In Stitches

                  I Believe Fate Smiled at Destiny

"She was born with her insides on the outside." My mother explains to me. "What does that mean, Insides?" I ask, tossing a plump fresh picked blueberry into my mouth. "Her stomach, liver, pancreas, intestines were all outside of her body when her mother gave birth to her." I am still confused, my mother sees my perplexed look. And so she continues,"remember how we told you about how mommies and daddies make love and the sperm fertilizes the egg and then a baby grows inside of the mommy. When the baby is big enough to survive outside of his or her mommie, the mommie goes into labor and the baby comes out of her vagina." I listen, even though I really don't care for this story that was told to me when my sister was growing inside of my mother. I did not see her come out of my moms vagina but I took her word for it.

I was inquiring about this teenager who rode the bus to school every morning named Carolyn Mc Fadden. Until this day, she was just another one of the older kids who sometimes teased me for the red hair I was born with or else the clothes I wore because they were hand me downs from a boy. It was unusually warm on this day and so Carolyn boarded the bus wearing a halter top and hiphugger cut-off shorts. As she walked the narrow ailse heading to the back of the bus because that was the cool place to sit. I had once seen a boy and girl kissing, the back of the bus was like a hide out. Anyway, as she came past me her midsection was at my eye level. Her stomach, her side her back covered in scars. I shivered, broke out in goosebumps. I spent my entire day in school wonderring why Carolyn had these scars, what happened? My mother woould know, I was sure of this.

Upon the birth of this girl, a hush had filled the delivery room as her insides followed the tiny baby neatly packaged in a thin membrane, like a sack.

"She was a miracle", Carolyns mother explained tears welling up in her hazel colored eyes."A tiny miracle from God." this was where the story became confusing, everyone in Arkansas seemed to eithr give God credit for miracles or else curse him when something went wrong. My mother and father did their damnest to explain God to me. I simply did not get it. Not at all.

"Following her miraculous birth baby Carolyn was swiftly air lifted to a hosital in Oklahoma City where they had doctors and equipment to care for children with difficulties." Mrs. Mc Fadden opens her eyes reliving this story as she might have every time she told it to someone.

"I woke up groggy from anasthesia. I was told by a nurse I had given birth to a 2# baby girl attached to a 1# 3 ounce sack sack of internal organs."

"Surgeons worked feverishly to connect Carolyn's God-given innards. A transperancy of the human body was projected onto ta large screen in the operating for the skilled surgeons to follow like a road map." Mrs. Mc Fadden's voice changes from a lump stuck. I want to clear it for her. She Clears her throat "Family and friends kept vigil right here in this house." she pats the formica table top. "People from all over the the United States heard of our story; churches were full with people people praying for our family."

The one glitch, the part that had not yet been discussed was the reproductive organs. The initial plan was to install only those pieces necessary to sustian baby Carolyns life.

The lead surgeon proclaimed;

"Baby Carolyn will survive without a uteus.Carrying a child most assuredly be a risky consequence for such a fragile female."

And then the expert surgeon from New Delhi, a Muslim who had been called on to perform the very tedious job of connecting the intestines to the stomach noticed the perfectly good ovaries, the uterus and the falopian tubes being held in an incubator.

He spoke up, though he was generally known as a soft spoken man;

"As physicians, we are obliged morally and ethically to assemble baby Carolyn's as wholly as we are able."

"The other surgeons who,were tired and in need of a warm shower reluctantly agreed to re-open the tiny baby and attempt placement of the nearly forgotten pieces of the puzzle. Her vitals fluctuated into and out of danger. Twelve laborious hours later baby Carolyn rested, blessed with the right to reproduce. She was stitched up."

My mother completed the story as had been told to her. I was as tired as those surgeons I supposed. I wondered then as I plopped another blueberry into my mouth how many stitches it took to close her up, how many spools of thread did it require?