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Excerpts The Singular Life of Eddy Dovewater
Eddy Dovewater was born running. Squeeze. Slide. Slap. An obligatory wail of disgust and he was free. Exiting the obstetrics ward, he was clocked at nearly fifteen km/hour. Not bad for his height. Forty-five centimetres of baby-pink blur. "And I thought I'd seen everything," said the midwife, rocking back on her heels. "Now, where's he going in such a hurry?" But to Eddy's pre-verbal brain, it wasn't so much where he was going, as where he was coming from. Eddy Dovewater had been born before. And this time, he was determined to stay alive. He might have been short, but he was fast. Spun between the legs of a hospital aide before anybody even began to react. Left the nurse for dust. Still slippery with amniotic fluid, he slid under a guernsey and into the corridor, dodging two astonished ambulance drivers. By then, Mrs Dovewater had blearily managed to raise her head from the pillow. "All right, then?" she asked, meaning: is it over yet? Doctor Kavendar, hands still held out towards the Dovewater womb, ignored her with professional ease. "We've got a runner!" he shouted, dropping his gloves to the floor with a wet smack. The door was swinging in Eddy's wake. Doc Kavendar leapt through and into the corridor, just in time to catch a glimpse of Eddy's firm pink bottom disappearing around a corner. "Forceps!" he shouted. He grabbed a pair of cruel metal fingers from the midwife's collection and took off, white coat flapping. He used to run at med school. They called him Stringbean.
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