Born Again
Ricky Ginsburg © May 2006
Ryan Andrew McDonough got his soul at 3:19 on the morning of February 28, 2004. For eight months, and twenty-six days he floated, alive, kicking, and demanding three squares daily through his mother's placenta. There was no happy or sad; the only thoughts coursing through his partially developed brain were the primitive tools we all start with, the simple needs of sustaining life.
Gregory James Tinker died from a bullet through his heart at 3:02 that same morning in a convenience store robbery. In the five and half minutes it took his brain to exhaust its last memory, he was also neither happy nor sad but his body had lost the ability to sustain his life and so his soul left it.
A soul will drift for a while, waiting, trying to find an unwritten page, a body waiting for its commander. Some souls spend years searching for a match. Gregory James Tinker found his new body in twelve minutes.
“What the hell? Where…no…again? I'm inside? INSIDE? Get me out of here!”
Sarah McDonough, four weeks passed her thirty-first birthday, gasped and grabbed her beach ball-sized abdomen as the first wave of pain ripped around her waist and shoved a knee into the small of her back.
“David…David…DAVID! Wake up, it's time.”
“Mmmph. Time for what, honey?”
“The baby's coming.”
David rolled one side of his face off the pillow and focused as best he could on the digital clock. “It's 3:22 in the morning, are you sure? Babies aren't born at 3:22 in the morning. You sleep at 3:22 in the morning, Sarah. Can't you wait?” David reinstalled his face into the pillow hoping for an affirmative reply and three more hours of sleep.
“Oh, oow, oooooww. David, he's coming. Get up and get dressed. Grab the hospital bag; it's in the back of my closet next to your golf clubs. Start the car. Don't forget to set the alarm. Should we call the doctor now or wait until we get to the hospital? David, is there gas in the car? David? DAVID!”
David, who had spent the hours from 11pm to 2:30am watching a live tennis match from the other side of the world, grunted and rolled over, pulling the covers, pillows, and a pair of sneakers that sat quietly, stinking up her side of the bed, with him as he fell onto the carpet.
“What did you say, Sarah?”
Sarah pulled a linebacker's t-shirt over the mound and down to her knees and looked at him, several small tears dripping from the tip of her nose as she bent over to try and catch her breath. “I'm in labor, David. Your child is about to be born and we've got to get to the hospital. Now, I could call a cab but we live on a farm and there's no taxi service out here. I could wait for a subway to be built, but I doubt the baby has that much patience. OR YOU COULD GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND DRIVE US TO THE HOSPITAL!” It was more of a hysterical plea than a venomous scream, but David got the message.
In the toasty warm uterus Gregory, soon to be christened Ryan, was freaking out. He'd managed to swing his tiny body around and had found a solid wall on the upper side of the darkened prison. He flexed and pushed with the minimal strength the not-yet-born body possessed. He tried several positions, pushing with both feet, then one at a time, rocking back and forth to finally wedge his head into what appeared to be a broad funnel.
Again and again, he would stomp and push and try to get enough of an angle to squeeze out. “I…have…got…to…get…out…of…HERE.” He did the baby birthing dance the same way it had been done it since the birth of man. It drained every last bit of energy out of the 9 pound soon-to-be infant and Gregory had no option but to pause before continuing to fight his way out again.
While he rested, and the basic primitive memory was still in gear, he explored the pieces of the new body within reach. Since his eyes were still sealed, he used the touch and squeeze method to assess his situation. “Um, down, here, um, yes! A boy again! I can pee standing up.” He counted fingers and toes, pleased to have ten of each. One of them fit comfortably in his nose; the small joys he looked forward to each fifty or seventy-one or nineteen years; was the last one only nineteen years? He knew he'd start to forget all this shortly after getting out like he'd done many times before. But this time, he was going to try and tell someone, this time he would make them understand - we all know what happens, we have no way of communicating the message - this time it would be different. If only he could say the words before he forgot them again.
