Oh, lord. Cleo runs her new beta of MS Flirt: Millennium Edition on Benton. It doesn't work. Send it back for bug testing. She hands off Mr. Fletcher's chart to him. Benton tries to get out of it on the basis that the last time Benton saw him, Mr. Fletcher yelled into his stethoscope. Cleo shoots back, "And he grabbed my ass. Suck it up. Come on. Be a man." She smiles, but the lights behind her eyes aren't working and the result is unnerving and creepy. Benton enters Mr. Fletcher's curtain area. Mr. Fletcher greets them, "What took you so long? I need to take a dump." Mr. Fletcher, c'est moi.
Lisa carries something down the hall that, at first, looks like Rex, but is, in fact, a couple of yellowish rubber gloves full of some kind of liquid. Mark, passing her, asks whether Rex is still hypothermic. She says he is, so Mark tells her to order another lamp, but she already has. She ushers the gloves in her hand into Regina's trauma room. Rex's pulse is down to ninety, according to Chuny. Lisa explains to Regina that the gloves are full of heated saline, to keep Rex warm while Regina holds him. Lisa glances around and asks, "Did your husband leave?" Regina said he went to -- OH MY GOD! The camera just cut to the baby's face, and it looks really gross. His head is huge and his face is tiny; his eyes aren't open and his skin is really grey. So, to review: rubber gloves full of saline look like a baby. The baby itself looks like a cross between an alien and a really old cabbage. Eccch. Anyway, Joseph is off looking for a priest, appropriately enough since that creature came straight from HADES, with one stop on JUPITER. But Regina claims it's to baptize the baby, not to perform last rites as they bury it deep beneath the earth's crust. Lisa tells Regina that there's a priest on call at the hospital, unless she and Joseph had someone specific in mind. Regina says they're only in town for a few days; she adds that her doctor told her she could travel during her second trimester. Lisa tells her that it probably would have happened whether Regina had been travelling or not. Regina, trying to keep it together, says, "We tried for almost two years to get pregnant, and finally gave up. And then, suddenly, I was! Look at him! He's hanging on. I counted ten little fingers and ten little toes. He looks perfect." Girlfriend, no one's going to quibble with your math, but he only looks perfect in comparison to, say, a lobster. Or perhaps a baby octopus. But not the cute kind. Ew, don't show it AGAIN! The memory of its appearance is still burned on my retinas. "He's just a little small," Regina deludes herself further. Yes. "A little small." And a lot UNGODLY. Lisa politely does not contradict Regina, but tries to prepare her for the inevitable: "Even if your baby was a few weeks older and somehow managed to survive, he would probably be plagued with --" "I know that's what you say because that's what you've seen," Regina interrupts, acting really badly now that she's no longer screaming, "but maybe he's meant to be a miracle. Sometimes you have to help a miracle along." Lisa replies, "And sometimes you have to let go." I wish someone had let go of the camera before aiming it at that "baby," because I am not going to be able to sleep tonight.













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