Chapter 39
A s the surges intensify, I lose the ability to distinguish between seconds and minutes, hours and days. Even so, I find myself more able to cope as Malia coaches me along.
I can’t help but wish that Nolan were here, but if I let my mind fixate on that ache too deeply, I remember that I’ll never see him again. And that pain is too much to bear.
I focus on making it through the excruciating pain of the moment.
There are times during surges where I revert back to tucking myself away, like I so often did during the long nights with Peter—hiding myself in the closet of my own mind until the agony is over and I steal a minute of relief.
Still, I find those surges more difficult to bear than the ones where I heed Malia’s voice and open the closet door, inviting the pain in.
There’s something about the invitation that allows my muscles to relax, accept.
Eventually something shifts. The pain intensifies, and the breaks in between seem no longer than a moment to jut my head above the raging waters and gulp a meager breath before the next current drags me under.
What I thought was pain before I now recognize as simply discomfort. My spine is the thread at the tip of a seam ripper. Over and over, lightning strikes my abdomen, each flood of piercing light followed by waves of darkness.
I’m faintly aware that my eyes are still open, but I can no longer see. As darkness encroaches on my vision, nausea sweeps through me in waves upon which I am no longer able to float.
I writhe atop the boulder upon which I’m draped, still clinging to its slick surface, wet with my sweat.
“I can’t do this.” The words are not mine, but some primal being within me. A creature who, up until this point, I’ve had no awareness of sharing my body with. You’re killing us , it screams, its unfamiliar voice piercing my skull.
My vision flashes in and out, enough for me to witness Malia returning to my side. She glances down at the contents of my stomach, now spilled across the rock. I don’t remember that happening.
Another surge of pain hits me and I retch, though this time nothing comes out. At the same time, something pops, the sound echoing through the cavern as a rush of water pours down my legs and onto the cave floor.
Everything intensifies.
“I can’t do this!” I scream. “Make it stop. Please make it stop.”
“You’re in transition,” she says. “This is the shortest part. You’re almost done. It’s almost over.”
Malia goes to pull my hair back and away from my shoulders. I swat at her arms, her touch just as nausea-inducing as the pain.
“I told you I can’t do this!” I cry. “I can’t do this without Nolan. Please, please, tell someone to go get him.”
“There’s no one else here,” says Malia, her voice calm.
“Then you go get him!” I scream, grabbing at her tunic and wrenching at it. It rips just at the collarbone. But if Malia is at all fazed, she doesn’t show it.
“Please—something’s wrong!” I cry.
She shakes her head, kneeling before me so that we’re eye level.
“We need to get you into a better position,” she says, then loops her arms underneath my armpits in an attempt to lead me off the rock.
But as soon as she tries to move me more upright, the pressure between my legs becomes unbearable.
It feels as if I have a rod stuck up inside of me, making it impossible to move.
“Don’t touch me!” I growl.
Malia holds her palms up. She leaves my side, and vaguely I’m aware of her crossing the cave. Something drags against the cave floor behind me.
It takes me a moment to realize she’s arranging the blanket beneath me. She helped me remove my trousers hours ago, so it’s just Nolan’s oversized shirt hanging around me now.
“Will you let me check you?” she asks. “To see if you’re ready to push?”
I grunt something incoherent. Even I am not sure whether it’s a yes or a no, but it doesn’t end up mattering, anyway.
Before Malia can check my progress, the strangest urge overcomes me. A need to relieve myself but stronger.
And before I know it, I’m pushing, as if my body itself has taken over, my subconscious mind taking the reins from me.
And suddenly, my wayward mind comes back into focus. I’m no longer screaming. I can’t quite tell if I’m in less pain than I was moments ago or if I’m simply too intent on the task at hand to notice it.
As yet another contraction ripples through me, I feel the urge to push. The next is the same, and soon I find myself in rhythm, able to anticipate them.
Malia is saying something to me, but I can barely hear her. It’s as if my body itself has broken away from my mind and is speaking to me separately, telling me exactly what I need to do.
All of a sudden, as I push, a fire breaks out between my legs.
“He’s crowning,” she says. “I can see your child’s hair.”
A single tear escapes my eyelid and slips down my cheek. It’s so hard. I can’t imagine pushing any harder than I am now.
“He’s not going to come out,” I say.
“You’re so close,” says Malia.
Close to what? the voice in my head says.
