You Got Yourself a Boy, Part I

November 1957

Bill paced around the small, green and white room.  Back and forth, up and down.

Clair glanced up from the Popular Mechanics magazine in which his nose had been buried.  “Bill, you’re going to wear a hole in the carpeting.”

Bill stopped in his tracks and looked up.  His gazed into the distance like a man in a trance. His interlaced fingers whitened as he tightened his hands’ grip on each other. “What could be taking so long?”

“It’s a boy,” a white-clad nurse announced from the door of the waiting room.

Bill turned so fast he nearly lost his balance. The worry lines around his eyes relaxed as they widened and his mouth opened into an O, then stretched into a big smile. “A boy?”

He whirled around to all the people stuffed into the room. His and Lois’s immediate families, and Mark and Anna, all jumped up and stood shoulder-to-shoulder, all grinning like a pack of fools. 

“It’s a boy!” Bill yelled. Everybody surged forward and started talking at once. They pounded on his back and shoulders from every direction.  He laughed and nudged his way through the pack. “Thank you.  Clair, pass out the cigars, would you.” His eyes moistened and his smile beamed like the sun. “I’m going to go meet my boy.”  To the nurse, he said, “How’s my wife?”

“She’s just fine Mr. Schoppe.” The nurse spoke without turning. “Her labor was hard, but she came through like a real trouper. She’s a tough young woman.”

Relieved, Bill laughed. “You don’t even know the half of it.” He stopped and turned. 

A cheer went up. Grinning, he turned back. The nurse was gone.

Poking his head out the doorway, he looked to his left and then to his right. He spotted a white cap over a short bob of brown curls bouncing down the hallway. “There she is,” he muttered, hurrying to catch up.

He followed her through a set of double doors and stopped in front of a wall, the top half of which was glass. Behind the glass two rows of bassinets. Bill’s eyes glistened as he looked at the rows of babies. “Which one is mine?” he said, without turning.

The nurse said, “just one moment.” She walked down the hall and went in through a door.  A few agonizing minutes later she reappeared on the other side of the glass, masked, gloved and wrapped in a surgical gown. She picked her way between the bassinets and stopped at one right in front of where Bill stood with his nose centimeters away from the glass. She caught his eye and hers crinkled above the mask.

Bill pointed. “Is that him?”

She nodded and picked up the squirming bundle. She held him out like a doll on display. 

“Wow,” Bill said. His eyes watered and he dabbed at them with the rolled-up cuff of his denim shirt.