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Five
Finley
When I awaken, curled on my side with Baby cuddled near my chest, I see sunlight streaming through the blinds into the clinic’s main room—but a glance outside reveals it’s streaking through more dark clouds. The radio confirms what I can tell by looking at the sky: more rain expected. When I step outside to urge Baby to go poo in the grass, I can feel it in the air—a kind of pause. The air feels too still between breezes, too heavy as it tosses my hair.
Lower Lane is fairly sunken, just a muddy river lined by dripping houses. Someone drives by—Father Barnard, I believe. The tires of his Jeep spray mud. I gather Baby back inside and spend the morning feeding her and working out a sort of diaper.
“What am I to do with you?” I smile down at her.
She prances over to the waiting area and back to our bed, tossing her head back, as if to make me laugh. I’m doing just that when a knock sounds at the door.
“Mmm? And who could this be?”
Baby stands beside me as I pull the door open, revealing Anna and wee Kayti. “Well, hello there.”
“Oh, my shoes!”
Anna’s Mary Janes are caked in mud.
“Oh no. It’s a river out there, and more coming, I hear.”
“Right monsoon.”
I smile at Kayti. “Hello, lovely.”
“Are you going to let us in?”
“Of course, but—”
“What is that thing?”
I follow Anna’s wide eyes to my fuzzy comrade. “Baby?”
“You let a lamb into the clinic?”
I shrug. “She’s an orphan, needed frozen milk. Did we have a well check this morning?”
Anna laughs. “I’m supposed to be the one with mum brain, Finley!”
“You were in the morning, before Wills and Doris?”
She waves Kayti’s hand at me. “I need a vaccine! So the tourists don’t kill me with their horrid germs!”
“Ugh—speaking of.”
I roll a football from a basket in the corner across the rug. As Baby trots after it, I lead Anna and Kayti to the birth and baby room, where I tell Anna what happened with the Carnegie and check Kayti over. Well, not all of what happened. I leave out the part about his bull-sized male parts. And my own parts. I can’t bear repeating it.
“I think he dropped a soda bottle in the tub. Some sort of bottle.”
Anna shakes her head, frowning.
“He was a right knob-head, that’s the primary point of my story. Spoiled, entitled, rude. The worst sort.”
“Disappointing, but perhaps I’m not surprised,” she says. “I saw him.”
“Meaning?” I ask as I press on Kayti’s belly.
“Well, he is uncommonly easy on the eyes. You know how that can go to one’s head a bit at times.”
