[adapted]

by
F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

As long ago as 1860 it was the usual thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the great doctors have decided that the first cries of the young should be heard in the medicine air of a hospital, preferably a popular one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this choice out of its time had any effect on the amazing story I am about to write will never be known.

I will tell you what happened, and let you decide for yourself.

The Roger Buttons held a very good position, both in society and with money, in Baltimore before the Civil War. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, gave them the right to be part of that very big group of important families that made up much of the Confederacy. This was their first time with the nice old custom of having babies — Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, at which school Mr. Button himself had been known for four years by the pretty obvious nickname of “Cuff.”

On the September morning set for the big event he got up nervously at six o’clock, dressed himself, adjusted a perfect tie, and hurried through the streets of Baltimore to the hospital, to see if the dark night had brought new life.

When he was about a hundred yards from the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene, the family doctor, going down the front steps, rubbing his hands together like he was washing them — as all doctors are supposed to do by the unwritten rules of their job.

Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button & Co., a hardware company, began to run toward Doctor Keene with much less dignity than people expected from a Southern gentleman of that old time. “Doctor Keene!” he called. “Oh, Doctor Keene!”

The doctor heard him, turned around, and stood waiting, a strange look coming over his hard, doctor-like face as Mr. Button came near.

“What happened?” asked Mr. Button, as he came up quickly, out of breath. “What was it? How is she? A boy? Who is it? What — ”

“Say something that makes sense!” said Doctor Keene angrily. He seemed a bit annoyed.

“Is the child born?” asked Mr. Button.

Doctor Keene frowned. “Well, yes, I think so — in a way.” Again he gave a strange look at Mr. Button.

“Is my wife okay?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Here now!” cried Doctor Keene, very angry, “I’ll ask you to go and see for yourself. Terrible!” He said the last word very sharply, almost in one short sound, then he turned away, mumbling to himself: “Do you think a case like this will help my good name as a doctor? One more would ruin me — ruin anybody.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Button, shocked. “Triplets?”

“No, not triplets!” answered the doctor angrily. “Also, you can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor. I helped you be born, young man, and I’ve been doctor to your family for forty years, but I’m done with you! I don’t want to see you or anyone in your family ever again! Good-bye!”

Then he turned quickly, and without another word climbed into his carriage, which was waiting at the curb, and drove away seriously.

Mr. Button stood there on the sidewalk, shocked and shaking from head to toe. What terrible accident had happened? He suddenly did not want at all to go into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen — it was with great difficulty that, a moment later, he made himself go up the steps and go in the front door.

A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the darkness of the hall. Trying to hide his shame, Mr. Button went to her.

“Good-morning,” she said, looking up at him in a friendly way.

“Good morning. I — I am Mr. Button.”

At this a look of great fear spread over the girl’s face. She stood up and looked like she was about to run out of the hall, holding herself back only with great difficulty.

“I want to see my child,” said Mr. Button.

The nurse gave a little scream. “Oh — of course!” she cried in a panic. “Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go — up!”

She pointed the way, and Mr. Button, covered in cool sweat, turned unsteadily, and began to go up to the second floor. In the upstairs hall he spoke to another nurse who came to him, with a bowl in her hand. “I’m Mr. Button,” he managed to say. “I want to see my — ”

Clank! The bowl fell to the floor with a loud noise and rolled toward the stairs. Clank! Clank! It began to go down step by step, as if feeling the same fear that this man caused.

“I want to see my child!” Mr. Button almost screamed. He was about to fall down.

Clank! The bowl reached the first floor. The nurse calmed down, and gave Mr. Button a look of strong dislike.

“All right, Mr. Button,” she agreed in a quiet voice. “Very well! But if you knew how upset it’s made us all this morning! It’s really terrible! The hospital will never have any reputation after — ”

“Hurry!” he cried in a rough voice. “I can’t stand this!”

“Come this way, then, Mr. Button.”

He moved slowly after her. At the end of a long hall they reached a room from which came many kinds of howls — in fact, a room which, in later times, would have been called the “crying-room.” They entered.

“Well,” said Mr. Button, “which is mine?”

“There!” said the nurse.

Mr. Button’s eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a very large white blanket, and partly pushed into one of the baby beds, there sat an old man who seemed about seventy years old. His thin hair was almost white, and from his chin hung a long gray beard, which waved in a silly way back and forth, moved by the wind coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dull, tired eyes in which there was a confused question.

“Am I mad?” shouted Mr. Button, his fear turning into anger. “Is this some awful hospital joke?

“It is not a joke to us,” said the nurse seriously. “And I don’t know if you’re crazy or not — but that is definitely your child.”

The cold sweat grew on Mr. Button’s forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake — he was looking at a man of seventy — a baby of seventy, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib in which it was resting.

The old man looked calmly from one to the other for a moment, and then suddenly spoke in a very old, broken voice. “Are you my father?” he asked.

Mr. Button and the nurse jumped in surprise.

“Because if you are,” went on the old man, complaining, “I wish you’d get me out of this place — or, at least, get them to put a comfortable rocking chair in here.”

“Where in the world did you come from? Who are you?” shouted Mr. Button in a very worried way.

“I can’t tell you exactly who I am,” answered the whining voice, “because I’ve only been born a few hours — but my last name is for sure Button.”

“You lie! You’re a fake!”

The old man turned tiredly to the nurse. “Nice way to welcome a newborn baby,” he complained in a weak voice. “Tell him he’s wrong, why don’t you?”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Button,” said the nurse seriously. “This is your child, and you’ll have to accept it. We’re going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as you can — sometime today.”

“Home?” repeated Mr. Button in surprise.

“Yes, we can’t let him stay here. We really can’t, you know?”

“I’m very glad about it,” complained the old man. “This is a good place to keep a child who likes quiet things. With all this yelling and shouting, I haven’t been able to sleep at all. I asked for something to eat” — here his voice became high and angry — “and they brought me a bottle of milk!”

Mr. Button, sat down on a chair near his son and hid his face in his hands. “My heavens!” he said softly, in great fear. “What will people say? What must I do?”

“You’ll have to take him home,” said the nurse firmly — “right now!”

A strange and ugly picture appeared very clearly before the eyes of the man in pain — a picture of himself walking through the crowded streets of the city with this terrible ghost-like figure following close by his side.

“I can’t. I can’t,” he said in a sad voice.