Chapter 7 Part IV-1

With the second baby growing inside Jenny, her weird, late-night cravings returned.One night, she craved root beer (juice extracted from the roots and herbs of certain plants or refined into a carbonated soft drink), followed by grapefruit. "Do we have a Snickers bar?" she asked again before midnight.Looks like I'll have to go to the 24-hour convenience store for the third time.I whistled to Marley, put him on a leash, and headed for the corner of the street.In the parking lot, we meet a young woman with blond hair, lavender lipstick, and the tallest heels I've ever seen. "Oh, he's so cute!" she complimented too enthusiastically. "Hey, puppy, what's your name, pretty guy?" Of course Marley would be more than happy to strike up a friendship with the beauty. and I pulled him tightly to my side so he wouldn't drool all over her purple miniskirt and white heels. "Do you want to kiss me, puppy?" she said, and made a "boom boom" kiss with her lips.

As we chatted, I was amazed that such an attractive woman would be alone in a parking lot off the Southern Highway at such an hour.She doesn't appear to be driving.It also didn't look like she was going into the store or had just come out of it.There she stood, like a parking lot ambassador, cheerfully welcoming strangers and their dogs as they arrived.Why is she acting so friendly?Beautiful women are never friendly, at least not to strange men in parking lots in the middle of the night.A car stopped and an old man rolled down his window. "Are you Heather?" he asked.She gave me a bewildered smile. "I have to go," she said, jumping into the car, "bye, puppy."

"Don't fall in love, Marley," I said to Marley when they drove away, "you can't afford her." A week later, at ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, Marley and I were walking to the same store to buy food for Jenny, and this time we met two young women, only teenagers. , both of them seemed a little nervous.Unlike the first woman we met a week earlier, they weren't overly attractive in appearance and didn't seem to make an effort to look good. "Harold?" one of them asked me. "No," I replied, but what was on my mind at the time was: "Do you really think a man would show up for anonymous sex and bring his Labrador retriever with him? ?” Do these two girls think I’m an oddball?While I was taking a newspaper out of the box in front of the shop, a car came up—Harold, I suppose—and the two girls got into it and drove away.

I'm not the only one who has witnessed the growing prostitution trade around the highways of the American South.My sister came to my house once, and even though she was dressed like a conservative nun, when she went out for a midday walk, she was asked twice in private by a guy who was driving around in a car and called himself John. Invitation to sex trafficking.Another guest who came to our house also said that when he was driving by, a woman showed her breasts to him, not that he thought of it. The mayor responded to complaints from residents by promising to openly arrest the touts, and the police began to set up elaborate traps, placing secret female officers on street corners, waiting for those who claimed to be guests to take the bait.The police "bait" are some of the most unattractive whores I've ever seen - think J. Edgar Hoover in a trailer - but that doesn't stop the men from seeking sex Serve.Just down the street from our house, there was a woman who offered to show her breasts — with a TV news crew.

If it was only between whores and their clients, then we could have our own peace, but crime doesn't stop there.Our region seems to be insecure every day.Once while we were walking along the pier, Jenny was so weak from pregnancy nausea that she decided to go home alone while I continued walking with Patrick and Marley.When she was walking along a side road, she heard a car slowly following her behind her.Her first thought was that it must be a neighbor who was about to pull over to say hello, or a driver who needed directions.When she turned and looked into the car, she saw the driver sitting naked and masturbating.When he got the expected response—Jenny yelled in horror—he drove the car in the opposite direction of the street to hide his license plate.

