My God, poor lady, he thought. I would gladly allow the baby to be delivered by George Wallace or Louise Day Hicks if the one were an obstetrician or the other a midwife, and either were here.

He opened the obstetrical pack, which contained not much: a bulb for suctioning, a couple of hemostats, scissors and forceps. Pulling her dress up to her bosom, he exposed thighs like oaks and a pair of brown silk underpants, which he proceeded to cut from her.

She began to cry. “Present from my second-oldest girl.”

“I’ll buy you new ones.”

Exposed, the stomach was awesome, an expanse of dusky flesh, fat-dappled and childbirth-mottled, on which her husband had lain and struggled in the only pleasure a poor black man could afford, the only joy that costs no money, cheaper than the movies, cheaper than booze, to deposit the tiny seed that had grown into this thing big and tight as a watermelon against her skin.

So low, so low.

I have a question from the peanut gallery, Doctor Robinson. How do I get an object as large as this fat woman’s undoubtedly fat baby through an opening which—although I have seen smaller—is still relatively small?

So small.

It was an opportunity, he realized grimly, to lose two patients, to score strike two and strike three simultaneously, as it were.

There was a bottle of Zephiran. He took off the cap and poured it liberally over the vulva and the perineum, then he poured some on each of his hands and waved them until dry; not a satisfactory substitute for the dermasurgical scrub, but the best one available.

The woman was huffing, puffing, pushing, trying to blow her house down.

“How you doing, mother?” She merely grunted.

Please, Lord.

There was a great gush of water all over his white pants, Niagara Falls the color of straw. Her eyes were closed, the great leg-muscles knotted. A small bald head appeared in the opening, wearing the hair of the mother’s unprepped genitalia like a tonsure.

Two more contractions and the head was clear. Spurgeon used the bulb to suction liquid out of the tiny mouth and then realized that she was having a tighter time with the shoulders. He made a small epesiotomy which bled very little. Next time she contracted he helped with his hands, and the entire baby was out in the cold world. He put two clips on the cord and cut between them, and then made a point of looking immediately at his watch; it was important for legal reasons that the time of birth be recorded.