David put three scoops of coffee in the food processor and folded himself into a chair at the glass topped kitchen table. The cotton placemat was a warm barrier between his left cheek and the cold see-through top. The coffee maker blinked 12:00 and dripped clear hot water onto the counter. Sarah, hospital bag in tow, had hobbled down the stairs and was standing in the doorway when the next contraction slammed her sideways into the door frame. Her back arched high and away from the door as the pain contorted the muscles in her face into a horrible Halloween mask. Her scream knocked David from the rolling kitchen chair, but not with enough clearance to miss the edge of the table. The chair slid out from under his pajama-covered bottom and over their sleeping cat's tail. The cat, who couldn't care less about the time but was allergic to rolling metal casters, scurried under the butcher block table, knocking loose three carving knives which, although they missed his rump and rear paws, took several patches of calico from him before embedding themselves in the linoleum floor. David rubbed his forehead and cursed the man who invented gravity and glass tables.
A small river ran down Sarah's legs and spread itself across the floor. “My water's broken, David, my water's broken. Get up, where are your car keys, where the hell is your coat. David, god dammit, we've got to get to the hospital!”
David looked over the newly formed pond glistening in the fluorescent glow and wondered if he should get a mop or leave it for, what was her name; Dana, Dorothy, Dotty, whatever, when Sarah bellowed again. Her shrill words had finally sparked his brain, which now slipped into first gear - Sarah, baby, hospital, drive…Now.
“Get in the car. I'll get your bag. Screw the alarm; no one robs houses at four o'clock in the morning. Go, Go, GO!”
Sarah slid down the door frame and settled into a heap of shaking mother-to-be. Most of the pond was absorbed by the size twenty sweatpants she had managed to pull over her legs between the contractions. She really didn't give a damn about the wet spot; the pain was a boxing match with not nearly enough time between rounds. Each time it found new places in her abdomen to strike. She wanted this baby out of her…now.
The vibration of the Dodge pickup truck sliding over the gravel road in the dark was enough to shake Gregory's legs away from the uterine ceiling. He flexed them several times and then relaxed to gather strength for his next escape attempt. During the brief time out, he continued his explorations, tapping and poking the soft tissue of his temporary prison. Gregory had known all about prison less than an hour ago. He'd been there twice in nineteen years, well three times, if you considered Juvenile Detention “doing time”. It was the luck of the Irish and a rookie cop with a broken holster which provided this morning's escape from a lifetime in a cell. He probably wouldn't have shot himself if he hadn't been so stoned. Fortunately, the transfer of the soul left the memories behind, the only ones he retained were the block of primitive birth memories secluded deep in his mind and only available for viewing at a time like this.
He knew this birth thing had happened many times before, and with every new birth in the past he had tried to tell everyone about it - rebirth, reincarnation - it was all real. Unfortunately he always started with a pair of flimsy vocal chords useless for the task, and the primitive memories he need to relate, were slung back to storage in just a few heartbeats. He was determined to make this one different. Somehow, some way he was going to let the people know about the soul, his soul, the transfer, the death which only lasts a few minutes. He would take away the horrible, gnawing fear of death we spend our lives repressing in the minute hope some scientist would figure out, preferably during our lifetime, a way to make us live forever. Gregory swung his left foot into a lump of tissue and resumed his attack. He pounded the quaking mass with his fists and slammed both legs to get someone's attention. The sooner he got out, the better his chances of remembering these thoughts.
Sarah groaned and pulled at the seat belt. David rolled the windows down and ignored the line of red traffic lights. “We're almost there, honey. Hang on, make the baby wait. You don't want to have your first baby born in the front seat of my pickup truck.” Sarah really didn't care where at this point, it was more a matter of when, and when was right now. The next contraction threw her against the door as a prehistoric roar splattered from her mouth, loud enough to drown out the siren of the county sheriff, now in hot pursuit of the swerving pickup. The constable pulled alongside David's truck and motioned him to the shoulder. It took less than fifteen seconds before the two car convoy took off with the sheriff now in the lead, holding back non-existent traffic at the empty intersections.
