Purpose

              Purpose 



              He walked through the village turned science experiment like a peacock would walk through an overcrowded chicken coop. He moved briskly so as to spend as little time possible amongst the people, whom started to stop and stared as he strode past. $6,500 Versaces settled and lifted in the cool mud repeatedly, receiving more wear within fifteen minutes than they ever had in their existence, but that did not stop them. Their controller, their owner, was a dedicated man, and $6,500 was pocket change anyway.

         He stuck out, for obvious reasons, in the crowd of mothers, orphans, soldiers, and farmers. His ivory head of blond hair bobbed through the sea of black, with several thousand years of white, male superiority radiating from his face like a healthy glow.  His eyes tried to stay forward, mostly because the slightest glance in any other direction made him sick, just the idea of such barbaric people made him cringe. Dr. Claus Otlo was not the most tolerant of people, especially when it came to his patients.

         After he made it half way through the slum, the entire village of what used to be called Ethiopians had stopped to look at him. One watching might say that he was Moses, for at this point everyone twenty feet ahead of him had parted to one side or the other, watching in awe and trepidation. Hundreds of ugly and deformed faces stared, their bloated lips open like a fresh wounds, their beady eyes like a hungry hyena’s. Cattle of mankind, thought Dr. Otlo, but not even cattle because they give nothing back; they are the burden of mankind.

         He kept his gloved hands in his coat pockets, hating himself for everything that was happening. Angry contradictions swarmed in his head like bees, a mess of noise and motion. Everything he thought was countered by another thought, almost like he was determined to fail. He heard his father’s ideas in his head, but soon after heard his own. This “haunting”, one could call it, caused him to try to think less and less, but he would do just about anything to keep his mind off the masses of hideousness around him.

         The villagers continued to stare, only a few children did otherwise; they stayed behind the crowd and chased each other, playing “civil war”. It was a rare sight, not because they were playing but because one of the children actually attempted to mold his harelip mouth into a smile. He represented the Zulu nation in this game, and, after having butchered the Matobian’s children and wife, started hacking a machete into one of the others.  It was not a machete he held in his hands though, but a stick. The other child (with a considerable sized goiter on his neck) fell to the ground, taking the beating like a terrified dog.

         The rare site did not intrigue Dr. Otlo, was nearly to the end of his haunting journey. The ulcer in his stomach started to burn a little, showing that he had not eaten lunch yet. The time of day was hidden by the overcast of clouds that would probably end up to be rain by nightfall, and from the observation tower you could see where it was already raining over the beautiful Ethiopian landscape. Beauty was something that most of the villagers never knew about. Many of the younger ones had never even left the camp, and were at the mercy of the elders to learn about the outside world. There are only eight of the elders left, ages ranging from thirty-nine to forty-eight. Nobody lived past forty eight.

         Doctor Otlo was about 100 feet away from the shanty when he heard her, and he actually paused for a split second to shudder.

         Dying. Dying and suffering and pain and death and dying. That is what the scream was saying, that is what the most horrible shriek from any animal on Gods earth tried to say. It rang throughout him, like someone hammering his head, sending waves throughout him. She, or it, sounded like a hyena caught in a bear trap; barking and panting accompanying in between.

         After the M.D. realized he had stopped, he picked up his walking pace twofold. Although everything in his body told him to stay away, he knew he needed this. He knew he needed to do this and if it worked, he wouldn’t have to enter back into hell for another six months. He would do just about anything for that.

         He came up to an incredibly loud shanty with wood walls partially covered by a whitish siding, all held up by nails. It was slightly elevated on wooden poles, only about two feet off the ground, so flood damage would not be so extensive. When he approached the closed door he was not sure what he was going to do, he could not afford to get his gloves dirty, but he could not afford to take them off, who knows what has touched these door handles. Through the cracks in the wall he could see streaks off light and hear shrieks of pain. Also an odor leaked out, an odor most unlike the smell of feces and rot that existed outside, but more like bleach and alcohol. One could say, he supposed, the smell of clean.

         “Open Up!” he yelled harshly and kicked the door repeatedly with his foot. He kicked it six times, forever breaking the seam on the tip of his right shoe, before he heard movement inside. The door opened, and a well built and incredibly dark African man stood their holding the door, a nearly panicked expression on his usually stoic face.

         “Doctor Otlo,” he started, “thank God you ah here, she is in da last stage of laba’ and is not holdin’ well.” He showed him into the one room house of eight, vertical cracks of light all over the walls inside. There appeared to be three boarded up windows on three separate walls, but why someone would want to cover up their only three windows was beyond him. Probably so you can’t see outside, he thought, and decided that being locked in this little, smelly shack was better than being out there.

         On the bed at the end of the room was a woman laying spread eagle and screaming very, very loudly. The shriek was different from any other women he had delivered from. It was no shriek of life. When a child is born, the birth pains cause shrieks of life because there is life from the screams, but theses were different. These were shrieks of death, and death is the last thing Doctor Otlo, or his ulcer, needed.

         All the light in the room was from a high powered lamp hanging from a pole near the roof of the shanty, which was about eight feet. The pole was attached to a tray/cart which had been moved into the house at the announcement of a birth. The “Baby basket” contrasted greatly from the rest of the shanty, mostly due to its incredibly clean white coloring (never mind the mud stains on the wheels and undercarriage) and all the completely sterilized tools, tubes, and syringes that were mounted on top. It’s light shown down directly onto the patient’s monstrously disproportionate body.

