The Prize Inside

If one could but see, it is a desolate landscape framed by the wintered Sakhalin forest. We trudge toward our destination at night. There is the hard crunch of snow made by feet. A scream, a woman’s scream splits the night, echoed in the dry air. Approaching a hissing gas lamp, see that yes, indeed there is much snow, snow dirtied by soot and street. Enter into the gray brick building below that dim glow: the hospital_ down long antiseptic corridors and encounter a man pacing. He is looking at each pass, with a worried look, the door we are about to enter.

Inside nurses mingle about beds in white starched uniforms. The Doctor, sweat running down his dark brow, barks orders of encouragement. Another scream shatters our ears. Her eyes are deep, tragic, yet beautiful. She is in labor. The sound of pain fills the room. Hard is proving harder, the baby, stubborn. Hours tick by, till, the Doctor, taken to humming a familiar march, has had enough and calls for a scalpel. It is to be cesarean.

Quickly, gracefully, he works, slicing through the belly of the problem. Blood is everywhere. He holds up a caterwauling babe, a noble story of monarchs, gay parties, crystalline but troubled lives. Handing it off he plunges his hands in again and another joins the cacophony. The tale is of a peasant, whose warm fire dwindles to thievery, leading to a wall and inevitable rifle shots. Shorter than the first, it is compact, soaked red with afterbirth clinging to its pages. This too he passes routinely to waiting hands. “Ah ha!” exclaims the Doctor looking down, “You slippery little devil…”

The swinging doors shut. The pacing man stops in his tracks. He looks to the Doctor, who, with hands raised shouts, “Mother Russia is well! Congratulations, three fine strapping boys hungry for milk and soon to call for Vodka!” The Doctor tromps away whistling leaving the father passed out, sunk, overcome with bill in hand. Doctor Anton Pavlovich Chekhov hurries onward; this is not his concern.