He was born with the face of an asshole and came out like any fighter would, fist first. “That’s my boy!” sputtered Du; a man with a face like a slapped ass and whose acrid stench suffused the hospital room.
The nurse gagged.
Pressing his face between his wife’s porridge thighs, he wiped his bristle-brushed, womb-broom on his stained undershirt, grabbed the kid’s fist with his grubby, calloused hands and pulled.“Jesus Christ! He looks just like me! Bring it on Karma, hurry up and crap that boy out!” Somewhere in a sea of breast and flesh, Asshole’s fist and shoulder made an audible crack and broke Karma’s pubic bone.
“Du, Can you see him? Is he out yet?”
A rush of fluid gushed out drenching the scrubs of the attending doc.
“It smells like alcohol! Nurse, get a sample for the lab.”
Du stuck his grimy finger in the puddle of effluent on the floor and licked it clean. “Tastes just like Southern Comfort… Well, I’ll be damned Karma! Were you sneaking shots? What the hell were you thinking?” No sooner did he say this when a cigar butt popped out smouldering, igniting the alcohol and setting the doc’s pants on fire. Oblivious, Du looked at Karma while the nurse tossed a bedpan full of urine to extinguish the flaming pants. In the background an alarm went off, “Code Red, Code Red, room 666.”
Du looked down at the doctor’s hands perched ready to catch the baby. “What the? Karma, he…” Asshole’s head slid out with a belch and on his neck was a tattoo that read “little asshole”. His left fist decorated with brass knuckles immediately met with his slug-lipped orifice. “Damn it Karma, he’s beautiful! He’s our little slugger baby!”
Karma didn’t respond, her apnea temporarily cut off her breathing. Once the nurse put her upright, her piggy pink skin returned. “Pass me the Big Gulp Du, I’m dry.” The nurse gingerly wrapped asshole in a mustard yellow hospital blanket and passed him over to Du. Asshole managed to pitch snot rockets straight for the nurses eye. Du reached out to cradle him in his arms only to meet with a swift crack to his jaw from Asshole’s knuckles. Karma smiled. “He’s got your strength Du, just like his papa-daddy.”
Du grinned. “What do you want to name him Karma?”
“How ’bout Asshole?” said the nurse. The doc nodded. A flood of fireman pour into the room.
“Du!! The baby’s hanging off your switch blade!
“Jesus, Gin and Mary, Karma, I’m thinking. I’m thinking on some business plans.”
“Come on little guy.”
“Damn, he nicked my gut.”
“Du, give’m to me, he needs the boob. Poor little slugger hasn’t had much of a chance at the latte makers.”
The nurse with the burnt scrubs came back into the room, her legs bandaged, the burn’s seepage already showing through. A small plume of smoke trailed from her pant cuff.
“Where did you put the pain killers you brought to the hospital?” the nurse said as she lost her balance in a puddle on the floor. She grunted and squawked, grabbed the pills and headed for the door.
“Hospital rules say these need locking up, besides, they’ve changed your prescription.”
She took a toothpaste spit cup filled with water and downed four capsules.
“What are you looking at? It’s a long shift! If it wasn’t for you and my last-minute assignment change, I would’ve had four comatose patients and time to practice my Tai-chi.”
Du wasn’t listening, he yanked off his du-rag and mopped up the rest of the womb booze carefully squeezing every drop into his shaving kit travel bottle. “Taste-testers for later. I need a cigarette.”
“You mean a fag Du?”
“No Karma, and you might want to consider looking up woodbine as I don’t much like what you’re implying. You need to start improving your vocabulary as our boy will need a mother who can edify his intellectual prowess.”
“Du? Been studying my crosswords?”
“Karma…with this baby we have arrived. Karma screamed then cooed. Asshole bit her nipple.”
“I think he pierced it. Can you get me some hoop earrings from the gift-shop? I want to honor this piercing and bless the birth of our first son.”
“Sure, I gotta get some air first.”
