The Memory Keeper's Daughter Read Online Free

abandoned, filled only with the rustlings of squirrels and mice.
    He’d had tears in his eyes when he opened them, raising his head from the desk. The nurse was standing in the doorway, her face gentled by emotion. She was beautiful in that moment, half smiling, not at all the efficient woman who worked beside him so quietly and competently each day. Their eyes met, and it seemed to the doctor that he knew her—that they knew each other—in some profound and certain way. For an instant nothing whatsoever stood between them; it was an intimacy of such magnitude that he was motionless, transfixed. Then she blushed severely and looked aside. She cleared her throat and straightened, saying that she had worked two hours overtime and would be going. For many days, her eyes would not meet his.
    After that, when people teased him about her, he made them stop. She’s a very fine nurse, he would say, holding up one hand against the jokes, honoring that moment of communion they had shared. She’s the best I’ve ever worked with. This was true, and now he was very glad to have her with him.
    “How about the emergency room?” she asked. “Could you make it?”
    The doctor shook his head. The contractions were just a minute or so apart.
    “This baby won’t wait,” he said, looking at his wife. Snow had melted in her hair and glittered like a diamond tiara. “This baby’s on its way.”
    “It’s all right,” his wife said, stoic. Her voice was harder now, determined. “This will be a better story to tell him, growing up: him or her.”
    The nurse smiled, the line still visible though fainter, between her eyes. “Let’s get you inside then,” she said. “Let’s get you some help with the pain.”
    He went into his own office to find a coat, and when he entered Bentley’s examination room his wife was lying on the bed, her feet in the stirrups. The room was pale blue, filled with chrome and white enamel and fine instruments of gleaming steel. The doctor went to the sink and washed his hands. He felt extremely alert, aware of the tiniest details, and as he performed this ordinary ritual he felt his panic at Bentley’s absence begin to ease. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus on his task.
    “Everything’s progressing,” the nurse said, when he turned. “Everything looks fine. I’d put her at ten centimeters; see what you think.”
    He sat on the low stool and reached up into the soft warm cave of his wife’s body. The amniotic sac was still intact, and through it he could feel the baby’s head, smooth and hard like a baseball. His child. He should be pacing a waiting room somewhere. Across the room, the blinds were closed on the only window, and as he pulled his hand from the warmth of his wife’s body he found himself wondering about the snow, if it was falling still, silencing the city and the land beyond.
    “Yes,” he said, “ten centimeters.”
    “Phoebe,” his wife said. He could not see her face, but her voice was clear. They had been discussing names for months and had reached no decisions. “For a girl, Phoebe. And for a boy, Paul, after my great-uncle. Did I tell you this?” she asked. “I meant to tell you I’d decided.”
    “Those are good names,” the nurse said, soothing.
    “Phoebe and Paul,” the doctor repeated, but he was concentrating on the contraction now rising in his wife’s flesh. He gestured to the nurse, who readied the gas. During his residency years, the practice had been to put the woman in labor out completely until the birth was over, but times had changed—it was 1964—and Bentley, he knew, used gas more selectively. Better that she should be awake to push; he would put her out for the worst of the contractions, for the crowning and the birth. His wife tensed and cried out, and the baby moved in the birth canal, bursting the amniotic sac.
    “Now,” the doctor said, and the nurse put the mask in place. His wife’s hands relaxed, her fists unclenching as