Born Weird Read Free Page B

his fourth child failed to excite him. He’d begun to see his children as some kind of venereal disease, direct results of copulation. At home he already hadthree children, all under the age of five. He loved all of them. He knew he would love this child too. This was the problem. As he continued trying to restart the engine, his wife opened the passenger door.
    Nicola got out of the Maserati and walked the last two hundred yards on her own. The doors to emergency slid open automatically. The admitting nurse dropped her paperwork and rushed over. Nicola was put on a gurney and wheeled through the swinging doors before Besnard had a chance to park. Nicola screamed as she felt Angie’s head start to crown. It was her fourth birthing experience and she knew that the worst was, or at least soon would be, over. They had almost reached the delivery room when a doctor ran up and stopped the gurney, examining Nicola right in the corridor.
    “Do not push anymore! Stop!” he said.
    “What are you talking about?” Nicola yelled.
    “Stop pushing right now!” the doctor said, firmly. He looked into her eyes and held her hand, gestures that Nicola never forgot. She stopped pushing. She breathed as deeply as she could. She concentrated on these things, which is why she didn’t notice how quiet everyone had become.
    “Can I push now?”
    “You cannot,” the doctor replied. “The cord’s around the baby’s neck.”
    Nicola gritted her teeth. She did not push. So much pressure built up inside her that her nose started to bleed.
    “Almost got it,” the doctor said.
    “My
goddamn
head is going to
goddamn
explode!”
    “Got it!”
    “Now?”
    “Now!”
    The cord unwound, Nicola pushed and Angelika Weird, quite literally, popped into the world.
    Angie never doubted that any part of this story was true. The question she asked herself was: did it really have the deep character-forming significance that her grandmother claimed it had? Angie didn’t believe it had any greater impact on her personality than the fact that she was born in early May, making her a Taurus. She would, however, admit that she had never been able to wear necklaces or turtlenecks. Nor had she ever been able to make herself do up the top button on any shirt.
    It was with a nosebleed that Grandmother Weird got herself admitted into Vancouver and District General Hospital, eight days before she wrote her phone number on Angie’s forearm. She finished her lunch and washed her dishes and then she took a taxi to the emergency room. It was 2:30 p.m. when she stepped into the line. Fifteen minutes later, when she got to the front of it, Annie told the triage nurse that she was terminally ill.
    “Could you be more specific?” the nurse asked.
    “My death will occur at 7:39 p.m. on April 20.”
    “That is
very
specific.”
    “Twenty-one days from today.”
    “Maybe you could come back on the nineteenth?”
    “Maybe you should watch your tone.”
    “Maybe
you
should take a seat.”
    The nurse looked down at her paperwork. She did not look back up. Annie took a seat beside a woman whose skin had taken on a yellowish hue. She folded her hands in her lap. She stared straight ahead. She set herself an impossible task: she would not move until her name was called.
    A parade of broken limbs, troubling coughs and exaggerated parental fears came and went. Just after 4:30 in the morning, after sitting still for fourteen hours, Annie was alone in the waiting room for the first time.
    “Angela Weirs?” a nurse called.
    “Close enough,” Annie said. She stood. Her joints were stiff. She took small jerky steps. The nurse led her into a room with curtains for walls. The thin brown paper crinkled as Annie sat on it. Her feet were a long way from the floor. She swung them. She waited for quite some time and then a doctor arrived. He was yawning, stubbled, and a third her age.
    “So. You are dying?” he asked. He looked at her and then down at his clipboard.