From the Corner of His Eye

said, "Another hypertensive crisis.
        The poor girl's blood pressure soared in spite of the medication. She suffered a violent seizure, eclamptic convulsions."
        "Oh, God."
        "She's in surgery now. Cesarean section."
        Celestina expected to be taken to a waiting room, but instead the nun escorted her to surgical prep.
        "I'm Sister Josephina." She slipped Celestina's purse off her shoulder-"You can trust this with me"- and helped her out of her jacket.
        A nurse in surgical greens appeared. "Pull up the sleeves of your scrub nearly to your elbows. Scrub hard. I'll tell you when to stop."
        As the nurse slapped a bar of lye soap in Celestina's right hand, she turned on the water in the sink.
        As luck would have it," the nun said, "Dr. Lipscomb was in the when it happened. He'd just delivered another baby under emergency conditions. He's excellent."
        "How's Phimie?" Celestina asked, scrubbing fiercely at her hands and forearms.
        "Dr. Lipscomb delivered the baby like two minutes ago. The afterbirth hasn't even been removed yet," the nurse informed her.
        "The baby's small but healthy. No deformity," Sister Josephina promised.
        Celestina's question had been about Phimie, but they had told her about the baby, and she was alarmed by their evasion.
        "Enough," said the nurse, and the nun reached through clouds of steam to crank off the water.
        Celestina turned away from the deep sink, raising her dripping hands as she had seen surgeons do in movies, and she could almost believe that she was still at home, in bed, in the fevered throes of a terrible dream.
        As the nurse slipped Celestina into a surgical gown and tied it be hind her back, Sister Josephina knelt before her and tugged a pair of elastic-trimmed cloth booties over her street shoes.
        This extraordinary and urgent invitation into the sanctum of surgery said more-and worse-about Phimie's condition than all the words that these two women could have spoken.
        The nurse tied a surgical mask over Celestina's nose and mouth, fitted a cap over her hair. "This way."
        From prep along a short hallway. Bright fluorescent panels over head. Booties squeaking on the vinyl-tile floor.
        The nurse pushed open a swinging door, held it for Celestina, and did not follow her into surgery.
        Celestina's heart was knocking so hard that the reverberations of it in her bones, traveling down into her legs, seemed as though they would buckle her knees under her.
        Here, now, the surgical team, heads bent as if in prayer rather than in the practice of medicine, and dear Phimie upon the operating table, in linens spattered with blood.
        Celestina told herself not to be alarmed by the blood. Birth was a bloody business. This was probably an ordinary scene in that regard.
        The baby was not in sight. In one corner, a heavyset nurse was attending something at another table, her body blocking whatever occupied her attention. A bundle of white cloth. Perhaps the infant.
        Celestina hated the baby with such ferocity that a bitter taste rose into the back of her mouth. Though not deformed, the child was a monster nonetheless. The rapist's curse. Healthy, but healthy at the expense of Phimie.
        In spite of the intensity and urgency with which the surgical team was working on the girl, a tall nurse stepped aside and motioned Celestina to the head of the operating table.
        And finally, now to Phimie, Phimie alive, but-oh-changed in a way that made Celestina feel as though her rib cage were closing like a clamp around her thudding heart.
        The right side of the girl's face appeared to be more strongly affected by gravity than the left: slack yet with a pulled look. The left eyelid drooped. That side of her mouth was turned down in half a frown. From the corner of her lips oozed a stream of drool. Her eyes rolled, wild with fear, and seemed not to be focused on anything in this room.
        "Cerebral hemorrhage," explained a doctor who might have been Lipscomb.
        To remain standing, Celestina had to brace herself with one hand against the operating table. The lights had grown painfully bright, and the air had thickened with the odors of antiseptics and blood, until breathing required an effort.
        Phimie turned her head, and her eyes stopped rolling wildly. She locked gazes with her sister, and