         The baby bulged out of her stomach in a way that looked so painful, you could feel the skin on your stomach stretching as you watched. She was skinny enough so you could see every bone in her arms and legs, but were her concave stomach should be rested a growth that seemed to dwarf even her. She was covered with a blanket from the navel down, leaving her black upper body exposed and beaded with sweat. It was truly a repugnant sight.

         “We really need dis baby Docta...”

         “Yah! Yah, I know we need the Goddammed kid. Now for God’s sake someone cover that woman up, I can’t stand to look at her.” A female assistant, this one Caucasian, quickly obliged. “It’s going to be any moment now so I need everyone’s cooperation. As soon as I make the delivery, I want Xavier to bring the child straight to O.R. in office and I want Natasha to… where the hell is Natasha?”

         “Here doctor,” said another assistant who was at the corner of the room, obviously trying to get away from the light and noise.

         “Get over here and listen! I want you to clean up all remains of, ahh, this and I want you two” he paused, pointing at a second and third black male, “to bring the mother to O.R in standby if she lives, if she doesn’t… grind her.” One might think that the woman would panic over hearing this, but it was obvious nothing could be heard over her consistent barking and shrieking. Also, although most of the town knew English, they were speaking far too fast for her to understand.

         “She’s so loud! Why hasn’t anybody pumped her up with painkillers yet?”

         “Her file says she is allergic Doctor, and we are afraid that putting her to sleep would send her body into shock.”

         He wished that his staff was better trained in this area of science, but he can understand their concern in this particular matter. After all, there had not been a live birth in over six and one half months, and their current six and one half month old baby was far too old.

         For a people that breed like rabbits, you’d think that at least a few of their young would live. Not a people…no… they are no longer a people. Dr. Otlo was right; you would think a few of their young would live. In the last 12 and a half months, there was 56 miscarriages, and one pair of Siamese twins. The Siamese twins were useless for any type of experiment they hoped on conducting, but did prove useful in feeding the dogs that constantly circled the electric fence around the village.

         The pushing and screaming went on for some time before they could actually do something to help her, but it was obvious that it was taking too long. Tension was filling the already crowded room like a poisonous gas. Where was the child? She pushed and pushed but nothing was coming. The most likely possibility was that the placenta had blocked the passage out, but it still seemed unlikely. At this point, the placenta would have been expelled, with the baby coming out soon after. It was always a possibility that the baby was in too awkward of a position, and there was no way he could fit through like a normal birth.

         Even to the interns, something was obviously wrong, her screaming far too painful and her body motions too violent. After a few more waves of the woman’s B.O. hit the doctor, he made a decision.

         “Emergency C-section!” He yelled over the screaming, “Xavier, Mathew, hold her down and, ah, for God’s sake keep her covered up!”

         “She can hardly breathe Doctor!”

         “If she couldn’t breathe, then she couldn’t squeal like an overfed pig! Now quit yelling and hand me my scalpel!” He could feel more motion behind him, probably the crowd getting restless outside. “Natasha, get the hell over here! Bring something to clean up the blood here! At the rate this one is thrashing, who knows were the hell I will end up cutting.” He was starting to decide he liked it better out in the mob then in here, when at that moment, his ulcer set in like a Molotov cocktail being thrown at the wall of his stomach.

         He took the scalpel from the nurse and lifted the bottom blanket, causing bile to form in the back off his throat. He tried to ignore what he was seeing, and cut a clean line across the bottom of the black mound. The woman, through all her pain, could still feel the sensation of being cut open and began to do what the Dc. hated most, panic. At that moment, the helpless body erupted into a series of shaking and screams and smells. Her kick pushed Xavier back a little, bumping him into the Baby Basket and causing the light above them to sway back and forth. The sickening motion of light caused them all to feel a little woozy, it seemed this mixture of smells, sounds, and sights was just perfect to make a man sick

         The cut went just deep enough into the uterus so the doctor could reach in, pushing his perfectly white glove into the fountain of red life. After doing the procedure with a piercing headache, nausea, and a burning ulcer, he eventually removed a small boy. He paused again, for a third time, and looked at the little shriveled mass of blood and flesh. The noise from the hyena on the table seemed to die down, even if just for a moment. The little baby did not move, it did not cry.

         “Doctor, how…” started Natasha, but she stopped short. Miscarriage number 57 was being held in his hands, its neck surrounded by its umbilical cord, its little blue face serene and immobile. There seemed to be no harelip on this one’s face, like 56% of the inmates had, and no other deformities were in sight. It was almost perfect, in comparison to everybody else, and was almost alive to know it. The sight was touching and confusing, for who would ever think that such a beautiful creation would be brought to the world by such a monstrosity as the woman.

         The woman, now unburdened by the mass of motionless flesh stopped her screaming, and began to breathe in a way someone might after they ran a marathon. The hoarse breathing was followed by coughing, spittle and mucus escaping from her bloated brown lips and landing on her cheeks and chin. It would still be a few minutes of recovery before she wanted to see her child.

         Natasha, a young lighter skinned African of 32 years old, looked back at the would be child and saw something in its lack of motion, something in its tranquility. Her eyes might even have watered, but she would not dare to do so next to Otlo. Doctor Claus Otlo. All he saw was one more mistake, one more lost opportunity, one more for the grinder. He closed his eyes for a second, in frustration, and heard a gasp. It quivered.

         It was a quiver so slight that at first Otlo thought it was his anger shaking it, but it came again, then once more, then it moved its arm.