An Event To Remember AND Forget

Prologue

Having a baby is an emotional event, especially when the child is born with an abnormality. Such is the luck of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Mr. Stanley’s emotions are humorously lacking in stability as he is besieged with worry after he hears his wife scream from the delivery room. But after the child is born, too bad Mrs. Stanley wasn’t as thrilled about it as much as her husband.

Genre – Humor
Target audience – Adults
Rated R – Mild Explicit Language


*An Event To Remember AND Forget

It all begins in a delivery room in a suburban hospital where an emotionally tightly wrapped expecting father paces the floor. His face is lined with worry because he suspects there is a problem with his wife's delivery of their fourth child.

"Oh God, I wish the baby would come. She's been in the darn delivery room way too long. Good God, why did she scream like that? Why can't it be an easy birth? Man, I wish it were over and done with!"

His pace quickens as he watches two more doctors rush past him into the delivery room.

"What the hell is going on in there? What's the problem?" he mumbles to himself.

Immediately, another "aaagh!" was heard coming from the delivery room.

"Alright, I've heard enough! She's obviously in some pain and I'm going in there, damn it!" As if shot from a cannon, he darts for the delivery room doors where he was rudely met by one of them, free-swinging and coming at him from the opposite direction. It smacked him hard against the left side of his nose, tearing open the inner lining of his nostril and causing it to spout blood profusely.

"Ouch! Shit, that hurt like hell!" he screams in reacting to his instant pain. In sarcastically quipping he questions his bad timing by saying, "Am I having a bad day, or what?" all the while scanning others around him as if hoping to get a consoling response from other expectant fathers who are waiting to get the news. None came.

The obstetrician, who was exiting the door at the time when it sharply smacked into the expectant father, saw the man standing there in front of him using his shirt to soak up the blood that was jetting from his nostril. Instinctively he rips off his surgical cap to give to him to assist in his effort, as the tough-lucked and high-strung father-to-be tilts his head back to slow the blood flow.

"How is she doc?" asked the beleaguered man looking across and past his bloody nose at the surprised doctor. His frayed nerves were obvious and his disposition left no choice but to be short on pleasantries.

"Your wife is just fine now. You can relax. It's all over. You have a bouncing baby boy who is as healthy as can be," the doctor said in a not so self-assured manner. “Congratulations.” His eyes, mystifying but penetrating, clearly show that there was more to say before pausing for a moment to briefly look down at the floor.

Then he conciliatorily said, "But there's a slight problem…"

"Ah, for God's sake, what the hell is that?" The emotional man by this time was wound so tight in his stomach that he suddenly doubled over in pain as an old ulcer began to flare up, all the while still trying to keep his head tilted back. He took on the posture of an indecisive squatting duck which vicariously moved up and down not knowing if it wanted to sit or stand.

"Anybody got any damn Rolaids?" he asked others in the waiting room. The only response he got was from a small-framed man, twitchy and wide-eyed and seated in the far corner. Wearing large wired-rimmed glasses and owning an enormous nose, he had the appearance and expression of an insecure Jewish man waiting to be operated on for a late circumcision. He could only nervously and cautiously shake his head back and forth to imply the word no. The other three expectant fathers stared at him with tingling bemusement, obviously entertained by the beleaguered man's behavior. They wanted nothing to do with him and were content just to observe.

The doctor continued to speak regardless of the man's emotional attrition, "Your son was born with a slight problem, and that is, his head is about four times the size of a normal newborn."

"What the…?" The perplexed man was even more so and felt as if the side of his face had just been slapped, sinking stinging confusion deeper into his maligning expression. In seeing his reaction, the doctor interrupted him before he had a much of a chance to respond.

"Your son was breeched, where his buttocks were in position to come out first. His legs were extended out in front of his body with his feet near his head. After we carefully repositioned him, then we had the problem of attempting to pass his head through the birth canal. The problem was his head was way too large. Well, after a few attempts at doing that, your poor wife began begging us to go cesarean. But we soon discovered that we still weren't able to do that because the child's head had become lodged in the birth canal. We were left with only one option."

The doctor continued explaining to the half squatting, half standing man as he tried to give the doctor his utmost attention.

"We ended up breaking your wife's pelvic bone to finish your child's birth. That was the reason for the excruciating scream from your wife. There was no time to sedate her with any medication because of the pressure upon the child's head. We had to react quickly. She'll have a nasty bruise for a while, but she'll recover nicely. So try and relax, Mr. Stanley, everything's okay now. Your wife will be fine and all your new son's vitals are normal."

The doctor, however, in feeling a bit restricted with his words because of his severe lack of knowledge concerning someone born with such a condition suddenly shifted his thoughts to announce he had an important phone call to make.

"I, uh, need to make a phone call to an associate who should be able to explain to me in detail more your son's special condition. You'll have to excuse me while I do this, but I'll be back just as soon as I can." The doctor took a moment to reassure the new father, now standing upright from the protruding posture he once had, by giving him a firm handshake, saying, "Don't worry. Your wife and son are fine."

