A Play A Day #183

Club Status


Cast:
Norton
Angela

Setting: Hospital room, postnatal. Angela is lying in her hospital bed, exhausted.


(Enter Norton)

Norton: Hey... hey.... sweetheart... (big hug and long kiss) You did it! You were great!

Angela: Ohhh... Norton... I don't remember... tell me what happened...

N: Just seeing you like this... you're going to make me cry... soooo beautiful right now.

A: Norton... what happened... they gave me so many drugs... I don't remember how it all went...

N: You couldn't tell, Angela, but, I mean, you were firing on all cylinders, and a couple I don't think the Doc even knew you had!

A: (more seriously) Seriously, Norton. What happened!?

N: You should have seen you! Really going to town!

A: Norton! No more positive feedback! Tell me what happened.

N: Well, the doctor said push, and you pushed, and plop! There she was!

A: (pause) And....?

N: They pumped some more pain killers into you and you've been asleep the past three hours.

A: What else?

N: Well, you're mom and dad are on their way... should be here in about an hour or so...

A: Norton. That's not what I mean.

N: I... I'm... I'm sorry, dear... ummm, what do you mean?

A: The baby... she's fine?

N: Oh yeah, a perfect 10 on the test.

A: Nothing wrong with her?

N: No, no, she's doing great.

A: Internal hemorrhaging?

N: No... like I said...

A: Deformities? Seizures?

N: No dear, she's absolutely fine!

A: Damnit!

N: Seven pounds, eight ounces; twenty inches long exactly.

A: What?! That's it?

N: Ummm... she's... asleep right now, and uhhh...

A: (not listening) That's so average!

N: Ohh, yes, and she looks so peaceful, I got to hold her for a while... (reenacts holding her, making little soothing noises into his arms)

A: Would you stop that!

N: (stopping abruptly) Ummm... sorry... did you want to sleep some more, sweetie?

A: No, no time for that! We have to come up with a story!

N: A... a, a story?

A: Your story and my story have to click! We can't have two of them floating around out there! Now, first thing... my labor was eighteen hours long...

N: Angelcakes... it lasted about two hours...

A: Bullshit! It was eighteen, Norton. Accept it!

N: But, honey...

A: Eighteen!

N: I don't think...

A: You don't need to! Eighteen!

N: I don't get why...

A: Repeat after me! Eighteen hours of labor!

N: But...

A: So help me God, Norton, don't flake on me now! Say it!

N: Uhhh...

A: Say it!!

N: Eighteen?

A: Eighteen Hours Of Labor!

N: Eighteen hours... of... labor.

A: Again!

N: Eighteen hours of labor.

A: Now! Open your eyes real wide and say it while you shake your head slowly from side to side...

N: Dear, I...

A: Do it!

N: (starts holding his eyes open, he pulls back and complies, opens eyes wide, shakes head slowly) Eighteen hours of labor.

A: Better, better... now, that means labor started five o'clock last night...

N: Honey, really... I...

A: So we were... rock climbing! That's it! We were free climbing in the foothills, forty... fifty... eighty miles from home...

N: What?

A: Climbing, you idiot... cliffs?! My water broke... we completed the climb, since we only had fifty feet to go...

N: Angela, dear, I don't climb cliffs...

A: Neither do I, but we just recently picked up the sport... buy some climbing gear on the way home, stomp on it in the grass for a while, make it look used, got it?

N: But...

A: Shut up, Norton, and listen... this is far more important to both of us than you could ever know... Now, here's where you come in... You, you... were so exhausted by the climb that you passed out.

N: What?!

A: Fashioning a quick stretcher from saplings, animal fur, birch bark and pitch, I dragged your unconscious body fourteen miles down the trail to our car, and drove over ninety miles an hour to the hospital.

N: Dear, we can't...

A: We HAVE to! Now, you keeping up with me so far?

N: I... I... guess so...

A: Having regained consciousness, you help me into the hospital. The sweat and grime from the trail having left me looking like a wild woman... security at the hospital, thinking they were under attack from a two-headed feral she-beast, drew their weapons... a tense three-hour standoff ensued, during which you.... you...

N: Helped you focus on you breathing?

A: Fainted.

N: But...

A: And I was able to convince the forces that I was indeed a pregnant, human female...

N: You did?

A: You lay helpless on the floor...

N: I wouldn't do that...

A: We had to get to the maternity ward... the elevator was broken... I scampered up four stories...

N: We're on the sixth story, dear.

A: Five stories, better, up the stairs, ahead of the security guards, to my room where my... my... Holistic Birth Interpreter was reworking the room's chi to prepare for the wonder within...

N: It was Doctor Lepin and two nurses.

A: Having established the proper mood, the birth meditation procedure begins...

N: For how long?

A: What did I say? Eighteen? No... I said sixteen...

N: Oh no you don't! It was definitely eighteen! I remember that part quite clearly!

A: (small smile to herself) Of course, it was eighteen hours... just being modest... now, candles lit, fountains on, Zen stones laid just so on the window sill, mirrors in place... meditating for ... uhhh... five hours of incredibly, insufferably painful labor... grueling labor...

N: Okay... but it...

A: But... and you must remember this part, Norton... if you forget it, you will find yourself in a free-fall, my love, a long, long, free fall.... Remember this, Norton! NO DRUGS!

N: No drugs?

A: No drugs!

N: They had you pumped pretty...

A: (grabbing him violently) NO DRUGS! NORTON! (methodically) I, took, no, drugs!

N: I... guess.. if...

A: The regular doctors tried to interrupt my gut-wrenchingly, painfully wonderful, personal birth journey with their crude, cruel Western "medicine", but I refused... I held on, Norton!! I rode that pain! I transcended the rending of my insides by a baby that we soon discovered - but, alas, too late - was breech! And weighed ELEVEN-AND-A-HALF POUNDS!!

N: (has been caught up in the story, somewhat, long pause as he unwraps it in his head) What?

A: Yes, she tore me from asshole to naval, but I took it, Norton... I took it all! No drugs!

N: Dear, she... ummm... she's... she... doesn't weigh that much...

A: (starts low, ends passage screaming) I want to tell you something, Norton... I'm that little girl's mother... if I say she weighs eleven-and-a-half pounds, then she weighs eleven-and-a-half pounds... I didn't endure eighteen hours of labor, dragging your body through a forest fire for fourteen miles, and ejecting a flesh bowling ball from my womb without the use of any drugs to have you question the truth and the social necessity of my story! Do you understand, Norton!!?

N: Well...

A: Do you!!?

N: I don't remember the forest fire...

A: (grabbing him by the hair, screaming again) DO YOU!!!??

N: Yes... yes, yes dear... I understand.

A: Damn right, you do... now, you get out there, and you figure out a way to add four pounds to that child before my mother gets here, or I'll have to get angry.

(Norton scampers out of the room, Angela pounds on the nurse's call button until there is an unintelligble metallic squawk of a reply on the other end)

A: (lights start fading) Can I get some more narcotics in here? (unintelligble squawk again, then, to herself) My throat is killing me...

(lights fade out)

(end)