Murder was once again on our block when Patrick was nearly a year old.Like the previous Mrs Nedmere, the victim this time was an older woman who lived alone.Hers is the first house you pass when you turn off the Southern Highway onto Churchill Road, just behind the all-night open-air laundromat.I just waved to her when I passed her house.Unlike Mrs. Nedmere's murder, this time the crime was not committed by an insider, otherwise we would still have the possibility of self-defense.The victim was chosen at random, and the attacker was a stranger who sneaked into her house on a Saturday afternoon while she was drying clothes in the yard.When she returned to the house, he tied her up with a telephone cord and pinned her under the mattress as he searched the house for loot.After the burglar fled with his loot, my frail neighbor suffocated under the weight of the mattress.The police quickly apprehended a homeless man who had been seen loitering near a coin laundromat; when they emptied his pockets, all he found was sixteen dollars and some change.And a woman paid with her life for a measly sixteen dollars.

With the crimes happening all around us, we can all be thankful to have Marley in our home.So if he was an avowed pacifist whose most aggressive tactic was the slobbering offensive, would we still feel safe?Who cares if his immediate reaction to the approach of any stranger is to snatch a tennis ball in the hope that some newcomer will play with him?Intruders don't need to know this.When a stranger comes to our door, we no longer lock Marley before answering.We are no longer busy convincing them that Marley is harmless.Instead, we're now distributing vague, ominous warnings like "His behavior has been getting more and more unpredictable lately" and "I don't know how many times this screen will take more of his lunges."

Now we have a baby and another one is coming.We will no longer be overly optimistic and carefree about personal security.Jenny and I often speculate on how Marley would react if someone tried to hurt the child or us.I'm inclined to think that he's just berserking, barking, and panting.And Jenny has even more faith in Marley.She believed that his special devotion to us, and especially to his new supplier of milk powder, Patrick, must be transformed into a kind of love that sprouted from the depths of his body at the nick of a crisis. Ferocious primal protective power. "No way," I said, "he'll just shove his nose into this bad guy's crotch and that's it." We agree that either way, he's going to scare the shit out of him.This is really very beneficial for us.His presence or absence can make the difference between our feeling of being vulnerable and our home feeling safe.As we continued to argue about his effectiveness as a protector, we fell asleep easily in our beds, knowing he was by our side.Then, one night, he settled the dispute between Jenny and me once and for all.

It was October, and the weather hadn't turned cold yet.It was a stuffy night with the air conditioner on and the windows closed.After watching the eleven o'clock news, I let Marley out to pee outside, checked on Patrick in the crib, turned off the light, and climbed into bed next to Jenny who was already asleep.Marley, as he always did, fell to the floor next to me, letting out a somewhat exaggerated sigh.As I was drifting into dreamland, I suddenly heard a shrill, piercing voice.I woke up instantly, and so did Marley.He stood motionless by the bed in the dark, his ears pricked.The sound came again, piercing through the closed windows, drowning out the hum of the air conditioner in decibels.A scream.A woman's scream, very loud, absolutely true.My first thought was that teenagers were clowns in the streets, as is often the case.However, the sound I just heard was not a happy scream that would make me laugh.There was desperation in the voice, real fear.Then it dawned on me that someone was in dire trouble.

"Come on, boy!" I whispered, sliding off the bed. "Don't go out!" Jenny's voice came from beside me in the darkness.I didn't realize she had woken up and heard screaming. "Call the police," I told her, "and I'll be careful." I grabbed Marley by his choker chain and led him out onto the front porch, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts because of my haste.At this moment, I caught a glimpse of a figure on the street running fast towards the pier.There was another scream from the opposite direction.Outside, without the barriers of walls and glass, the voice of this woman pierced the tranquility of the night and filled the air, making people creepy. I have only heard this kind of voice in horror movies.The lights on the porches of other houses came on, too.Two young men who shared a house across the street from me also rushed out, wearing only fringe shorts, and ran in the direction of the screams.I saw them run onto a lawn not too far from a few houses, and a few seconds later they were sprinting back in my direction.

