Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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A nurse, gauze mask swinging below her chin, entered the semi-private room. "You want to see the baby, don't you, Mr. Baker?" she said.

"Oh, yes, of course I want to see the baby." He was surprised that he hadn't thought of this himself. One of the first things he should have done, he was sure, was to ask to see the baby. He hoped that Mabel hadn't noticed his lapse in protocol.

The baby was one of twelve babies, displayed like packaged dolls in a department store window, in a room shielded from the corridor by plate glass. "This is a new idea," the nurse explained. "Protects them from the flu germs." She pointed to one of the baskets. "That's yours."

Nicholas Baker saw a red face, wrinkled like a dried apple, but afterwards he was never absolutely certain he had looked at the right one. He wondered what custom required him to say, and how many minutes he should look at this wrinkled, red face. "Ah, fine, fine!" he said. After he was gone the nurse thought he behaved not at all like the father of a first-born son. It might have been his sixth, he seemed in such a hurry to get out of the hospital.