It was a
beautiful, clear night, with only a single cloud drifting over the
moon occasionally. In a hospital somewhere in England, a woman sat
anxiously in her bed, waiting. Her husband sat next to her holding
her hand.
"I want to see my baby," the woman said, wiping
sweat-soaked blonde hair from her forehead. "I need to see
him."
"We're just giving him a bath, Mrs…"
"Keehl.
Mrs Keehl."
"Don't worry, darling. It'll only be a second.
They're just making him all nice for you."
Her
husband had a thick accent, unlike the wife's, which obviously
German. His accent was more thick, like his voice was wading through
the language barrier.
The nurse presented the baby to the woman.
She smiled and sighed, and took him in her arms.
"He really is
a beautiful baby. Exceptional," the nurse said, kindly.
The
wife smiled up at her.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one who
thinks that," she said.
There was a pause, then the nurse
shifted, like she had been hiding something. She withdrew a camera
from her pocket.
"Uh, ma'am, we have a bit of a tradition at
the hospital here… um, whenever one of us sees a really cute baby,
we usually take a photo and pin it up on the board in the staff room,
and I'd like to take a picture of your child, if that's ok…"
she murmured, obviously embarrassed but dutiful.
"Of course!"
Mrs Keehl
smiled happily, every smidgen of anxiety blown out the window. The
nurse took the photo.
"Thankyou, ma'am. Have you two thought
of a name yet?"
"Well, we were actually thinking about Mihael.
That's the name of my father," the man said, speaking up for the
first time in a while.
The baby was named and the photo was pinned
up in the staff room. Every day, doctors and nurses alike would stop
and think to themselves, That is a really adorable baby, isn't
it?
Or they did, until another night, this one entirely
cloudless. A woman sat, completely at peace, as the same nurse washed
her child and passed him to her.
"There you are, Mrs River. Your
first child. How do you feel?" she asked.
"Wonderful,
thankyou. Little Nate… I wonder what's in store for him?" the
woman, Mrs River, sighed happily.
The nurse shuffled her feet, as
she had many nights ago, and withdrew her camera, making her baby
photo speech. Mr and Mrs River, proud of their child, insisted on it,
and the photo was taken.
A few days later, after the Rivers had
left the hospital, the photo of little Nate turned up on the
noticeboard. After a week or so, an old doctor finally stopped and
moved it to the centre.
"I really am sick of having to look down
to see this photo. Mihael has had a good run, but it's Nate's
turn in the limelight now."
Nate's picture covered the other
entirely. It stayed that way for many years, unchallenged in
cuteness. News reached the hospital that the parents of both children
had been killed, one in a fire and one in a plane crash. Whenever the
hospital staff saw the smiling parents in the pictures they would
feel a sad for the children. The photos remained on the board until
one year when they were ordered destroyed.
"Fate is a funny old
thing, isn't it?" the nurse who had taken the pictures, now with
grey hair, said sadly. "Them both winding up orphaned. Imagine if
they both went to the same orphanage. I wonder."