A young expatriate husband spends a "Night Vigil" in Nairobi
Hospital as his wife gives birth to their first child.
It was 3:30 in the morning. The night had grown cold. Derek had been reading, but
now the cold distracted him, that and the crying from across the hall. The waiting room
was small and close and poorly lit. Derek thought it smelled of Africa which meant,
although he did not know it, that he felt far from home. He looked up from his book to
find that the missionary sitting opposite him had stopped reading his Bible. They listened
to a baby yowling.
"Life begins with a cry," the missionary said.
In the early afternoon he had brought a Kamba woman to the
hospital; she had taken the third place in the four-bed "labor ward" in which
Derek and his wife had spent most of the day. This birth would be the Kamba woman’s
eighth. She was the wife of a catechist who worked for the missionary. He had explained
that to Derek during their sharing of the waiting room. Because the couple had so many
children the husband had not come in from his catechizing safari.
Derek’s wife was having their first baby. She was at this
moment in the delivery room at the end of the hall. Because Derek had heard his wife
crying out in pain, the wailing of the babies unnerved him. He half-envied the absent
catechist and yet he could not imagine being away from his wife at this time...
"Life begins with pain," the missionary said. "And
often ends with it."
"Cold tonight," Derek said. He did not want the
missionary to declare, not just now, that at least the process of making children brought
couples joy.
Suddenly the crying ceased; the last flutterings of breath muted
into silence. The two men looked at one another, almost startled. A half-smile tilted on
the missionary’s mouth. They listened to the nearby soundlessness. But the
consciousness of the other crying he had heard made Derek cold. He stood. He wondered what
was happening at the end of the long corridor behind them. |