BLACK PRESIDENT, CHAPTER 8. Sarah Little gets a medical checkup, leading to a surprise. Rudy can't stop thinking about a license plate he spots on a Cadillac.

<https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/black-president-the-story-of-jfks-secret-sons-rick-schmidt/1138455004>

Nice Top-100 rating for BLACK PRESIDENT (during free amazon/KindleUnlimited PR).

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CHAPTER EIGHT

“Sarah Little?” called the admitting nurse from off the clipboard. Sarah raised her hand silently, put down the magazine, walked into a narrow hallway with several tiny dressing rooms off to one side. By the time Sarah had learned about Leon’s fall from the garage roof, he was no longer in danger, comfortably installed in Swedish Hospital just two floors below.

“Please get dressed in the examining clothes – the doctor will see you soon,” the nurse said, in a monotone delivery. On the bench in room #3 Sarah found a folded green gown and white booties. She undressed and threaded her arms through the openings of the hospital gown, barely able to get the strings tied in front. My god, I’m getting huge! she thought. It was a strain to wait there in such an unpresentable state, but she did her best to be patient. She sat quietly on the plastic-covered wooden bench and stared at the blue curtain inches from her face, carefully listening for someone to call her name.

After ten minutes of sitting alone in that confined space, Sarah’s state of mind began to disintegrate. It wasn’t exactly panic that she felt, but a vague uneasiness. While her conscious mind kept reassuring her that it was “normal” to be waiting under such circumstances, she was emotionally rattled by the anonymity of it all, the feeling that she was so disconnected from real life. How often was a person stuck in a three by three foot box, half-covered by a sheet? She felt so vulnerable and alone. It made her feel even more pathetic when tears started running down her cheeks.

I’m not sad, she repeated to herself, as if her eyes were acting independent of her real state of mind. Why cry now, she wondered? Leon would be fine, and her baby was getting big. That was all. But thoughts of her interaction with President Kennedy intruded into the present. Memories of his voice soothing her as he undid her blouse and skirt. The small space off the Oval office had been similar in its feeling of claustrophobia, with its close-in walls and subdued light. In that unfamiliar place their lovemaking had happened as if in a dream, her body and his touch somehow unreal. He panting just like her husband Leon, thrusting like Leon, finally spent like Leon. Then, with a quick re-assembling of clothes and tie and coat, he was the formal man, the famous icon, and she was again just the visitor who had to be hustled off to a bus that was waiting outside. Yes, she knew it was wrong... but couldn’t stop it. And now, sitting in the hospital, she felt terribly off-kilter. She hoped there was some way to make it up to her husband. And to the child.

Wiping the tears from her cheeks again, Sarah reached for her nearby notebook and pen. To try and settle herself down she decided to distract herself in the only manner available. She wrote and underlined “Doctor’s Visit” at the top of a fresh page, her hand trembling with every letter. Then she described the small compartment where she sat, the approximate height, width, and length of the cubicle, the color of the walls and the sounds she heard filtering in from the corridor. Then she added a description of the nurse who had installed her there.

The nurse was older woman, about...twenty-five or six, with brown hair, and... wore glasses. She was about one or two inches shorter than me, your mama, and acted sort of like a robot. I guess I’m thinking that because she moved stiffly, didn’t ever look me in the eyes, talked sort of like a...like that robot in the Amazing Planet movie we saw. When you grow up I want you to make sure that you look in people’s eyes when you are with them. It makes a people feel sort of invisible and confused if you don’t look them in the face when you talk to them. I know the nurse didn’t mean to be mean or anything. It’s just that...

“Sarah Little?” a woman’s voice suddenly called from out in the hall again.

“Yes! Here!”

Putting the pad of paper back into her large purse, Sarah got up and again tried to tie the too-small hospital gown. But no amount of fidgeting helped her gain the extra fabric where it counted most. Sarah parted the flimsy curtain, stepped out into the hall wearing the supplied hospital booties, and followed a different, older nurse down the hallway. A quick right then left turn took her to another small cubicle where she was weighed, then measured for height.

Inside the inner office the nurse took a quick blood pressure reading, stuck a thermometer in her mouth and departed. Minutes after that the doctor knocked and entered.

“Mrs. Little? Hello. How are you feeling?” asked Dr. Peters, a white man in his mid-thirties with a thin face and thick, black- rimmed glasses.

“OK,” she mumbled, the thermometer still in her mouth. The doctor pulled it out and read it before setting it down carefully on a metal tray. Sarah was still feeling a little off balance.

