Frederik Frasner arrived with all the violence of a military event and none of the courtesy.
Rafael would later say, with deep personal bitterness, that this was unsurprising. The child had spent months using his body as a siege site. It was only natural that his actual entrance into the world should be loud, difficult, and entirely too committed to the point.
Marin, dry to the end, had informed him afterward that both Rafael and the baby were healthy, stable, and in excellent condition.
Rafael, sweating, exhausted, and profoundly unconvinced that language should be allowed to do that much lying in a medical setting, had stared at him and asked whether 'excellent condition' was the clinical term for feeling as though one's bones had been individually abused.
Marin, whose sympathy had always come dressed as irony, merely adjusted his gloves and said, "You did it again, so evidently your standards for survival remain unreasonably high."
