Chapter 1

The storm railed with blasting winds and thunder, as if Nature herself protested the coming of the aberration. The hospital staff was lean tonight. Day shift nurses and doctors remained to fill in for employees who failed to show up for work. It was shaping up to be a busy night. The ER was full of road accident victims, and on the second floor, a woman had arrived in labor.

Amidst intermittent shouts of thunder, large hail battered the roof like pummeling fists. The woman, reclined in a hospital bed with her legs hoisted by stirrups, raised her face to the heavens and screamed back defiantly. There was pain, but she was tough and determined. She was also desperate. The last four had been born dead. She pleaded with God to preserve this one's life.

In the first floor lobby, her husband sat crumpled and drunk in a waiting room chair. He had almost killed them on the way to the hospital, when the sheets of rain were so dense that he could hardly see the lane dividers painted on the highway. The prospect of driving home made him reach for the silver flask tucked inside the inner pocket of his jacket, which was still heavy with the soak of rain. The receptionist had given up telling him he couldn't drink on the premises.

Back on the second floor, an obstetrician coached the woman to push, push, push as the delivery was nearing an end.

"Again, Pamela. One more time. Again. Very good. Almost out."

She felt her womb release the baby completely, and upon hearing that the infant was silent, she began to sob.

"No," she whispered, her voice ravished.

The doctor laughed. She looked at him, anger slowly displacing grief.

"My baby's dead. Why are you laughing?"

"No, Pamela. It's alive. It's a boy, and he's alive."

She was stunned.

"What? Why isn't he crying?"

"I've only seen it a handful of times in all these years. It's rare, but sometimes they come out just so calm and quiet."

"But he's alive? My baby is alive?"

"Oh my, yes," the doctor said, again laughing.

He handed the bloody infant to a nurse. The nurse's smile faltered when she looked into its face.

Pamela stretched out her arms.

"Give him to me. Please, let me hold him."

"Let's get him washed up first," the doctor said.

When the baby was clean and swaddled in its mothers arms, the doctor sat next to her bed and spoke.

"As we discussed before, the chances of birth defects increase dramatically as women approach forty. There are some anomalies in the facial features, but I wouldn't worry yet. It's early, and sometimes these things have a tendency to, well..." He interwove the fingers of his hands together. "Kind of come together as the baby grows."

Pamela did not appear to be listening. She was rapt in the tiny, warm body pressed close to her breasts. Her eyes were red, tired, yet filled with unmistakable joy. They never parted from the sleeping infant. She spoke softly to it.

"He lives. My sweet boy. Jason lives."