After the doctor turned to leave, the man was left feeling bewildered by the doctor's big head statement. Such news left him not knowing how to react. With his curiosity being stretched as to the detail of what his new son's appearance was, he could only display a worrisome expression that left him wondering how did this happened and why.

After taking several moments to try and absorb the doctor's words to a tolerable level of optimism, he still hadn't moved from the same spot on the floor when another surgeon suddenly emerged from the delivery room.

Quickly the new father stops him to ask, "May I see my wife and son?"

"Of course sir, go right in," asserted the surgeon.

When the man entered the room he immediately noticed his loving wife resting in bed. He was relieved to have her ordeal over, but he knew not nearly as she was. She could only manage a weak smile as she returned his loving look when he approached her. And when he got closer it was only then that he noticed a tear slowly making its way down her left cheek. He bent over to give her an immediate kiss upon that salty wet cheek, happy that she was no longer in such excruciating pain. His own intense emotions quickly simmered down to where his ulcer began to fade as well. But her tear had him wondering why the sadness. After all, she just gave birth to their first son. He was unaware of the reproach she felt by her son's appearance.

He lovingly asks her, "What's wrong, Honey?" Before she answered, though, out of the corner of his eye he observed the tear that was still clinging to her chin silently fall and absorbed itself into the cotton blanket wrapped around their newest family member who was firmly snuggled in her arms.

"Come and look at your son," she barely said. "He doesn't look like either one of us. He looks more like some kind of space alien, for God's sake! How could I have given birth to such a thing?" The woman was very disheartened with her new son's appearance and began to openly weep. She couldn't help it. Emotionally, as well as physically, she was worn out. For the moment, it was difficult for her to accept what had happened.

"Yeah I know, Honey. The doctor warned me about the way he looks." But her husband's excitement to have his first glimpse of his son became too much for him to bear any longer. So, he shifted his thoughts to him, for the moment anyway, to reach toward him to gently pull down the thin white cotton blanket to dramatically uncover his face.

And upon first seeing him, nothing but love filled the child's father's heart as it began to swell with unrepressed joy. Although he was clearly not one of God's better creations, he was still the most beautiful little human being he had ever laid his eyes upon. Sure, he had that enormous head. The thing was abnormally huge, probably extending over several inches across from ear to ear. But the child was his and he instantly felt a unique bond with the infant. It didn't mattered what the child looked like. The infant could have resembled an offspring of something of less admiration and his father still would have been pleased.

The doctor suddenly walked in interrupting the tender moment and said, "Please excuse me for interrupting, but I thought you might like to know that I have some good news. We just had someone on the phone from our Seattle office that deals with births of this nature and he said your son's condition is more than likely only temporary."

"What do you mean, more than likely?" asked the father.

"A Doctor Kazorachi said that your son was born with what is called temporary disproportionate cranium encephalitis (later becoming known as only encephalitis), and should grow out of it as he gets older, probably within a few years. To put it in layman's terms, he stated what happened was while you were carrying your son, the child had larger than normal blood flow to his brain because of abnormal-sized veins in his neck.

The reason for those is not totally understood, at least not yet. But, with the extra amount of blood flow also came extra amounts of oxygen and other necessary nutrients within that blood that overfed his brain, enabling it to grow at a much faster rate than anything else. That function in turn caused his developing brain to continually demand those needed nutrients, if you will. It was like his brain was a sponge, absorbing all the resources within his young body, and yours too, so it kept developing at a faster rate and robbing the rest of his body of its normal growth pattern. His brain kept on growing with his skull expanding itself as the need arose. If you remember during your pregnancy you constantly wanted to eat much more than a normal pregnant woman would."

The good doctor continues, "Now, I must tell you that there has been a few world-wide reported cases where this type of condition did not leave, but everyone of those people led productive lives, fortunately." He paused for a few moments to see if the confused parents understood his words. In being satisfied, he then continued, "And, of course, the hospital will want to monitor his condition from the very beginning, at least for awhile and with your permission of course, because this condition isn't widely known about. The information we can get from encephalitis would greatly enhance the knowledge of it, enabling the medial field to understand it more."

"So, this Kazorachi guy is completely sure that this, how do you say it, temporary disproportionate cranium, uh, en-ce-pha-li-tis or something, will leave him as he grows older? I just want to be sure," Mr. Stanley asked concernedly.

"He feels very strongly that your son will be just fine in a relative short period of time."

The relieved father then said, "Well, that's great news then. I mean, if he's able to grow out of this condition, then he'll eventually be normal in every which way, right?"

"I'd say his chances for a normal life are excellent, Mr. Stanley" the doctor happily replied.

The man looked at his physically drained wife to say, "You see, Honey, everything will be okay. Our new son will be as normal as any kid on the block." Then he gives her another kiss before affectionately saying as he lovingly looked into her exhausted face as if she was assuredly feeling the same, "We'll love him no matter what."

His exhausted wife could only look up at her husband to very confidently say, "I want my damn tubes cut!"