By this time the groans and screams grew to a deafening crescendo. Booker DeWitt sat rocking himself back and forth in anguish so great he felt his mouth salivating preparing him to vomit. His wife was in their bedroom giving birth to their child and he mumbled the names they had picked out if the baby was a boy or girl. His thoughts would break again when another scream sounded from their room. Nurses were running back and forth in the halls of their tiny house grabbing blankets and linens, gauze and towels or whatever they could find and when one person entered the room with fresh white cloths, another was leaving with crimson ones.
Minutes had ebbed into hours it seemed, Booker lost count and when the old grandfather clock struck eleven the deep toll started. He pressed his hands to his ears as the sounds of pain blended into each gong in the cacophony that had swelled.
Suddenly, as if inexplicably, all sound ceased. The sweat the had poured over his heated body was suddenly chilled. He heard no cries from the child, no more shrieks from his wife, no mumblings from the doctor or nurses. Silence. The silence was worse than the symphony of pain. He bolted from his chair and into the room. He stood in the doorway and instantly felt his body sink under an invisible force.
There, in the bed he shared with his beloved, laid someone he did not recognize. This person, this, thing, had blue, pallid skin, sunken eyes that were growing more and more black as the seconds ticked by, lips purple with a contorted tongue hanging lifelessly from its mouth. It looked like his wife, but it wasn't her. He spun his head around to see a nurse holding a swaddle of bloodied rags and sheets. Muffled cries could be heard beneath them.
Booker blinked his gaze back and forth wildly between the baby and the prone figure on his bed. He dashed over to the corpse and found himself wildly pounding on its chest. Come on, come on he thought. He huffed as he pushed and pushed. He could hear pleas around him from the staff but they sounded distant and tinny.
Suddenly her eyes met his.
Booker froze in place, but only for a few seconds. Words spilled out, "I can save her, she looked at me, I can save her, I can save her." But as he continued blood poured out in streams out of the corners of her mouth. Finally the doctor wrenched him away and nearly slammed him into the wall. Booker collapsed in a heap and was gasping.
"She's dead...Mr. DeWitt...blood rushed to her head and it made her eyes move...she's dead. I'm sorry."
"No...she...she isn't...you don't know what I saw." The words choked out and sounded like a child's.
The doctor stared at the broken man for a few moments before reaching for his baby. "She's a girl," he said, "she's all you have." Booker came out of his trance. "Wha..?" he could barely see him and his voice was hoarse when he spoke. "A girl?" What should have been joy was muddled with confusion and desperation. He took her into his arms and stared at her for awhile. Her skin and hair were slick from blood and fluids, her eyes were yet dark and her mouth opened hungrily.
An overwhelming sense of helplessness washed over him. The air felt cold, the air seemed dry, and he found himself staring into the dying eyes of an Indian. He shot this old man, in the back on that bitter December day. The man lay gasping, his mouth opening up like a fish out of water but he knew that he struck him in the lung. He watched as the man agonizingly slipped away from him, slowly, with eyes that Booker tried to give emotion to but all he saw was emptiness.
His gaze canvassed across the flat Kansas plains, the sky was a washed out grey, the earth frigid and hard. Bodies littered the ground and he understood that he murdered them, in a moment void of thought or feeling. He did it because he was programmed to, all he knew was that there was danger, and he engaged in the massacre as if it were a sport. And now, here he was confronted in the reality of his actions and the same sense of utter helplessness as he held his daughter.
He looked back up at the staff and pushed his child back into their arms. He ran into the hall where a mirror stood. He gripped the sides and stared deeply into his own eyes...and felt...nothing...he imagined himself punching it through and shakily grabbing a big shard and gliding it across his wrists when the doctor called out to him again. "Mr. DeWitt!"
Booker clumsily walked back into the bedroom and took his daughter while the nurses were busy cleaning the mess.
"Anna..." he said