LAKE
With trembling hands I grab my son under his little arms and lift him, sliding him up my stomach toward my chest.
It’s cold, so I wrap him in a second blanket.
I look toward what is still hanging from the other omega.
A bluish head with bluish lips.
To be honest, I’m afraid to do anything. Fear rarely paralyzes me, but it does now, and then another contraction rolls through the unconscious omega’s body and a gray little body slips onto the blanket.
I stare, just stare.
My lips tremble, tears spill down my cheeks because a tragedy has just happened to that other omega. He not only lost his husband but also his firstborn child.
The way the baby looks… I have no hope.
Taking a deep breath, eventually I manage to break through the paralysis.
Slowly I lean to the side, and I touch the tiny body.
The baby is so very small. Is it premature or just tiny? Compared to my son, he’s half his size. On the side of his head, his arm, and his back there’s a huge, bloody bruise.
Was that what killed him? During the accident? Were the seat belts that Albert Strada fastened himself with what crushed the baby?
With an uncertain motion I draw the baby toward me. He’s still warm because he was inside the omega’s body. I listen for a heartbeat, but there’s only silence. The only fast, frantic beat comes from my own son’s heart.
I’m lying, or half-lying, propped against the side of the car.
It’s one of those strange suspended moments. I lift my eyes to the gray sky and feel a wave of deep sorrow.
A tiny life was lost. He will never know love, happiness, the small daily joys, the smile of his parents, the starlit wonder in their eyes turned toward him… and he will never be held.
For a while, I look at the pale gray body. Something inside me twists in pain.
Slowly I reach for the little one. It isn’t easy to lift a stillborn while my own son lies against my chest.
But I manage to pull the dead baby up onto my other shoulder.
It’s all I can give him, one last embrace before he disappears into the depths of nonexistence.
I look at his tiny gray face.
I’m no expert in first aid, but I’m certain nothing could help in a situation like this. The baby is gone, and I have no doubt about it. The energy of life has left his body.
"Poor little one," I whisper. "You will not know what life is, with all its pain and all its sweetness."
Some people say it’s better not to exist, that it’s the kinder alternative, but I disagree, because beauty does not exist without the eyes that look at it, without the ones that pull it out of nothingness, without someone who will write a poem about it or paint a picture.
The world becomes empty, a place of forms drifting through it without meaning or purpose beyond simple being.
Suddenly I notice something strange.
My tiny son begins to squirm in an odd way, almost as if he’s trying to turn toward the dead baby.
A ragged cry tears out of his throat.
"Easy, Bay, it’s all right, we’re alive.
I just need to gather my strength and find a way to get someone’s attention, but I’m afraid I’ll have to climb the slope to catch a signal, and for now I need to rest a moment because I just gave birth to you, and you are such a big boy… " I murmur to him in a soothing tone.
But Bay won’t calm down. He chaotically wiggles and stretches his little hand, almost like blindly reaching out, toward the stillborn newborn.
It’s so strange and almost unsettling that for a moment I build a barrier of blanket between the two babies, but little Bay screams louder and louder, and he has quite a set of lungs. His tiny fist keeps hitting the blanket barrier. How odd this is?
"My sweet boy, this is a poor dead little baby. It’s not a good idea for you to touch him."
Bay just screams and screams. But I can’t be irresponsible. I won’t let him touch a corpse.
I close my eyes and rest my head against the car, trying to steady myself, but Bay keeps wailing.
"Oh Aiden, please wake up…" I whisper, because it all feels so heavy and lonely.
Finally I sigh and open my eyes, and I see that my stubborn little Bay has pounded the blanket for so long that he pushed it aside.
Before I react, his tiny hand with its splayed fingers clumsily grabs the pale hand of the dead newborn.
The moment those two hands touch…
A sudden burst of light floods everything, so sharp and blinding that it sends a shock through my whole system.
I lose consciousness.
When I come to, for a moment I have no idea what happened, but then it returns in fragments.
I don’t know how much time has passed, maybe five minutes or maybe half an hour. I blink and then I realize I hear sounds.
Quiet whimpering.
Right… right! I gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
I blink again and lower my head, surprised that the whimpering seems doubled.
In my arms lie two little bodies.
And I clearly hear two newborns’ voices.
They’re both mewling softly, the second one probably from the cold, because the blanket covers only Bay.
I stare in shock at the tiny face of the other newborn, no longer that pale.
He was dead!
I was absolutely certain he was dead. The bruise, where is it? I look the baby over, but I don’t see it.
Was I hallucinating?
But that’s not the only sound reaching me. From far away I hear something like distant calls, as if several people are shouting, along with the crackle of branches and the forest floor being trampled.
I cover both babies with the blanket, but my eyes keep drifting to the gap in the wall of bushes, the path carved out when the car rolled down the slope.
A couple of minutes later I see several figures in rain jackets making their way toward us.
"Hello, over here!" I shout.
I don’t have time to think about what just happened, about the strange miracle that occurred, because I have no idea how to wrap my head around it.
"Help, over here!" I call in a breaking voice.
I hear raised voices and the crack of branches under their feet, and soon a group of people runs closer toward us.
They aren’t first responders, as it turns out. They’re drivers who noticed the broken shrubs and marks on the road and decided to check if an accident happened.
When they see us they look terrified, especially when they realize I’m the only conscious one and the driver is dead.
For a moment everything is chaotic. One of them climbs back up the slope to call the police while the others pull Aiden out of the car and lay him next to me after I tell them we’re True Mates.
The touch of my skin brings Aiden around after a moment.
My husband is in complete shock when he sees two babies in my arms. After a moment of hesitation, I decide not to tell him what happened for now, because at this point I don’t even know how I would describe it.
I hold the babies close, wrapped tightly in the blanket, and the others wrap the unconscious omega and prepare him for transport. About an hour later rescuers reach us with stretchers and we’re all taken to the hospital, since the helicopter can’t land here.
It turns out the omega, Albert Strada, suffered a severe concussion.
The brother of the deceased Max Strada, Dimitri, comes to care for the child and immediately shows gentle affection despite grieving his brother.
It also turns out that the tiny newborn isn’t premature at all.
He’s full term, just petite, weighing 5 pounds, while Bay weighs around 11 pounds and loudly demands to be nursed constantly.
Aiden and I stay in the hospital for two days. Aiden has a broken leg, broken ribs, and a severe concussion. I’m badly bruised, but luckily I have no fractures, so I’m able to care for Bay.
When Albert finally regains full consciousness after two days, I visit him, and I’m stunned when he looks at me with an unrecognizing stare, assuming I’m a nurse. I decide to leave things as they are without explaining who I am.
When I ask the doctor about it, he explains that Albert may have lost memories from the day of the accident and may not remember taking us on that drive at all.
Not wanting to add to his trauma, which is already heavy enough, I decide to leave him in peace. Adding the burden of knowing that two other people were in the car with him, both of whom were injured, and that there was an infant whose life was at risk, does not seem wise.
Two days later we leave the hospital with Bay, but the events of that day haunt my dreams for a long time. I cannot make sense of what happened.
I try everything, searching medical literature, searching the internet, but I find nothing even remotely similar.
It seems this mystery will have to remain unsolved.