Tonio by Jonathan Reeder

distance. My delicate little Minchen was not cut out for childbirth. I should never have saddled her with this.
    When the contractions subsided for a moment, the redheaded maternity nurse who had met us at the lift went to fetch coffee. When she returned, she pressed a paper cup into my hand and whispered: ‘I think your wife could use your help right now.’
    So coffee in hand, I sat down on the stool next to Miriam’s bed. I took a sip and bent over to whisper something encouraging, but before I could get a word out she cried: ‘No, please! Not with that coffee breath! Ugh, it stinks … I’m so nauseous … I can’t stand it …’
    Never before had she looked at me (or through me) like that. Not only as though I were a complete stranger, but a hostile one at that. I noticed that even now, in the throes of labour, she emphasised the word can’t — as a child she adopted this one quirk of her father’s accent. ‘I can’t stand it.’
    Her reaction made me recoil and nearly knock over the stool. So this was how ill giving birth could make you. I fled to the corridor, set the still-full coffee cup on a window sill on the way to the WC , rinsing my mouth a good five or six times, gargling with water until my throat went raw.
    When the contractions resumed in full force, the women laid Miriam on the floor.
    â€˜Don’t be alarmed, honey. You can push better this way.’
    They put a pillow under her head, and there she lay, on the scuffed linoleum, with three women kneeling around her. The maternity nurse wiped up small amounts of faeces that came out with each push. The midwife put a stethoscope to Miriam’s belly, offering the mother-to-be a listen, but Miriam shook her head vehemently as a sign that the hooks be removed from her ears: by now, everything was an intrusion. The midwife signalled me to come listen. I’d have rather not, but I didn’t want to come across as an indifferent father. I knelt down next to Miriam, and with the stethoscope attached, I tried to hold my breath (it was the combination of Surinamese sausage and coffee on an empty stomach, of course, that had produced such a birthing-unfriendly stench). I listened to my imminent fatherhood. Eyes closed, I saw in my mind’s eye a snippet of a documentary of a coral reef. The panicked gurgle of escaping gas bubbles. Blurp, blurp. An improbably fast, watery heartbeat. Acoustically, already a miscarriage.
    I nodded and handed the stethoscope back to the obstetrician. I returned to my stool near the door. The women conferred quietly as to whether it wasn’t time to break the membranes. A few moments later, I heard the metallic sound of fluids dripping, then gushing, then dripping again.
    7
    â€˜Look, honey, this is the amniotic fluid.’ The Fiat-midwife held the kidney-shaped bedpan up for Miriam to see. ‘That red’s just a bit of blood.’
    It was one of those wards where nothing was done without the patient being informed. The heavily sagging body of my sweetheart rested on hands and knees on the floor like a pregnant animal ready to drag itself off to its den to deliver its cubs. The women crouched behind her continued their cries of encouragement. I thought the birthing process had begun. But no. Their exclamations were for the mother-to-be’s excrement. ‘Go on, girl, there’s still more in there. Breathe through the contractions, give us a little push.’
    Before unleashing a wonder, a woman first has to prove she is capable of abandoning all dignity.
    Back when Miriam was still on the bed, the women whispered among themselves about the dilation, which with a crinkling rubber glove was established to be eight centimetres. ‘At ten, we start pushing.’
    Now, even more soft-spokenly, they measured eight-and-a-half, which apparently was enough to give the green light for pushing. There must be a reason for their haste. Miriam once again