at her husband’s prone form like a cat watching a mouse hole. Devon supposed she was waiting for movement. Waiting for the sign that she herself was waiting for. Hoping for.
    On the fourth day in the room, Devon’s mother finally stirred.
    “So late,” Cynthia said suddenly.
    Devon stopped. And stayed silent for what felt like a very long time. “What?” she whispered finally.
    Her mother seemed to have been waiting for a prompt. “You were so late,” she said, turning slightly toward Devon.
    “I was late?” Devon echoed, trying to play along. Trying to keep the conversation going. “When?”
    Cynthia Hall turned to look at her daughter. Her eyes lost their cloudy covering, and she fixed Devon with the bright, hard-eyed intelligence that had always been there. Since Devon was ten, five, two. Since she could remember.
    “You were late being born ,” Cynthia said, and gave her a fond smile. “Late by a whole month.” She shook her head at the memory, as if still amazed that Devon had finally managed to be born at all. She let out a little laugh. “And those idiotic women counseling me, they told me the best thing was to just let the baby come. Let it come when it would come.” She looked up at the ceiling, then back at Devon, who was hearing only half of what her mother was saying. She was too relieved to have her back. To have her operating at full power again. “ But you weren’t coming at all ,” Cynthia said, her voice rising a notch, and this snapped Devon back to reality. Yes, her mother was back. But now she was moving forward. And she was trying to tell her something. “You weren’t coming,” Cynthia said, “and I had to demand that they do something about it. Can you believe that? Do you have any idea what it feels like to be over ten months pregnant?”
    Devon shook her head. No, she did not. But she could try to imagine, even if she had never –
    “No, you can’t,” her mother cut in gently. “You can’t even imagine it. But never mind. They took me in and they gave me the Pitocin. Do you know what that is? A synthetic hormone that mimics the stuff my body was supposed to be producing. It induces labor.” She smiled ruefully again at the thought. Yes, they had finally given her the Pitocin. In April. When Devon’s due date had been March 12th. But they had started her on a 0.5 mU/min solution drip, which would have been conservative even if Cynthia Hall, twenty-three at the time, had not been the strong, athletic, 185-pound-ten-months-pregnant woman that she was. And she was . So the solution they gave her was wholly insufficient, and it had no effect until they upped the concentration all the way to the maximum allowable dose of 12 mU/min, when contractions finally began. And this after eight hours of walking around the hospital, which made Cynthia’s swollen feet sing to her that they had had enough .
    “I’ve had enough ,” she called out, to the walls and to the supposedly calming lighthouse watercolor pictures decorating the antiseptic-blue hall, where she was shuffling along at one or two steps a minute like an injured tortoise. She was holding her enormous belly in one hand.
    Peter was at her side, grasping Cynthia’s other hand and managing their traveling I.V. cart, with it’s tangle of hanging tubes and sensors attached to Cynthia’s belly, arm, heart, and pelvis. “I’m going to my bed ,” she added, “and I’m going to lie down until this thing is done .”
    From one of the rooms, a midwife appeared like a gnome. “You should try to keep walking as long as possible,” the little woman said, urgency in her voice. “To keep the baby moving down so that – ”
    “Out of my way, please,” said Cynthia Hall, her voice in its full command register despite the pain radiating through her legs and abdomen.