The Light at the End of the Tunnel Read Online Free PDF

must
have been imagining things earlier. She unwrapped the blanket and
pulled off the baby’s top and bottom. The diaper itself remained.
It looked clean, and had no odor. The baby must have received good
care. She wondered what would possess a woman, young or older, to
abandon her child. She undid the two clingy straps and opened the
diaper and immediately a monstrous pass of gas, a huge dump of
excreta, and before she could back away a yellow stream of urine in
her face.
    She screamed, and could not believe the
vision she was having of the baby’s face. That same expression as
earlier had appeared just before the explosion of waste.
    The older nurse came rushing back, “Good
Lord, Waters! What’s wrong?”
    Nurse Waters began wiping her face, “The baby peed on me!” She held off telling of the baby’s
facial…expression. She was still having trouble believing it
herself.
    “Well, that happens, girl. Consider yourself
initiated, now get that child cleaned up and dressed, and at least
now we know it’s a boy.”
    Yes, a boy, Waters thought, a girl would
never do what that boy just did. Yet she continued having trouble
with her thoughts, yet she felt sure the child’s bowel movement and
urination had been planned, just like when it grabbed at her
breast. But the child was only just months old, two or three at the
most. It couldn’t possibly be having conscious thought. It couldn’t possibly have planned the two assaults on her…yet…
    The child lay quietly in its mess. Nurse
Waters approached. The boy baby’s face now had just a normal baby’s
expression. No smile, no frown, just…nothing. She dismissed her
earlier thoughts that must surely have been imagination. She
lifted the child from its mess and took it to a plastic-lined metal
bowl in the sink, kept her hand behind its head and neck, yet
thinking this child probably really didn’t require such careful
care, turned on the water and adjusted to lukewarm, then took the
sprayer and washed the baby off, causing it to make pleasant
sounds.
    Nurse Waters smiled as she kept the water
flowing, “Oooh, you like that, huh?” She shut the water off,
then moved her hand over the water clinging to the baby’s skin,
then sprayed again. The child appeared to really enjoy the
attention, and Nurse Waters felt herself again trusting that the
baby was just a normal baby, that the two earlier events were just
that: vents.
    She toweled the baby off then carried him to
where the older nurse had placed the new clothes and diaper and
placed him on it, and immediately Les Paul let go with another
powerful spray of strong-smelling yellow urine, and got poor Nurse
Waters square in the face, again .
    She screamed again, louder and more
hysterically than before because, again , she had seen the
baby’s expression change, just before the discharge. She managed to
keep her hands on the baby, though, because she didn’t want him to
roll onto the floor and get her in trouble, although she wanted to
punish him, somehow, and had trouble believing such a thought had
even passed her mind.
    But it had.
    The older nurse came rushing back, “Waters!
What on earth…?”
    “Take him! I’m through with him! I won’t
touch that…that—she wanted to say that little shit!—that child
again! He peed on me again, and he did it on purpose!”
    “You fool, Waters. Babies do that.
They can’t help it!”
    “ This one does it on purpose.” Nurse
Waters removed her hands from the baby, “You take care of him. I
won’t touch him again, even if it means my job.”
    ****
    The word spread fast. The hospital was small
so that meant it could spread even faster. By the following
morning, all other employees, all three shifts had heard and spread
the news even to the media. Nurse Waters had finished her shift at
midnight, went home, had a terrible night of horrible dreams of
babies attacking her, awoke the next day about 8am, ate a fitful
breakfast, went on her mobile phone and searched for