“Ready to hear about ma baby,” she chirped, smiling, hoping to talk herself back into a cheerful mood.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “Of course. All right. Let’s check you out.” He began the examination with gentle, reassuring touches, culminating with a thorough pelvic exam. The physical discomfort of probing fingers was somehow much easier to take than the psychological torture she had experienced back in the changing room. Finally Dr.Peters seemed satisfied, but Sarah couldn’t help detecting something in the air, some added charge to the doctor demeanor .

“Is everything OK, doctor?” asked Sarah, a worried look wrinkling her brow. When the doctor didn’t answer quickly enough she added, “My baby is OK...isn’t he?”

“Yes...yes,” said Dr. Peters, “More than OK. Twice as OK.” He never knew quite how a young mother, any mother-to-be, would react, so he went easy with the new information.

“Twice?” said Sarah, parroting the word.

“Yes. I say ’twice as good’ because you are actually carrying two babies.”

“Twins”

***

Rudy’s mother-in-law, Jill, was an incessant talker, which of course spoiled the enjoyment of any meal she provided, no matter how delicious. The baked salmon, coated in mayonnaise and then baked slowly (a trick Jill said she learned from the back of the jar), was tender and delicious, but while Rudy made every effort to savor the flavorful dish, chewing each mouthful slowly and trying to ignore the conversation, he couldn’t help getting a bad taste in his mouth from where the dinner topic was heading.

“You’re still young people, but you should get started now,” Jill was saying as she reached for a second helping of peas. “Lora Ann’s body won’t always be in this ideal condition, you know. Lora Ann. Have you been watching your temperature, keeping track like I told you?”

Rudy just shook his head. His mother-in-law, in her mid-50’s, wore gold bifocals and a hairdo that looked like a hornet’s nest turned on end. She had a small, oval face with a pinched nose jutting out over wide lips thickly coated with red lipstick. And she seemed to squint her eyes a lot, as if she either needed new glasses or was just limiting her line of sight, turning vision into a weapon, searching for a target to be critical about.

It struck Rudy that her pear-shaped figure was the kind designed to eject kids as rapidly as the Coke machines spit out filled bottles down at the plant. It was surprising, then, that she had only had one child. Too bad. She really needed more than one grown kid to terrorize on her weekly visits and daily phone calls. Whatever could be said, her prying into his personal affairs made his mind turn hostile and defiant. He was almost driven to ask her point-blank just how many times a week she’d like him to ejaculate sperm into her daughter’s vagina. Five? Ten? Twenty? In order for him to have sex with his wife more than twice a day, he’d have to drive across town from the bottling plant during his lunch break, track Lora Ann down at her secretarial job and screw her against a wall in the nearest bathroom, gobble down his sandwich and race back before the whistle blew at Coke. And that would be OK...once in a while. Especially if he could time it with the cushy, after-lunch job of examining bottles at the X-ray station. But the shifts rotated every day. What if he was unfortunate enough to combine a week of unbridled bathroom sex with stacking heavy crates at the end of the belt? Even with his expertises at working the pendulum style he’d still be begging for a heart attack, stroke, or worse, at his tender age of twenty-three.

Before he could speak up, explain his work schedule in detail, draw a line in the sand, Lora Ann broke in.

“We’re trying, Mom.” She looked from Rudy back over to her mother again. “Maybe we’ll have a surprise for you by summer.”

As the meal with his mother-in-law drifted on and conversation turned to more mundane topics, Rudy remembered the license plate he’d recently seen on a Cadillac off San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, with the words, “Fuck My Life” imprinted on its sturdy, thick-gauged metal frame. It had jolted him. Apparently someone had deliberately walked into a custom license frame shop and ordered those particular words to be stamped into the metal. The juxtaposition of the rich man’s car and that disturbing epitaph had worked to create two distinct portraits in Rudy’s mind – one for a male driver, another for a female. He couldn’t help wondering, pimp or whore? If it was a woman’s car, he figured the money she had used for the expensive ride and license plate motto had come from fucking...so fucking was her life. On the other hand, if the car belonged to a pimp, then that man could be seen as just describing his profession...actually advertising it. Fuck my life...as if the pimp understood that yes, his life was fucked, but hey, It’s a living!

Later, given his hours of focus and speculation on the license plate topic, Rudy wished he’d just hung around the Cadillac until he learned who the driver was. A final image that invaded his mind was one of a beautiful hooker, blond hair, great figure and flashy red dress, showing off all of her assets as she exited a building and sashayed her way back to her ride

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Chapter 9 next)