"Go and save the girl," one of them yelled, "she's been stabbed." "We're going after that fellow," cried another, and they sprinted barefoot down the street in the direction from which the figure had fled.My neighbor Barry, a brave single woman who had just bought a bungalow next door to Mrs Nedmere's house, jumped into her car and joined the hunt for the killer . I let go of Marley's collar and ran towards the scream.After running three houses down, I found my seventeen-year-old neighbor standing alone in the driveway, bent over, gasping for breath and sobbing loudly.She was clutching her ribs, and I could see the blood seeping from between her fingers, staining her shirt red.She was a thin, pretty girl with long blond hair hanging down her shoulders.She lived with her divorced mother, a very nice woman who worked as a night shift nurse in a hospital.I chatted with her mother a few times, but I just waved and said hello to her daughter.I don't even know her name. "He said don't bark or he'll stab me," she said, sobbing and breathing heavily, "but I barked anyway. I barked, so he stabbed me. "She seemed to think that I didn't believe her words, so she lifted up the shirt and showed me the wrinkled wound that pierced her chest. "I was sitting in my car listening to the radio. He just popped out of nowhere." I put my hands on her arms and tried to calm her down, and she buckled her knees and fell on top of mine. In her arms, her legs folded under her like kid goats.I helped her onto the sidewalk and sat down, hugging her tightly.Now, her words became softer and calmer, and she tried hard to keep her eyes open. "He told me not to bark," she continued. "He put his hand over my mouth and told me not to bark." "You did the right thing," I reassured her. "You scared him away with your yelling." It seemed to me that she was going into shock, and for a moment I didn't know what to do. "Come on, ambulance. Where are you?" There was only one way I could comfort her, and that was the way I comforted my own little baby - stroking her hair, patting her with the palm of my hand Caressing her cheek, wiped away the tears on her face.As she got weaker and weaker, I kept telling her to just hang in there, help was coming. "You'll be all right," I said, though I wasn't even quite sure of that myself.Her skin turned grayish white.We sat alone on the sidewalk for what seemed like hours, but in fact, according to later police reports, only three minutes passed.I thought of Marley, and looking up quickly, I saw him standing ten paces from us, facing the street in a decisive, crouched posture I had never seen before.It's a fighter's pose.The muscles of his neck bulged, his jaw tensed, and the hair between his shoulder blades stood on end.He was staring intently at the street, maintaining a posture ready to pounce at any moment.At that moment, I realized that Jenny was right.If the armed assailant returns, he must first pass me, the mighty dog.I knew at that moment—without a doubt, with absolute certainty—that Marley was going to fight the gangster hard enough to kill him before he hit us.In short, as I supported this young girl, my inner emotional waves were surging violently, and at the same time, I was very worried that this girl would die in my arms.Seeing Marley protect us so seriously, seeing his majestic demeanor and posture, I was so excited that tears welled up in my eyes.Who is man's best friend?Needless to say, it was definitely Marley. "I'll protect you," I told the girl.But what I want to say, what I should have said - "we" will protect you - Marley and me. "The police are coming soon," I said, "just hold on for a while, just a little bit, please." Before she closed her eyes, she whispered, "My name is Lisa." "My name is John," I said.It seemed a little ridiculous to introduce each other under such circumstances, as if we were at a neighborhood dinner.I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity.But instead of actually laughing, I stroked the