The Birth of Albert Roth

It was two am when Emilia Williams Roth gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Her husband watched as she held the baby in her arms and gently rocked him back and forth.

"Can I hold him, Mommy?" the little boy standing to the side of the bed asked.

"Not yet," his father said. "You can hold him soon enough, but right now, he has to go rest. And Mommy has to rest, too, okay?"

"Okay," the boy said.

The nurse took the baby away and Emilia Williams Roth watched him being wheeled away, her eyes never turning back to her husband or other son.

As the father turned back to talk to his wife, the boy followed the cart. His father called to him, but the boy said, "I have to go pee, please." And the father let him go, because he was a big boy now. He was almost six years old.

The boy followed the nurse all the way to a room filled with babies, each one a tiny pink ball with eyes and ears and tiny fingers.

The boy looked at them, wondering which one was his new brother. He was so intent on looking at each one, he barely noticed when another man walked into the room. The other man placed his hand upon the boy's shoulder and the boy looked up and saw a blank white face, void of anything and everything.

"Hello," the boy said to the man with no face. "My name is Albert. What's yours?"