"Yo, greassssaaaaa!" Some Soc yelled out of his car window as he drove past about twenty miles over the speed limit. I stopped and looked at that car speeding past, a Mercedes, and I just sat down and cried on the curb.
My name's Warp, I live on the East side of town, and I really wish life would give me a break once in a while.
July 17th, 1993, 1:00 a.m. north eastern time: Katherine, pregnant with her second son and in her third trimester, woke up in the early morning hours to find her sheets wet. At first, she assumed she had wet the bed—her bladder was weaker, especially after having a son and another was on the way—but she soon felt a stabbing pain in her stomach and realized her water had broken and she had started labor. She roused her husband who was fast asleep.
"Max, Max! We need to get to the hospital," she told him, as soon as his sleepy eyes opened. He was soon fully awake and helping Katherine to the car. There was no need to pack up this suit cases, Max had already thought ahead. Canine, their first son who was five years old, ran up to his mother. How he had gotten out of crib, Katherine didn't know, but she knew that Canine was upset, since his tears were shining in the yellow street light.
"Mommy, where are you going? Stay here with me!" Canine screamed, frightened to let his mother go. He grabbed onto her wrist. Katherine put her hand on his head and patted his black hair lovingly.
"I'll be back, sweetie," she soothed him. As another stab went through her stomach, she gritted her teeth and bent down to kiss her son. "And you'll have a new baby brother too," she said between gasps of breath as the pain increased. She started to have a sinking feeling. This was not like her first pregnancy at all, why was it so painful already? She calmed herself down. Doctor Sarabeth (that was what the Kyler family called her, since she was also a close family friend) had told Katherine that every pregnancy is different, even with the same woman. Her husband helped her into the back seat (since the passenger seat is always called, 'the seat of death' by most people) and she lied down, breathing rhythmically. Max was telling the babysitter about Canine's favorite breakfast bowl and cereal and the homework he had to complete. The babysitter nodded, and Max flung himself into the driver's seat. Canine watched the car drive away with sad eyes. The babysitter took his hand and led him into to house.
"You want some ice cream?" she asked, but her words just sounded like empty blobs in his ears. He just nodded and let tears roll down his face.
Katherine moaned in the back seat. By now, she knew something was horribly wrong with this pregnancy, she was just too afraid to tell Max. She bit down on her lip as another stabbing pain ripped through her.
"You okay back there, honey?" He said a little louder than he meant too. Katherine just responded with a moan. Max dodged other cars quickly; he didn't want his second son to be born in a back seat.
The lights of the hospital blinded Max's eyes. He felt Katherine's dead weight on him.
"You're doing fine, baby," he said, as he went up to the desk. A nurse quickly ran over with a wheelchair and motioned Katherine to sit. The nurse quickly wheeled her away since Katherine was struggling to keep quiet. The pain was growing more intense by the minute, and Katherine just wanted to scream even though she knew that screaming would do no good. She couldn't imagine living through this kind of pain. The nurse helped her off the wheelchair and into a bed. Katherine by now was screaming in pain.
"Make it stop," she cried to the nurse, who was trying to calm Katherine down, "Please, do something. I'm dying," she moaned again and the nurse started hooking her up to machines. Then, something red caught the nurse's eye. There was a puddle of blood where Katherine was just sitting, and bright red liquid started to leak through the white sheets of the hospital bed. The nurse was by now paging the first OB/GYN she could think of. The nurse started pushing the hair away from Katherine's face, shushing her and telling her it was going to be okay. Katherine was crying and shaking her head, telling the nurse she needed Sarabeth.
"Please, get me Sarabeth," she cried, "Get me Max. I want to tell him I love him." Another knife of pain sliced through her body and she screamed, regardless of the nurse's efforts to calm her.
"So, do any of you know what the difference is between a vampire and Dr. Jenkins?" Dr. Shwartz set up a joke about the nastiest and bitchiest doctor in the whole hospital. Everyone was enjoying coffee at the cafeteria, and everyone was smiling as they shook their heads and awaited the punch line. Dr. Shwartz took a sip of coffee and enlightened them, "One will suck your blood, and the other is a vampire!" Everyone laughed even though it was incredibly corny and really not funny at all. Dr. Shwartz's pager beeped and everyone groaned. Shwartz rolled her eyes as she saw it was an emergency.
"Guys, I gotta take this. Another mother-to-be is freaking out again," she put her pager in her pocket and poured her coffee down the drain. She crushed her cup and put it in the garbage. The room that the pager had informed her of was on the third floor, room 358.
As soon as she entered room 358, Dr. Shwartz was confronted with a screaming pregnant woman and five nurses trying to calm her down.
"He's dying, I'm dying!" She kept on screaming over and over. Dr. Shwartz rushed over to the bed. Her first intentions were to try to calm the mother. She had seen cases in which the pain was so intense that the woman truly believed she was dying, but really everything was going smoothly and beautifully. And then she saw the blood. She put her hand over her mouth and quickly started giving orders.
"Get me an oxygen mask, a scalpel, and some alcohol," she screamed, the nurses quickly scattered to get what Dr. Shwartz asked for. As soon as she was handed everything, Dr. Shwartz worked fast. She slapped the mask over Katherine's face. Katherine screamed again in pain as hot searing agony cut through her body.
"Where's Max?!" She screamed, her eyes, red from tears and crying, looked around the room but she only found white walls and a face with a green surgeon's mask over half of it. Katherine screamed again in terror and confusion. Dr. Shwartz splashed the alcohol on Katherine's distended stomach to prevent infection and cut her way into Katherine's body. Cold, sharp pain exploded through Katherine as soon as the scalpel cut her. Dr. Shwartz quickly delivered the baby and tried to get it to breathe. By then, five other doctors had entered the room to help. Dr. Shwartz handed the newborn over to another OB/GYN because she had now just realized Katherine was bleeding to death. Despite all their efforts, Katherine was fading fast. When Dr. Shwartz cut Katherine, she had shifted in pain and it had caused the incision to cut wider and larger than Dr. Shwartz intended, thus, it was hard to stop the bleeding.
Katherine Kyler died at 4:68 a.m. about ten minutes after her baby Warp was born.
Max was pacing in the waiting room of the Labor and Birth unit. He had seen so many doctors rushing in and out of rooms, he tried to tell himself Katherine was alright, but he had a sinking feeling that she wasn't. A doctor with short blonde hair and icy blue eyes came out of the room Katherine had been admitted into. He longed for those words he had heard when Canine had been born, "Mr. Kyler, you are now the proud father to a healthy baby boy…". To his horror, he found himself mouthing those words as he saw Dr. Shwartz walk up to him. Dr. Shwartz extended her hand and he shook it robotically.
"I'm Dr. Shwartz. I know I'm not your wife's OB/GYN, but I delivered your baby boy, and he's fine. Your wife Katherine passed away—," Max only heard those words before his ears fell silent to anything else. He saw Dr. Shwartz's mouth moving but he heard no words come out. Max found himself nodding as he felt tears spill from his eyes uncontrollably. His hearing seemed to come back because he suddenly heard himself scream.
