The Cider House Rules

Homer led the way to Nurse Angela's office; at the threshold he saw the dead baby's hands reaching above the edge of the white enamel examining tray, which still rested on Nurse Angela's typewriter. The baby's hands were still waiting for the ball, but Homer's reflexes were quick enough; he turned full circle in the doorway, pushing Candy back into the hall. "This is Doctor Larch," Homer said to Candy, introducing them while he herded them down the hall to the dispensary. Wilbur Larch did not remember that there was a dead baby on top of the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office.

He said crossly to Homer, "Shouldn't we let Miss Kendall sit down?" He didn't remember that the dead stationmaster was in the dispensary, either, and when he saw the moron's muddy shoes, he pulled Homer aside and whispered harshly to him. "Have you no feeling for this poor girl?" Homer whispered back that he thought the partial view of a dead man was preferable to the whole view of a dead baby.

"Oh," Wilbur Larch said.

"I'll deliver the woman from Damariscotta," Homer added to Dr. Larch, still whispering.

"Well

, don't be in too big a hurry," Larch whispered.

"I mean I won't have anything to do with this one," Homer whispered back, looking at Candy. "I won't even look at her, do you understand?"

Dr. Larch regarded the young woman. He thought he understood, a little. She was a very pretty young woman, even Dr. Larch could see that, and he'd not seen Homer so agitated in anyone's presence before. Homer fancies he's in love! thought Dr. Larch. Or he fancies that he'd like to be. Have I been utterly insensitive? Larch wondered. Is the boy still enough of a boy to need to romanticize women? Or is he enough of a man to desire to romance women, too?

Wally was introducing himself to Homer Wells. Wilbur Larch thought, Here's the one with apples for brains; why is he whispering? It didn't occur to Dr. Larch that Wally thought, by his partial view of the stationmaster, that the stationmaster was asleep.

"If I could have just a moment's peace with Miss Kendall," said Wilbur Larch, "we can all meet each other another time. Edna will assist me with Miss Kendall, please, and Angela--would you help Homer with the Damariscotta woman? Homer," Dr. Larch explained to Wally and to Candy, "is a very accomplished midwife."

"You are?" Wally said to Homer enthusiastically. "Wow."

Homer Wells maintained silence. Nurse Angela, bristling at the word "midwife"--at the condescension she quite correctly heard in Dr. Larch's tone--touched Homer's arm very gently and said to him, "I'll give you a count of the contractions." Nurse Edna, whose uncritical love for Dr. Larch beamed forth ever brightly, cheerfully pointed out that various people had to be moved both from and to various beds if a room was to be made ready for Candy.

"Please do it, then," Dr. Larch said. "If I could just have a moment alone with Miss Kendall," he repeated, but he saw that Homer seemed riveted; Homer was unaware that he was staring at Candy. The boy has gone gaga on me, thought Wilbur Larch, and he saw no indication that Apple Brains intended to leave the dispensary. "If I could just explain a little of the process to Miss Kendall," Wilbur Larch said to Wally (it appeared hopeless to address Homer). "I'd like her to know about the bleeding, later--for example," Larch added, intending that the word "bleeding" would have some effect on Wally's apple-bright complexion. It did--perhaps in combination with the overpowering atmosphere of ether in the dispensary.

"Is someone going to cut her?" he asked Homer pathetically; Homer caught Wally's arm and pulled him abruptly away. He pulled him so quickly along the hall and got him outdoors so fast that Wally almost escaped being sick at all. As it was, completely owing to Homer's good reflexes, Wally didn't throw up until the two of them were behind the boys' division--on the particular hillside Wally had suggested planting with apple trees, the very hillside where Homer Wells's shadow had only recently outdistanced Dr. Larch's.

The two young men walked up and down and across the hill, in straight lines--respecting the rows of trees Wally was planting in his imagination.

Homer, politely, explained the procedure that Candy would undergo, but Wally wanted to talk about apple trees.

"This hill is perfect for your standard forty-by-forty plot," Wally said, walking forty feet in one direction, then making a perfect right-angle turn.

"If she's in the first three months," Homer noted, "there really shouldn't be any work with the forceps, just the standard dilatation--that means dilating the opening to the uterus--and then curetting--that's scraping."

"I'd recommend four rows of McIntosh, then one row of Red Delicious," Wally said. "Half of the trees should be Macs. I'd mix up the rest--maybe ten percent Red Delicious, another ten or fifteen percent Cortlands and Baldwins. You'll want a few Northern Spies, and I'll throw in some Gravensteins--they're a great apple for pies, and you get to pick them early."

"There's no actual cutting," Homer told Wally, "although there will be some bleeding--we call it spotting, actually, because it's usually not very heavy bleeding. Doctor Larch has a great touch with ether, so don't worry--she won't feel a thing. Of course, she'll feel something afterward," admitted Homer. "It's a special sort of cramp. Doctor Larch says that the other discomfort is psychological."

"You could come back to the coast with us," Wally told Homer. "We could load a truck full of baby trees, and in a day or two we could come back here and plant the orchard together. It wouldn't take too long."

"It's a deal," said Homer Wells. The coast, he thought. I get to see the coast. And the girl. I get to ride in that car with that girl.

"A midwife, gosh," Wally said. "I guess you're probably going to be a doctor?"

"I don't think so," said Homer Wells. "I don't know yet."

"Well, apples are in my family," Wally said. "I'm going to college, but I really don't know why I bother."

College, thought Homer Wells.

"Candy's father is a lobsterman," Wally explained, "but she's going to go to college, too."

Lobster! thought Homer Wells. The bottom of the sea!

From the bottom of the hill, Nurse Angela was waving to them.

"Damariscotta is ready!" she called to Homer Wells.