Birth Scene

It is Thursday the 12th of December 1994. The Christmas lights are being switched on in the city of Exeter by chat-show host Jerry Springer. The cheers of elation erupting from the high street surge towards the hospital building as the twinkling fairy lights illuminate the festivities taking place below them. “JERRY JERRY JERRY” Springer sits on his papier mache throne and feels contented that he has once more brought happiness and joy to a mob of strangers. He casts a smiling glance at his loyal subjects; teenage boys with mistletoe stuck to their belts; pregnant teenage girls singing “Away in a manger” at peoples doorsteps for money; men buying cut-price jewellery for their mistresses; middle-aged women stuffing chocolate selection boxes into their handbags for their grandchildren; and a particularly mischievous red robin perched on a white fairy light staring into the maternity ward of the hospital.

An unusually high influx of women with wet patches around their groins has forced the maternity wing to split each ward into two beds. Three nervous looking men, two exasperated women with their legs in the air and a young girl holding a care bear, occupy the room being surveyed by the red robin. The male midwife is constantly pacing from one side of the room to the other tending to both prospective parents, cursing nurse Paige who booked the night off months in advance upon hearing who was switching on the Christmas lights. One of the men is knelt down beside his wife looking very worried and repeatedly asking her: “Is everything alright dear?” or “How are you feeling?” to which she replies accurately and insincerely: “I FEEL LIKE I’M GOING TO FUCKING DIE HERE”. The other man is crouched over, rubbing his short spiky ginger hair against his wives dainty freckled forehead roaring: “Come on Janine! Do it for the Wedleys”. Janine smiles and her face radiates elusive beauty, before she screws up her face and unleashes a thunderous scream that scares the birth into action. The cute three-year-old girl is leant over the windowsill, hugging her care bear tightly and staring back at the red robin with a white ring around its eye.

The room explodes into action. One woman is confidently heaving and breathing, screaming in an animalistic manner, her husband is incredibly awed by her performance and is even forced to adjust the slackness of his belt to accommodate stirring. The other woman is somewhat quieter, efficiently carrying out the wonder of childbirth, whilst her husband preys, preys to whom he does not know. The midwife is hurriedly scuttering between the two beds trying his best to give the correct advice for the reciprocal period of labour. He occasionally confuses dilation measurements between women but nobody is detached enough from the situation to notice. The young girl is still examining the red robin.

“Mummy! The birdie is shaking. The birdie is sick!” The young girl looks towards her mother and wonders why her father is holding his hands together so close to his face. Nobody hears her. Suddenly the white light that the robin is perched upon starts to flash. The robin bursts into flames and combusts into a sullen pile of ashes. The whole circuit of lights starts sparkling and emitting screeching sounds. Flashes of light spark from the bulbs, some crack and explode shattering into glassy snowflakes falling to the ground. People below start gasping. They shriek as the fairy lights turn into fireworks and light up the sky as the city is plunged into darkness. Jerry Springer looks confused. The little girl is crying. The maternity ward is thrown into a frenzy of confusion; the expulsing mothers are wailing, instinctively concerned for their young; one father is weeping, crying for help; whilst the other is shouting, furiously demanding an explanation; the midwife is taking photos of the dilated vaginas with his camera phone, using the flash to help deliver the babies; the little girl is crying.

Somehow through the chaos the midwife manages to cut both umbilical chords and carry the babies into the emergency cots where a night nurse with a candle tends to them. When he returns to the ward, both women have expelled their placentas onto the floor and the backup lighting has been activated. One father is profusely thankful for the midwife’s ‘calm and confidence in a horrible moment” and the other father assures the room that he “would have responded in the same heroic way if he was called upon” to do so. The young girl is now lying in her mother’s arms, stained by the afterbirth.

“Both the babies are boys.” The midwife says.

“See Janine, I told ya didn’t I? The lads gonna be a true Wedley, I knew it” The ginger father says to his wife. The mother gleams back at him proudly.

“Aww did you hear that Jennifer? You’ve got a baby brother! The other father says patting his daughter on the back. The young girl snuggles deeper into her mother’s arms without responding.

“The mothers should get some rest-”

“-NO we are going home tonight” The ginger father interrupts the midwife.

“But I really think it is best for both the mothers and the infants to spend the first night in hospital, just as a precaution.” Says the midwife.

“We have to pick up little Charlie from my mum’s and we’d like to spend the night as a family if it’s all the same by you.” The mother says.

“And you?” The midwife asks the other family.

“We’d like to stay” the mother yawns “It’s my first night off in, in, well since I can remember and I’d like to sleep now.”

The midwife fetches one of the babies from the night nurse and all the necessary information is discussed. This process is repeated in the morning for the other family.

The ginger father names his son Chris and the other boy is named Roger by its mother.