Mario's premature "first birth" on the brownstone staircase

pivotal · ~25 Nov B.S. 1990

• When: A metal-lit November evening, seventh month of Avril's hidden pregnancy; best placed ~25 Nov B.S. 1990.
• What: Avril, who never showed and "bled like clockwork," stops in labor on the maple staircase of the Back Bay brownstone ("It's pain"); James, ragged on Wild Turkey, thinks she is dying (his own father died on stairs). Half-brother C.T., upstairs on his portable StairMaster, scuttles down and takes charge. Mario is scraped prematurely out of the womb to whose sides he clung by cords of sinew (n.113: "neural-gray"), and spends weeks in incubators, tube-fed, his head cradled by a thumb. Per Orin (170), who was seven in the Brigham and Women's waiting room, it was quite a touch-and-go thing and Himself was in the delivery room.