In just a few moments, my child will be taken away from me. My husband too.
As the next contraction sweeps through me, my muscles seem to go limp.
I slump, and Malia grabs at my back, sounding alarmed. “You can’t stop,” she says. “You don’t have the option to stop. You have to keep going.”
But I don’t want to keep going.
My mind splits, and the hidden, primal part of it is screaming to make the pain stop. But I’m just so tired. So tired of losing. So tired of losing myself. Losing Nolan. Losing John. Losing my son.
I’m so tired of losing that I can’t find within me the energy to go on.
Perhaps I will die like this. Perhaps the pain will kill me. I’ll be like one of so many women who succumb to the tragedy of childbirth.
Perhaps this is my end. Or perhaps not.
Perhaps I’ll be trapped in this wretched purgatory forever—stuck in this cycle of excruciating pain, no energy to rid myself of it. So close to the end but unable to reach out and grasp it.
“You have to push,” says Malia.
I bite my lip and frown and let out a feral groan that sounds nothing like me.
And all of a sudden, I feel my son slip out of me.
An instant relief takes its place.
It’s as if the pain has been vacuumed up, whisked into a black hole, forgotten—almost as if it never existed to begin with.
I go to spin around, to glimpse my son, but Malia keeps one hand on my back.
“If you turn around, your leg will become wrapped up in the cord. Give him a little time to get the last few pulses of blood.”
I don’t know what that means or why it’s important. All I know is that I want nothing more than to hold my baby.
“Why isn’t he crying?” I say—all the worst-case scenarios bombarding my head. Fear that he’s gone. That I failed him already.
“Your son is crying,” says Malia.
I blink, confused.
The sound in the room comes back on, as if someone had stuffed a sock into a phonograph and has just now removed it. I hear that cry, and it’s the most beautifully heartbreaking sound that’s ever reached my ears.
I crane my neck to look. From this angle, I can’t see my son, but I watch as Malia secures a band around the umbilical cord, then takes a blade to the segment beneath the tie.
I barely notice because my baby is screaming. My baby.
A flood of emotions encompasses me.
Once the umbilical cord is cut and I’m free to twist around, I do, taking in the sight of my child for the first time.
He seems so small. Like something must be wrong with him. Like it couldn’t possibly be natural for a living human to be that small and survive.
But he’s crying, his little chest heaving up and down. He’s covered in a white, sticky material that Malia is rubbing into his skin.
A head of dark black hair, just like his father’s. The smallest of fingers, grasping at the air. Grasping for me. And before I know what I’m doing, my hands are reaching for him.
Malia stands abruptly. She turns away from me, her hips swaying back and forth as she rocks my baby in her arms.
His screams pierce my ears.
“Please, just let me hold him.”
Malia says nothing. And for a moment, I wonder if she can’t hear me.
I watch her back as she takes her hand to her shoulder. At first, I think she’s massaging it, but then she slips the tunic down over her shoulder, leaving it bare. I frown, confused.
Quiet fills the cave, stifling the echoes of my son’s screams.
And then a sound that sends chills beyond my spine—suckling noises, and a gentle click in between my baby’s labored breaths.
“What… what are you doing?” I ask.
The unease dragging my belly toward the floor tells me I already know. My blood runs cold as a memory assaults me—a whisper from the past in the form of a serpent’s voice. You may enter the library, should you forfeit the possibility of nursing your firstborn at your breasts .
“Please, Nolan’s not here yet,” I say. “What harm can it do? Just let me… just let me hold him.”
Malia doesn’t answer.
And the ache in my belly slowly turns into dread.
Something isn’t right. Kendra obviously kept secrets from me, and for good reason. But when we had met with Kendra, she had seemed open about hiring a wet nurse. It hadn’t seemed to cross her mind to use Malia.
Of course, that all could have been a show for keeping me in the dark as much as possible.
But what was the point?
What was the point of keeping me in the dark about Malia being the wet nurse, if she was going to reveal it to me immediately, anyway?
The sound of my baby nursing against another woman’s breast claws at my insides, a pressure building up within my chest for which I have no release.
Something is wrong.
I push myself off the boulder and stumble forward. I don’t know what I plan to do. Snatch him out of her arms, I suppose. But as I limp toward them, yet another contraction ripples through me. This one is not nearly as painful as the others, and a cruel hope sneaks into my mind.