An Adequate Opening?

The infant crowned through a red mess. The doctor reached inside and pulled him out in relative silence, only the beeps of machines around him and the nurses and the father looking down at the spent mother. The infant cried, dripping in umbilical disarray, and was shown to his father, who glanced once and nodded, his eyes drawn back to his wife whose eyes were closed, as if she were only sleeping.

They asked him for a name later, the father. A name for the survivor. It's likely the thing that had transpired was still on his mind. She had to have been on his mind, her name ringing "Judith" like church bells. The nurses knew he was grieving, too, and knew he would continue for, they hoped, an appropriate amount of time. The question was meant to provide stasis: grieve for your wife, but here, there is tangible joy. But he was not ready, not yet. So when they came upon him, not with forms, out of respect, just an index card and a pen and said, "Mr. Newbell, a name for your son?" he took the card and pen and leaned against the smooth but imperfect concrete hospital wall and wrote: Judas Newbell.