hair behind her ears and said, "You're safe now, Lisa." Like an archangel descending from the sky, a police officer rushed onto the sidewalk.I whispered to Marley, "It's all right, boy. She's all right." As if some kind of trance had been broken by my whisper, my stupid, kind companion was back, and he turned Trotting in circles, panting, sniffing us hard.The original mind and soul returned to his body.Then, more officers swarmed around us.Soon, an ambulance team arrived with a stretcher and lots of sterile gauze.I told the police everything I knew, and walked home, with Marley loping in front of me. Jenny greeted us at the door, and we both stood at the window watching the thriller play out on our street.Our neighborhood looks like a set from a detective TV show.Red flashes flickered on the windows.A police helicopter circled above us, shining a spotlight on the yard and path.Police set up roadblocks and searched the neighborhood.But their efforts were in vain, neither arresting a single suspect nor probing any motive for the crime.My three neighbors who chased the criminal later told me they didn't even get a glimpse of what the guy looked like.Finally, Jenny and I went back to bed, but we couldn't fall asleep and lay in bed with our eyes open for a long time. "You should be so proud of Marley," I told her, "that's really weird. For some reason, he was able to know the seriousness of the situation. He just knew it. He felt the danger, and he seemed to be a completely Different dogs." "I told you," she said.indeed so. As the helicopter boomed over us, Jenny rolled onto her side of the bed, and before falling asleep, she said, "Just another boring, boring night on the block." I stretched out I reached out and groped for Marley, who was lying next to me in the dark. "You did a great job tonight, big guy," I whispered, scratching his ear, "a big bag of dog food." I put my hand on his back and drifted off to sleep. South Florida's insensitivity to the crime of a teenage girl being stabbed in the car in front of her home was glimpsed in the brief six-sentence coverage of the case in the newspapers the next morning. The Sun Guardian's coverage of the case appeared only in a brief section on page 3B, headlined "Man Assaults Girl." There was no mention of me or Marley or the two half-naked men who lived across the street chasing their attackers, or Barry chasing criminals in his car, or the people who lit the porch lights and Neighbors up and down the block who called 911.In the ugly world of violent crime in South Florida, this horror scene on our block is a piece of cake.No deaths, no hostages, and no big shots. The dagger pierced Lisa's lung, and she spent five days in hospital and several weeks recovering at home.Her mother notified neighbors of her recovery, but the girl remained confined.I worry about the psychological scars the attack has left on her.Would she ever feel at ease again, outside the safety of her home?Although I only spent three minutes with her, I felt as if I was an older brother who took care of her.I want to respect her privacy, but I also want to visit her, to see for myself that she is all right. I was washing my car in the driveway on a Saturday afternoon with Marley locked next to me.Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching slowly, I looked up and found her standing there.She is prettier than I remember.Tanned, strong, refreshed - looking like a different person.She smiled, then asked, "Remember me?" "Let me think about it," I said, pretending to be puzzled, "you look familiar. Are you the one who stood in front of me at the Tom Petty concert and wouldn't sit down?" people?" She laughed.So I asked, "How are you doing, Lisa?" "I'm fine," she replied, "at least back to normal." "You look fine," I told her, "better than the last time I saw you." "Yes, much better," she said, and looked down at her feet. "What a terrible night." "What a dreadful night," I repeated. Then she told me about the hospital, the