“I will show you.”
She took me down to the end of the hall. The door of the room was partly open. I could see Catherine lying on a table, covered by a sheet. The nurse was on one side and the doctor stood on the other side of the table beside some cylinders. The doctor held a rubber mask attached to a tube in one hand.
“I will give you a gown and you can go in,” the nurse said. “Come in here, please.”
She put a white gown on me and pinned it at the neck in back with a safety pin.
“Now you can go in,” she said. I went into the room.
“Hello, darling,” Catherine said in a strained voice. “I’m not doing much.”
“You are Mr. Henry?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. How is everything going, doctor?”
“Things are going very well,” the doctor said. “We came in here where it is easy to give gas for the pains.”
“I want it now,” Catherine said. The doctor placed the rubber mask over her face and turned a dial and I watched Catherine breathing deeply and rapidly. Then she pushed the mask away. The doctor shut off the petcock.
“That wasn’t a very big one. I had a very big one a while ago. The doctor made me go clear out, didn’t you, doctor?” Her voice was strange. It rose on the word doctor.
The doctor smiled.