The Hatching

My dad was getting open heart surgery the day the mutations happened. 

Nothing would ever be the same for anyone ever again.

I got the day off school due to the family emergency, but it wasn't any damn fun.

To ten year old me, it seemed like I'd spent eternity in that hospital waiting room, long enough to get sick of the two game cards I had for my Nintendo Switch, and the books mom had brought along.

They had a children's play corner, but it had been meant for smaller kids, and Covid took all the toys away. 

No clock adorned the gray walls, just some ugly abstract paintings and a picture of flowers. Big hospitals like this didn't have religious paintings. They had fake plants, and boring magazines with titles like House and Home, Reader's Digest and Your Health

We had a widescreen TV, but the programming, in my estimation, could have just as well been a test pattern. Wendy Williams turned to Jeopardy turned to Family Feud turned to Judge Judy. 

That television turned out to be our last source of information when the whole history-making shit show began.

I could feel the Pepsi and Snickers bar mom got me an hour ago setting in my teeth. My paper mask had been on my face so long that it felt stuffy and probably needed to be replaced.

Mom took an emery board out of a purse covered in pictures of Michelle Obama, filing her nails to make them pretty.

The relatives of other patients, all older than me, looked bored and unhappy. Nobody talked, except for an old lady with a cel phone. Some crap about a misapplied payment. I guess she only wanted to pay U.S. Bank a hundred on Credit Card A so she could keep going into debt, but instead they put it on Card B, which they'd already closed due to nonpayment and weren't going to reopen. Then she started arguing about credit limits.

Mom's facial expression changed from `Bobby, I'm sorry that you have to be here and go through all of this,' to `Settle the fuck down, Bobby, you're not the only one who has to put up with this shit.'

I didn't know it yet, but this would be the last time her face would be plump and mocha skinned.

It turns out that there are worse things than being bored and sitting in a hard uncomfortable chair for hours on end.

All of a sudden, Mom started shrieking. 

We both collapsed on the jazz checkerboard carpeting, writhing in pain.

I don't know how much time elapsed after I blacked out, but it didn't seem that long before I awoke with a strange floaty feeling.

Still dark. It felt like I had a fever, and I'd been buried beneath a million sweltering blankets. My hands felt like they'd been stuck inside a pair of oversized mittens. I could barely feel my legs.

The moment I fought against these invisible restraints, that's when I discovered something had gone horribly wrong.

It was like being in one of those Alien movies and experiencing birth from the monster's perspective. Blood, bits of meat and bone sprayed everywhere.

My head emerged somewhere below my chin, attached to a long neck. I pulled what felt like arms out of my arms, pulled the rest of my body up and out of my body cavity.

When I saw a bloody face appear in front of me, I screamed.

Its head resembled a ferret's, but with the ears of a pig, its goose neck craned toward me, a furry beak opening to reveal buckteeth. "Bobby?"

I let out a whimpering sob when I recognized the voice. "Mama?"

The creature nodded, letting out a low parrot squawk.

"Mom, what's happening to us?"

Her turkey body shifted a little beside my ruptured abdomen. "I don't know, honey..." She frowned, made a tsk sound. "You're covered in blood. Here. I got some napkins in my purse..."

A pair of little T-Rex limbs emerged from beneath her wings. Long four fingered hands dug hankies out of her Michelle Obama purse.

She moistened a few with spit, wiping my face and strangely serpentine neck, then licked me like some animal cleaning placenta off a newborn.

It wasn't just us. Everyone in the waiting room was going through the same kind of birth process. The old lady, or rather, the thing she was becoming, seemed to be struggling with her transition. Another mutant bird creature pecked at her rib cage, clawed the flesh open with chicken feet.

"Mama, I'm going to stretch my...claws a little, okay?"

Her beady little eyes looked sad as she glanced at the hallway. There'd later be actual branches of psychology devoted to coping with the kind of loss we were feeling, but at the moment we were all in shock. "Don't get lost. Read the signs, and don't get anyone's way. They're saving people's lives here."

I frowned. "You think they're still doing that?"

Indeed, it seemed the entire hospital staff had been lying down on the job, replaced by a murder of panic stricken, squawking bird things. 

I couldn't tell the difference between employee and patient until one perched on top of the nurse's station and let out a loud trilling sound. "Ladies, floor meeting! Floor meeting!" Authoritative voice. Female. Nasal. "I know the situation is...unusual, but we presumably still have salaries, and a use for all our years in med school. Anyone want to own up to being a HCA professional?"

"I'm out," said a creature. "I stopped being a nurse when I died."

"We've all grown beaks, and you're still trying to stay on top of the pecking order," another bird thing agreed. "This is bullshit."

But a handful did flock around the leader.

I turned back to look for mom, but she was already standing behind me, preening herself. I could tell her identity by scent. "Mama, what's going to happen to Dad?"

She sucked in her breath. "I don't know, baby."

Mom waddled down the hallway, dinosaur tail wiggling back and forth with each ridiculous looking goose stride.

The doors to an operating room came bursting open the moment we neared it, another pair of creatures flapping out.

"Sir," a female voiced one cried, snapping at the other's tail to get its attention. "You can't leave in the middle of an operation! The patient will die!"

"How am I supposed to perform any procedure in these circumstances? Our patient's heart has moved to a different location! He has a cloaca, for God's sake!"

"He didn't have one when you started cutting him open. Regardless of what he looks like, his life is still in your hands!"

"Joanne, these are not hands anymore. I already stated that he, it, has a cloaca! We don't even know if Mr. Odum is still in there!" He let out a goose-like hissing sound. "When I swore to the Hippocratic Oath, I never agreed to operate on hippos!"

Mr. Odum? I thought. They're talking about Dad!

"Metaphorically, sir, you are a hippo. And since you obviously still talk and think like Doctor Pagani, I can only assume that that creature in there is Mr. Odum. The very least you can do for him is sew him back up!"

"Joanne, every time I hold a scalpel, it's like I'm a fucking kid eating with a damn pair of chopsticks! There's no medical manual on earth that covers a scenario like this! We're supposed to be wearing masks and lab coats and scrub up! How the fuck do we sterilize feathers!"

"You think that's bad? I think I've just grown a penis!"

"What!"

"Sir, all I'm saying is, you've got to finish the job! You want that man's death on your conscience?"

The doctor honked. "I'm still hoping this is just a really bad nightmare, and I'm going to wake from this."

"And what if you don't?"

The other creature swore profusely, pushing back through the doors.

"What have you done to my husband!" my mother cawed.

"Ma'am, calm down," said the transformed staff lady.

"Calm down!" Mother's voice got louder, taking on the sharp tones of a red tailed hawk. And a goose. "Bet you wouldn't have pulled that shit if I and my husband had been white!"

The other bird creature looked like she'd been slapped. "Ma'am, I assure you that race has nothing to do with this." A smirk crept up the side of her beak. "But while we're on the subject, did you notice that our feathers are the same exact color?"

Still, the (doctor? nurse? ) promised they'd do their very best, that she'd just convinced the surgeon to finish his job.

"You'd better," Mom threatened. "Or I'll call my lawyer and sue you out of this hospital!"

The staffer only rolled her eyes. "You sure there will be a telephone in his birdhouse?"