doctors, the detective who met her, the endless fruit baskets, and the boredom of being at home during treatment.She dodged that attack though, and so did I.Some things are better forgotten. Lisa stayed a long time that afternoon, following me around the yard, playing with Marley, and talking briefly while I went about my chores.I felt that she wanted to say something, but didn't know how to say it.She's only seventeen; I don't expect her to find the right words to express her feelings.Our lives collided once without any plan or warning, two strangers bound together by a sudden violent event.There is no time for the customary decency of neighbors; there is no time for the establishment of boundaries.There is only an intimate bond forged in the midst of a crisis, a father in boxer shorts and a teenage girl whose top is soaked in blood, leaning on each other for hope.There is a kind of intimacy between me and her, and there is also a trace of embarrassment and embarrassment, because at that moment we completely let go of our defenses and understood each other.Words are no longer necessary.I know she is very grateful that I went to help her; I know she is very grateful that I have tried to comfort her, although my comfort was very clumsy and maybe it didn't do much.She knew I cared deeply about her situation.On that night on the sidewalk, we shared an emotion—that fleeting, fleeting moment that has clearly defined the rest of one's life—that neither of us will ever forget . "I'm glad you stopped by to see me," I said. "I'm glad I did," Lisa replied. I had a really good feeling for this girl when she left.She is already strong.She is already strong.She can move on.And so it was, and a few years later, when I heard that she had become a TV anchor, I found that feeling to be pretty accurate. Although I was in a drowsy sleep, I gradually felt that someone was calling my name. "John, John, get up." It was Jenny's voice, she was shaking my body, "John, I think a baby may be born soon." I propped myself up on one elbow and rubbed my eyes.Jenny lay on her side of the bed with her knees bent to her chest. "What happened to the child?" "I've got terrible abdominal pain," she said. "I'm lying here counting the labor pains. We need to call Dr. Sherman." Now I'm wide awake. "Baby coming soon?" I was feverishly anticipating the arrival of our second child - which we had already learned from the ultrasound, it was another boy.However, the timing of this child's arrival was very bad.Jenny was only twenty-one weeks into her pregnancy, almost halfway through her full-term delivery at forty weeks.In her maternity books were printed pictures which showed very clearly the development of the fetus from week to week.Just a few days ago, we were sitting there looking at these books, poring over pictures of twenty-week-old fetuses, and marveling at how our little one was growing.A twenty-week-old fetus, the size of a hand and weighing less than a pound, has its eyes shut, its fingers like fragile, twigs, and its lungs have yet to develop. Completely, unable to absorb oxygen from the air.At twenty-one weeks, a baby is just barely alive.The odds of surviving outside the womb are slim, and the odds of surviving without serious, long-term health problems are even less likely.That is why nature keeps a baby in the womb for nine months. "Maybe it's nothing," I said.However, when I quickly dialed the phone number and heard the "beep" waiting tone from the microphone, I could feel my "pounding" heartbeat.Two minutes later, Dr. Sherman picked up the phone, his voice clearly not fully awake. "It might just be flatulence," he said, "but we'd better take a look." He told me to take Jenny to the hospital immediately.So I scrambled around the house to pack things up, throw some items into the travel bag for her, grab the bottle and diaper bag.Jenny called her good friend Sandy, who had just become a mother and lived a few blocks from here, and Jenny asked her if we could drop Patrick