Passing the nursing station he tried to rouse the nurse, but she was non-responsive, so he wrote on the whiteboard next to their doctor’s name an extra column titled “family” and scribbled “gone for a smoke”.
If he was going to get his plan going he’d have to start now. The smoking area was a designated patch 100 feet from the hospital entrance. A soggy section of moss sucked at the stiletto heels of a hospital administrator. Tripping, she latched onto the shoulders of a gastric by-pass patient in a wheelchair and walloped the man’s head with her purse.
“Sounds like my wife’s …” Du trailed off as he dropped his pack sac on the ground next to him. He pulled out some tiny cups he’d pilfered from the hospital washroom. Two others joined them, a deaf, 70-year-old man and another visitor he recognized from the maternity ward. The woman in heels aerated the rest of way through the sod and flicked her still lit cigarette in Du’s direction.
“Asshole” she said.
“Who’s the asshole?” the old man snapped. Every time he moved, his bones cracked causing him to moan in pain.
Du poured a sample into four cups. “Here’s to the birth of our children and the women who push them out.”
“Mine had a c-section.”
“Too bad, that means you never got to taste the mother gush. Kinda like the gold rush, come to think of it.”
“Yah, I guess,” The father tipped it back spilling some on his cheek and chin. “it stings a bit, guess it’s my psoriasis.”
Gastric Bypass put half of it for good measure in his feeding tube.
The old, deaf man took a deep drag of his cigarette, downed the shot and choked on his own sputum; the projectile landed like a basketball in his cup.
“He scores!” Du yelled.
Gastric Bypass looked vacantly at Du. Unfortunately, he’d left his glasses back somewhere in the hospital lobby where another patient with dementia picked them up. “Up a bum” he said, and drank the entire shot.
“Exactly,” said Du, “that’s the perfect toast.”
“So what line of business are you in?” said the father.
“Product development and research.” Du reached out and shook their hands. “I’m Du Bad, my wife’s name is Karma, here’s my card.” He passed out three pub coasters he had in his jacket pocket handwritten with his name and phone number, part of his latest effort to reuse and recycle everyday objects.
“Unusual card, each design is different, and the card-stock, impressive. I wouldn’t mind talking to you later about creative marketing.” said the psoriatic-faced father.
“Yah, you can reuse them as drink coasters, kinda like the idea behind business card magnets.” Du’s phone rang. Karma yelled on the other end something unintelligible, something about Asshole choking the nurse. “Poor Asshole, sorry, gotta go, my old lady’s horror-mones are in need of my calming presence.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, just because I’m an old, deaf man, doesn’t mean I need sympathy, dickhead.”
“That’ll be my next kids name.” Du left Psoriatic to push Gastric Bypass out of the mud, while the old man struggled to find his hearing aid in the grass.
“Asshole!” the old man yelled.
“Yes! You got it old man! Here, here!” With tears of joy in his eyes, Du raised both fists and disappeared behind the automatic doors.
When he entered the room, baby Asshole had the nurse in a choke hold with her stethoscope.
“Du! Tickle Asshole, maybe he’ll loosen his grip.”
Du tickled the baby up his thorny spine until Asshole broke into laughter and released the now spewing nurse.
WHAT a fucker! God-damn it! WHAT is with you people? I’m getting your discharge papers. Pack up and be ready to leave stat.”
The nurse massaged the bruises on her neck and tripped on Karma’s IV line. Karma squealed and the nurse scoffed. “Good. Now I don’t have to remove it. Put pressure on it, you don’t want to bleed to death. Just wish it had been your kid Satan. Looks like I’ll have to call the hospital priest to exorcise the room.”
Asshole smiled and raised his fist with pinky, index and thumb protruding. Du sparked his lighter acknowledging his new-found brotherhood with his son. Over the loud-speaker boomed the nurse’s voice. “Dr. Harry Hunt, OBG-YN, please come to the nurses station, we are in need of a signature.”