I put it on and pinned it in back at the neck.
I looked in the glass and saw myself looking like a fake doctor with a beard.
I went down the hail to the delivery room.
The door was closed and I knocked.
No one answered so I turned the handle and went in.
The doctor sat by Catherine.
The nurse was doing something at the other end of the room.
"Here is your husband," the doctor said.
"Oh, darling, I have the most wonderful doctor," Catherine said in a very strange voice. "He's been telling me the most wonderful story and when the pain came too badly he put me all the way out.
He's wonderful.
You're wonderful, doctor."
"You're drunk," I said.
"I know it," Catherine said. "But you shouldn't say it." Then "Give it to me.
Give it to me."
She clutched hold of the mask and breathed short and deep, pantingly, making the respirator click.
Then she gave a long sigh and the doctor reached with his left hand and lifted away the mask.
"That was a very big one," Catherine said.
Her voice was very strange. "I'm not going to die now, darling.
I'm past where I was going to die.
Aren't you glad?"
"Don't you get in that place again."
"I won't.
I'm not afraid of it though.
I won't die, darling."
"You will not do any such foolishness," the doctor said. "You would not die and leave your husband."
"Oh, no.
I won't die.
I wouldn't die.
It's silly to die.
There it comes. Give it to me."
After a while the doctor said,
"You will go out, Mr. Henry, for a few moments and I will make an examination."
"He wants to see how I am doing," Catherine said. "You can come back afterward, darling, can't he, doctor?"
"Yes," said the doctor.
"I will send word when he can come back."
I went out the door and down the hall to the room where Catherine was to be after the baby came.
I sat in a chair there and looked at the room.
I had the paper in my coat that I had bought when I went out for lunch and I read it.
It was beginning to be dark outside and I turned the light on to read.
After a while I stopped reading and turned off the light and watched it get dark outside.
I wondered why the doctor did not send for me.
Maybe it was better I was away.
He probably wanted me away for a while.
I looked at my watch.
If he did not send for me in ten minutes I would go down anyway.
Poor, poor dear Cat.
And this was the price you paid for sleeping together.
This was the end of the trap.
This was what people got for loving each other.
Thank God for gas, anyway.