there.Now Marley was awake too, stretching, yawning, and shaking. "Late night road trip!" "I'm sorry, Marley," I told him as I walked him into the garage, with a look of great disappointment on his face, "you've got to be good." I'll Patrick got out of his crib, put him in his stroller without waking him, and we went out into the night. In the neonatal intensive care area of ​​St. Mary's Hospital, the nurses quickly put into work.They changed Jenny into a set of hospital pajamas and hooked her up to a monitor to check for her contractions and the baby's heartbeat.It turned out that Jenny's contractions were every six minutes.This is definitely not a symptom of a bloated stomach. "Your little baby wants to come out," said a nurse. "We're going to do everything we can to make sure the baby doesn't rush out now." Dr. Sherman called the nurses to check that Jenny's cervix had been dilated.A nurse inserted a gloved finger into Jenny's penis and reported that Jenny's cervix had only been dilated by an inch.Even I know that the situation is not rosy.In a normal delivery, the mother can only begin to exert force when the cervix is ​​fully dilated to ten centimeters.With every sharp pain in the abdomen, Jenny's body seemed to be getting closer and closer to the limit of enduring the pain. Dr. Sherman ordered them to give Jenny an intravenous drip of saline and painkillers.The contractions improved a bit, but within two hours Jenny's contractions intensified again, requiring a second injection, and then a third. For the next twelve days, Jenny could only be treated in the hospital, prodded and prodded by a line of perinatal physicians, and hooked up to a host of monitoring machines and IVs, so Can't move.I took extended leave from the newspaper, played Patrick's single dad role, and did my best to keep everything functioning—laundry, feeding, cooking, bills, chores, backyard.Oh yes, and another creature in our house.Poor Marley, he's dropped precipitously from second violin in the symphony orchestra to not even being in the orchestra.Even I ignored him.He maintained his last ties to family ties and never let me out of his sight.Patrick faithfully follows me as I run around the house with my arm around him, vacuuming, doing laundry in the laundry room, or cooking in the kitchen .I'd be in the kitchen, throwing some dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and Marley would lumber along behind me, and he'd go around the kitchen half a dozen times to make sure a The best position, and then get down on the floor.However, before he "settles down" in the kitchen for long, I will rush to the laundry room to take the clothes out of the washing machine and put them in the dryer.So, he could only follow the "relocation" to the laundry room again, turning around and grabbing the carpet with his paws until he made it the way he liked, and then fell to the floor with a "plop".But not long after, he had to get up again, and followed me to the living room to pack the newspapers.Then, he will turn around again, determine the position, and get down.If he's lucky, I'll pause for a moment in the spinning top and give him a quick slap on the butt or the back. One night, after finally putting Patrick to sleep, I collapsed on the couch, exhausted.Marley happily reared up, put his rope pull toy on my lap, and looked up at me with his big brown eyes. "Whoa, Marley," I said, "I'm so tired." He put his muzzle under the string toy, flicked it into the air, and waited for me to grab it as hard as I could, ready to Draw with me. "I'm sorry, old man," I said, "not tonight." He frowned and held his head up.Suddenly, his comfortable daily routine was torn to shreds.His mistress was mysteriously absent, and his mistress had become devoid of any interest, and was not the same as before.He let out a small whine, and I could see he was trying to figure out why. "Why doesn't John want to play with me anymore? What the hell happened to that morning walk? Why is there no more