Chapter 2 Summary

Bird is wakened from a dream (in which he is being chased by an angry animal from which there is no escape) by a telephone call summoning him to the hospital. "The baby is abnormal," Bird is told. Bird, still in pain from the fight the night before, hurries to dress, frantically rides his bicycle to the hospital, and is shown into the waiting room. There he finds his mother-in-law (hiding her face in either embarrassment or pain), the hospital's Director (whose presence makes Bird uncomfortable - see "Quotes", p. 17) and a pair of doctors, one of whom (Bird notes) has a glass eye.

Bird identifies himself as the father and, with a strange nervous giggle that Bird attributes to embarrassment, the Director asks whether he would like to see "the goods". Bird asks for an explanation of what's wrong with the baby...