The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

“Okay, get ready.”

Jenny moved beside her with a towel and a basin. Sara drew the baby through the incision, sliding her hand beneath its head as it emerged and hooking her thumb and pinkie beneath its shoulders. Her arms; the baby was a girl. One more slow pull and she came free. Holding her in the towel, Jenny suctioned her mouth and nose, rolled her onto her stomach, and rubbed her back; with a wet hiccup, the child began to breathe. Sara clamped the umbilicus, snipped it with a pair of shears, drew out the placenta, and dropped it into the basin. While Jenny put the baby in the warmer and checked her vitals, Sara sutured the woman’s incisions. Minimal blood, no complications, a healthy baby: not bad for ten minutes’ work.

Sara drew the mask off the woman’s face. “She’s here,” she whispered into her ear. “Everything’s fine. She’s a healthy baby girl.”

Her husband and sons were waiting outside. Sara gave everyone a moment together. Carlos kissed his wife, who had begun to come around, then lifted the baby from the warmer to hold her. Each of the sons took a turn.

“Do you have a name for her?” Sara asked.

The man nodded, his eyes shining with tears. Sara liked him for this; not all the fathers were so sentimental. Some seemed barely to care.

“Grace,” he said.

Mother and daughter were wheeled down the hall. The man sent his boys away, then reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and nervously handed Sara the piece of paper she was expecting. Couples who were going to have a third baby were allowed to purchase the right to do so from a couple who had had fewer than their legal allotment. Sara disliked the practice; it seemed wrong to her, buying and selling the rights to making a person, and half the certificates she saw were forgeries, purchased on the trade.

She examined Carlos’s document. The paper was government-issue stock, but the ink wasn’t even close to the correct color, and the seal had been embossed on the wrong side.

“Whoever sold you this, you should get your money back.”

Carlos’s face collapsed. “Please, I’m just a hydro. I don’t have enough to pay the tax. It was totally my fault. She said it wasn’t the right day.”

“Good of you to admit, but I’m afraid that’s not the issue.”

“I’m begging you, Dr. Wilson. Don’t make us give her to the sisters. My sons are good boys, you can see that.”

Sara had no intention of sending baby Grace to the orphanage. On the other hand, the man’s certificate was so palpably false that somebody in the census office was bound to flag it.

“Do us both a favor and get rid of this. I’ll record the birth, and if the paperwork bounces back, I’ll make something up—tell them I lost it or something. With any luck, it’ll get misplaced in the shuffle.”

Carlos made no move to accept the certificate; he seemed not to comprehend what Sara was telling him. She had no doubt that he had mentally rehearsed this moment a thousand times. Not once, in all that time, had he imagined that somebody would simply make his problem go away.

“Go on, take it.”

“You’d really do that? Won’t you get in trouble?”

She pushed the paper toward him. “Tear it up, burn it, shove it in a trash can somewhere. Just forget we had this conversation.”

The man returned the certificate to his pocket. For a second, he seemed about to hug her but stopped himself. “You’ll be in our prayers, Dr. Wilson. We’ll give her a good life, I swear.”

“I’m counting on it. Just do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“When your wife tells you it’s not the right day, believe her, okay?”

—

At the checkpoint, Sara showed her pass and made her way home through darkened streets. Except for the hospital and other essential buildings, the electricity was shut off at 2200. Which was not to say that the city went to bed the minute the power was cut; in darkness, it acquired a different kind of life. Saloons, brothels, gaming halls—Hollis had told her plenty of stories, and after two years in the refugee camp, there wasn’t much that Sara hadn’t seen herself.

She let herself into the apartment. Kate had long since been put to bed, but Hollis was waiting up, reading a book by candlelight at the kitchen table.

“Anything good?” she asked.

With Sara working so many late hours at the hospital, Hollis had become quite a reader, checking out armfuls of books from the library and reading them from a stack he kept by his side of the bed.

“It’s a little heavy on the mumbo jumbo. Michael recommended it a while ago. It’s about a submarine.”