wrestling on the floor? And, where the hell is Jenny? She hasn't let me How about a running race with a dalmatian on the next block, no?" Life wasn't all bleak and bleak for Marley.On the bright side, I've quickly returned to the lazy, slovenly lifestyle I had before marriage.As the only adult in the house, I was empowered to suspend the act of family life as a married couple and declare the outlawed single rule to be the law of the land again.During Jenny's stay in the hospital, shirts would be worn twice, or even three times, with obvious mustard stains; milk would be poured straight from the cardboard carton; It only comes down when you sit on it.To Marley's extra delight, I instituted a policy of keeping the bathroom door open all the way.After all, he's a male just like me, and there's nothing to shy away from.This gave Marley a chance to be intimate with me in a confined space.There he found meaning in life because he could drink from under the bathtub faucet.Jenny would probably be horrified at his behavior, but the way I look at it is that it's better than him drinking water from the toilet.Now that the policy of having to cover toilet seats has been lifted in my single life, I should give Marley Provide another possible selection object. When I was in the bathroom, I made it a habit to turn the faucet in the tub a little bit so Marley could lick some cool, fresh water to drink.He trembled with intoxication.He twisted his head, leaned under the faucet, licked the dripping water, and slammed his tail on the sink behind him.His thirst seemed to have no limit at all, so I began to believe that he must have been a camel in the desert in his previous life.It didn't take long for me to realize that I had created a bathtub monster; and Marley soon started going into bathrooms without me, standing there, staring pitifully at the faucet for every drop. licking the faucet, tapping his nose on the drain knob until I couldn't bear his misery and hunger, and then I'd go into the bathroom , Unscrew the tap for him.Suddenly, the water in his bowl had lost all appeal to him. The next step in our descent into grossness came while I was showering.Marley figured he could poke his head through the shower curtain, so he'd have a waterfall instead of a trickle or a stream of drops.I was covered in lather, completely unaware that his huge brown head would suddenly come in, nor that he would lick the huge jet of water from the shower. "Don't tell mom," I said. 我尽力蒙骗詹妮，让她认为我不费吹灰之力便让一切都井井有条。“哦，我们一切都好，”我告诉她说，然后转向帕特里克，我会补上一句，“是不是，小伙伴？”对于我的这句问话，他会给出自己的标准回答：“爸爸！”然后，指着天花板上的电扇：“扇扇！”可是，詹妮是非常有头脑的，不会轻易上当。有一天，当我带着帕特里克进行我们的每日访问时，詹妮开始用一种不信任的眼光盯着我们，然后问道：“看在上帝的份上，你都对他干了些什么？” “你这是什么意思，我都对他干了些什么？”我把她的话重复了一遍，“他很好。你看上去也不错，不是吗？” “爸爸！扇扇！” “他的衣服，”她说道，“究竟——” 我这时候才明白过来。帕特里克的连身衣裤出了些差错。现在我意识到，他那两条圆胖的大腿被挤压进了袖孔里，袖子太紧，所以这两条腿的血液循环肯定被切断了；衣领就像一个乳房一样垂挂在他的两条腿之间；往上看去，帕特里克的脑袋从分开的胯部里伸了出来，而他的胳膊则不知道迷失在这身衣裤里的什么地方了。这幅景象真是异常壮观。 “你这个呆瓜，”她说道，“你把他给上下颠倒了。” “这只是你的意见。”我说道。 可是游戏终于结束了。詹妮开始从她的病床上通过电话对我展开了遥控指挥。几天之后，我那位甜美的、亲爱的姨妈安尼塔，一位十几岁时便从爱尔兰来到美国，现在居住在南佛罗里达州另一端的退休护士，神奇地出现在了我的面前，她手里拿着行李箱，愉快地开始着手进行重建的工作。单身规则成了历史。 当詹妮的医生终于允许她回家的时侯，伴随了许多最为严格的命令。如果她希望生下一个健康的孩子的话，那么她就必须尽可能地躺在床上静养。她唯一被允许步行的情况便是去浴室。她一天只能洗一个快速的、简单的澡，然后便只能回到床上继续躺着。不能做饭，不能给帕特里克换尿布，不能出门取邮件，不能举任何比一个牙刷重的东西——这意味着，她体内的孩子，是一个几乎会扼杀掉她的巨大约束。我并没有骗人，的确是完全的卧床休养。詹妮的医生们已经成功地关闭上了早产这扇危险的大门；现在，他们的目标便是，将这扇大门继续关闭至少十二周的时间。到了那个时候，小宝宝便会有三十五周大了，尽管仍然很小，却发育完全，能够根据自己的主张迎接外面的世界了。安妮塔姨妈——保佑她那善良的灵魂——将在十二周这一漫长的时间里居住在我们家里。马利对于这位新的玩伴的到来感到十分开心。很快，他便训练安妮塔姨妈学会了为他拧开浴缸的水龙头了。 医院的一位技师来到了我们家，将一个导尿管插入了詹妮的大腿间，她将这个导尿管连接在了一个绑缚在詹妮腿上的小小的由电池供电的抽水泵上，并将止痛剂连续输送进了她的血流里。她似乎认为这些举措还不足够，于是为詹妮配备了一个看上去仿佛是拷打设备的监测系统——一个体积过大的吸盘，连接着一团接在电话机上的乱糟糟的电线。吸盘通过一个有弹性的带子绑缚在了詹妮的腹部上，记录着胎儿的心跳以及任何宫缩的情形，一天三次，然后将这些情况通过电话线发送给一位负责监视麻烦出现的第一线索的护士。我跑去书店里，然后带着丰富的阅读材料返回家中，在最初的三天里，詹妮贪婪地阅读着这些书籍。她努力去保持情绪的高昂，可是，厌倦、烦闷、时时处于对她那未出生孩子的健康状况的不确定之中，这一切都合谋起来，想把她拖垮。最糟糕的是，她还是一个十五个月大的孩子的母亲，可是医生却不允许她去举起她的孩子，同他玩耍，在他饥饿的时候给他喂食，当他浑身脏兮兮的时候给他洗澡，当他难过的时候将他抱起来、亲吻着他的脸颊。我会把帕特里克放在床上，在那儿，他可以拉扯着她的头发，将他的手指头伸进她的嘴巴里。他会指着悬挂在床的上空的旋转着的桨状物，然后说道：“妈妈！扇扇！”这会让詹妮微笑起来。可是，她会慢慢地因长期禁闭而发疯的。