Excerpt of Fortunate Son by Walter Mosley
(Page 1 of 8)
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THOMAS BEERMAN was born with a hole in his lung.
Because of this birth defect, he spent the first six months of his life
in the intensive care unit at Helmutt-Briggs, a hospital in West Los
Angeles. The doctors told his mother, Branwyn, that most likely he would
not survive.
"Newborns with this kind of disorder, removed from
the physical love of their mothers, often wither," kind-eyed Dr. Mason
Settler told her.
So she came to the hospital every day after work and
watched over her son from six to eleven. She couldn’t touch him because
he was kept in a glass-enclosed, germ-free environment. But they stared
into each other’s eyes for hours every day.
Branwyn would read to the little boy and talk to him
through the night after her shift at Ethel’s Florist Shop.
“I know you must wonder why it’s always me here and
never your father," Branwyn said to her son one Thursday evening. “Elton
has a lot of good qualities, but bein’ a father is not one of them. He
left me for one of my girlfriends less than a month after we found out I
was having you. He told me that he’d stay if I decided not to have the
baby. But Elton had the choice to be with me or not and you didn’t. I
couldn’t ask you if you minded if I didn’t have you and if you didn’t
have a life to live. No sunshine or sandy beaches. You don’t even know
what a sandy beach is. So I told Elton he could leave if he wanted to
but I was havin’ my baby.
“May Fine said that she’d be happy to be childless
with a man like Elton. You know, your father is a good-looking man. He’s
got big muscles and a nice smile."
Branwyn smiled at Baby Thomas, who was then four
months old. He grinned within his bubble and reached out, touching his
mother’s image in the glass.
“But you know," Branwyn continued, “May is gonna want
a baby one day, and when she does, Elton and his good looks will be
gone. And then she’ll be worse off than me. It’s like my mother said,
‘That Elton’s a heartbreak waitin’ to happen.’
“So he’s not here, and he probably won’t be comin’
around either. But that doesn’t matter, Tommy, because I will be with
you through thick and thin, rain and shine."
Branwyn brought children’s books and read and sang to
Thomas even when he was asleep and didn’t seem to know she was there.
DR. MINAS NOLAN was a heart surgeon who had
temporary offices across the hall from the intensive care unit where
Thomas and his mother spent that half year. Nolan was a widower, young
and hale. A week after Thomas was delivered, Dr. Nolan’s wife, Joanne,
had borne them a son. She died of complications thirty-six hours later.
His son, Eric, came out weighing twelve pounds and twelve ounces, with a
thick mane of blond hair, and arms and legs flailing. One of the nurses
had commented that it was as if Eric had drained all of the life out of
his mother from the inside, and by the time he was born, she was all
used up.
Dr. Nolan often worked until eleven at night, when
the ICU nurse on duty was forced by hospital regulations to ask Miss
Beerman to leave. Branwyn always hesitated. She would have happily spent
the whole night sleeping in a chair next to her baby. Then in the
morning she could be the first thing he saw.
One evening, noticing the new mother linger at the
unit door, Minas offered to walk Branwyn to her car.
“Oh, I don’t have a car, Doctor," she said. “I get
the bus down on Olympic." The dark-skinned Negro woman had a beautiful
smile and nearly transparent gray eyes.
“Well, then let me drive you," the doctor offered.
Copyright © 2006 by Walter Mosley
