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"It was pretty harmonious before you and your damn body got here," the stationmaster said.
"Moronville!" Larch shouted out the window as the train pulled away. "Idiotsburg!"
To his great disappointment, when the train arrived in St. Cloud's, the stationmaster was not there. "Lunch," someone told Dr. Larch, but it was early evening.
"Perhaps you mean supper?" Dr. Larch asked. "Perhaps the stationmaster doesn't know the difference," he said nastily; he hired the help of two louts to lug Clara up the hill to the boys' division.
He was surprised by the disarray in which Homer Wells had left body number two. In the excitement of the emergency, Homer had forgotten to put body number two away, and Larch ordered the two oafs to carry Clara in there--not preparing the simpletons for the shopworn cadaver exposed on the table. One of the clods ran into a wall. Terrible crying out and jumping around! Larch went shouting through the orphanage, looking for Homer.
"Here I am, running after a new body for you--across half the damn state of Maine--and you leave a mess like that just lying out in the open where any fool can fall upon it! Homer!" Dr. Larch yelled. "Goddamn it," he muttered to himself, "there is no way a teen-ager is going to be an adult ahead of his own, good time--no way you can expect a teen-ager to accept adult responsibilities, to do an adult's Goddamn job!" He went muttering all over the boys' division, looking for Homer Wells, but Homer had collapsed on Larch's white-iron bed in the dispensary and had fallen into the deepest sleep. The aura of ether surrounding that spare bed under that eastern window might have enhanced Homer's drowsiness, but he scarcely needed ether to sleep; he had been up for nearly forty hours with the eclampsia patient--delivering her and her child.
Nurse Angela interrupted Dr. Larch before he could find Homer Wells and wake him up.
"What's happening around here?" Larch demanded to know. "Is no one the least bit interested in where in Hell I've been? And why has that boy left his body looking like a war casualty? I go away overnight and just look at this place."
But Nurse Ange
la straightened him out. She told him it had been the worst case of puerpural convulsions she'd ever seen, and she had seen some--in her time. Wilbur Larch had seen some, too. In his days at the Boston Lying-In, he'd lost a lot of women to eclampsia, and even in 194_, about a quarter of the deaths in childbirth were credited to these convulsions.
"Homer did this?" Larch asked Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna; he was reading the report; he had examined the mother, who was fine, and the premature baby boy, who was normal and healthy.
"He was almost as calm as you, Wilbur," Nurse Edna said admiringly. "You can be real proud of him."
"He is an angel, in my opinion," Nurse Angela said.
"He looked a little grim when he had to break the water," Nurse Edna remembered, "but he did everything just right."
"He was as sure as snow," Nurse Angela said.
He did almost everything right, Wilbur Larch was thinking; it really was amazing. Larch thought it was a slight error that Homer had failed to record the exact number of convulsions in the second twelve-hour period (especially after correctly counting them in the first twelve hours), and Homer had not mentioned the number or the severity of the convulsions (or if there were any) in the ten-hour period after the patient's labor contractions began and before she delivered. Minor criticism. Wilbur Larch was a good teacher; he knew that this criticism was better withheld. Homer Wells had performed all the hard parts correctly; his procedure had been perfect.
"He's not even twenty--is he?" Larch asked. But Nurse Edna had gone to bed, she was exhausted; in her dreams she would mingle Homer's heroism with her already considerable love for Larch; she would sleep very well. Nurse Angela was still up, in her office, and when Dr. Larch asked her why the premature baby had not been named, she told Larch that it was Nurse Edna's turn and Nurse Edna had been too tired.
"Well, it's just a matter of form," said Wilbur Larch. "You name it, then--I want it named. It won't kill you to go out of turn, will it?"
But Nurse Angela had a better idea. It was Homer's baby--he had saved it, and the mother. Homer Wells should name this one, Nurse Angela said.
"Yes, you're right, he should," Dr. Larch replied, filling with pride in his wonderful creation.
Homer Wells would wake to a day of naming. In the same day he would be faced with naming body number three and his first orphan. He would name the new body Clara, and what else could he have named a baby boy except David Copperfield? He was reading Great Expectations at the time and he preferred Great Expectations to David Copperfield as a book. But he would not name anyone Pip, and he didn't care for the character of Pip as much as he cared for little David. It was an easy decision, and he woke that morning very refreshed and capable of more demanding decisions than that one.
He had slept almost through the night. He woke only once on the dispensary bed, aware that Dr. Larch was back; Larch was in the room, probably looking at him, but Homer kept his eyes closed. He somehow knew Larch was there because of the sweet scent of ether, which Larch wore like cologne, and because of the steadiness of Larch's breathing. Then he felt Larch's hand--a doctor's hand, feeling for fever--pass very lightly over his forehead. Homer Wells, not yet twenty--quite accomplished in obstetrical procedure and as knowledgeable as almost any doctor on the care of "the female organs of generation"--lay very still, pretending to sleep.
Dr. Larch bent over him and kissed him, very lightly, on his lips. Homer heard Larch whisper, "Good work, Homer." He felt a second, even lighter kiss. "Good work, my boy," the doctor said, and then left him.
Homer Wells felt his tears come silently; there were more tears than he remembered crying the last time he had cried--when Fuzzy Stone had died and Homer had lied about Fuzzy to Snowy Meadows and the others. He cried and cried, but he never made a sound; he would have to change Dr. Larch's pillowcase in the morning, he cried so much. He cried because he had received his first fatherly kisses.
Of course Melony had kissed him; she didn't do it much anymore, but she had. And Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had kissed him silly, but they kissed everyone. Dr. Larch had never kissed him before, and now he had kissed him twice.
Homer Wells cried because he'd never known how nice a father's kisses could be, and he cried because he doubted that Wilbur Larch would ever do it again--or would have done it, if he'd thought Homer was awake.
Dr. Larch went to marvel at the good health of the eclampsia patient and at her thriving, tiny child--who, in the morning, would become the orphan David Copperfield ("David Copperfield, Junior," Dr. Larch would enjoy saying). Then Larch went to the familiar typewriter in Nurse Angela's office, but he couldn't write anything. He couldn't even think, he was so agitated from kissing Homer Wells. If Homer Wells had received his first fatherly kisses, Dr. Larch had given the first kisses he had ever given--fatherly, or otherwise--since the day in the Portland boardinghouse when he caught the clap from Mrs. Eames. And the kisses he gave to Mrs. Eames were more in the nature of explorations than they were gifts of love. Oh God, thought Wilbur Larch, what will happen to me when Homer has to go?
Where he would go was hardly a place of comparable excitement, of comparable challenge, of comparable sadness, of comparable gloom; but where he would go was nice, and what would Homer Wells, with his background, make of nice? Wouldn't it simply seduce him? Wouldn't anyone rather have nice?
What did Heart's Haven or Heart's Rock know of trouble, and what did anyone do there to be of use?
Yes, Olive Worthington suffered her brother Bucky's intrusions--his well-digging slime in her swimming pool and his trekking across her rugs. Big deal. Yes, Olive worried if young Wally would have gumption, if he would really learn and contribute to the apple-growing business--or would the pretty boy become, like Senior, a good-timer turning pathetic? But what were these worries compared to the business of St. Cloud's? Compared to the Lord's work and the Devil's work, weren't these concerns trivial? Wasn't life in nice places shallow?