Two nurses and a first year resident, still combing his hair and tying his sneakers, met them at the emergency room entrance. Sarah, now limp and sweat-soaked, was lifted from the pickup and carefully placed on a gurney. The cool night air was a moment of refreshment as the rolling pain faded. She gulped several breaths and braced for the next punch. But the next punch wasn't coming just yet. Gregory had also run out of gas. It was feeding time, and her body took control while Gregory slept for a few hours.
Sarah's doctor made several visits over the next eight hours, measuring, checking, listening, and waiting in the hospital's coffee shop for his cue. David sat by Sarah's bed and drifted; his snoring kept Sarah awake. He had just slipped into a lavender wave off the coast of Maui when Sarah crushed the fingers on his left hand and wailed loud enough to rattle the windows in the room. Two white, starched nurses ran into the room, a third one paged the doctor.
“It's time, Sarah. We're going to take you to the delivery room. Your baby's ready.”
“I'm ready,” she moaned, “get the baby out, now!”
Gregory lost his toehold as they bounced Sarah on a gurney with one locked wheel into the delivery room. Gregory had had enough of all this, he was getting out now and there was no way to stop him. He had to remember, had to tell the truth, had to let the world know what really happens. With all the strength in his flabby hips and flimsy knees he gave it the all-or-nothing push. A cool breeze pat the top of his head, he could hear sounds coming from the outside. “Got to remember, got to remember,” he repeated the memory mantra to take with him. Sarah pushed, the doctor pulled and Gregory opened his eyes and stared, upside down, at the crowd for a moment before an unseen hand smacked him on the ass for no apparent reason.
Ryan Andrew McDonough inhaled his first breath and gave his smiling parents a howl they would never forget. Gregory James Tinker was gone.
END
*From the Publisher: Ricky sent me a short bio, and here it is...I like the pic so following the short one is the longer one, both fun to read...
Ricky Ginsburg will some day be famous; his mom keeps telling him it will happen. He believes her so he writes. But his writing is often interrupted by the good weather of South Florida and the silent pull of the salt air and the toasty sunshine beaming down on his balding pate. He's got a garden where he can be clever with Mother Nature's tools, building characters from plants and plot lines with plastic pipe. And when he's not digging holes or spitting out salt water, he's slowly cooking large pieces of meat and drinking moonshine from a mason jar, practicing to win another barbecue cook off. But he writes for fun, like the rest of this is work? You may have read his stories on Zoetrope, or in Skive Magazine, or on-line at Outcry, Bewildering Stories, Humdinger, Lamoille Lamentations, or Static Movement. If you didn't, then you should; it will help make him famous.
Ricky Ginsburg
Ricky Ginsburg escaped from New Jersey in 1998 on the eve of his 45 th birthday to the wilds of Southeastern Florida at the edge of the everglades. He works only when necessary preferring a day at the beach or the company of scantily clad college girls at Florida Atlantic University.
As a writer he was first published a nine part tale of competition barbecue in 2004 in The National Barbecue News. The photo above is from an article in Zone 10 Gardening Magazine (now defunct) that Ricky wrote about solving the mistakes most Northerners make when they try to garden in South Florida . Currently he has short stories appearing in Bewildering Stories, Humdinger, Lamoille Lamentations, Outcry, Skive Magazine, and Static Movement.
Ricky has had more than his fair share of fame having exceeded Warhol's predictions with almost eleven years at WFMU radio (not defunct) and two and half years at WBCN – Boston (should be defunct.) His radio show at WFMU – Synthetic Pleasure – had, for over five years, almost a half million listeners and
was most famous for his discovery of Yanni. During that phase of his fame he wrote and published a magazine also cleverly called Synthetic Pleasure that had over 1000 subscribers at its apogee.
