Chapter 65- Completed family
Today had not gone as planned.
Not one single part of it.
That realization came to me slowly because nothing inside my mind seemed capable of moving quickly anymore.
Thought had become something distant and soft around the edges, as though exhaustion had wrapped my entire consciousness in thick cloth and left only small openings through which the room could reach me.
Voices came and went. Hands moved around the bed.
Water poured somewhere nearby. Cloth brushed against skin.
Someone spoke in the calm, measured tone physicians always used when trying to convince everyone that blood, screaming, and terror belonged to a perfectly reasonable process.
I heard them.
I simply did not care enough to understand.
The room no longer felt real.
It had stopped feeling real hours ago, somewhere between the pain becoming too large to think around and my body deciding that dignity was an unnecessary burden.
The lamps seemed too bright. The air smelled of sweat, iron, medicine, extinguished candles, clean linen, and the faint remains of whatever flowers Achille had allowed into the room before fear turned every petal into an enemy.
The curtains had been drawn, though a thin line of light still pressed against the edges, suggesting the world outside continued existing with insulting calm.
People were probably eating.
Sleeping.
Arguing over trivial things.
Somewhere in the palace, a servant might have been complaining about laundry. Someone in the kitchens was likely burning bread. A noblewoman had probably begun a rumor before breakfast and would finish ruining three reputations by dinner.
Life continued.
Meanwhile, I had discovered that pain could become so complete it stopped feeling like something happening to the body and began feeling like the body itself.
I had expected to come home.
That had been the entire plan.
A simple plan, or at least simple by the standards of my life, which had become so complicated that returning to a palace where someone had recently tried to murder me with flowers somehow counted as comforting.
I would come home. Eat in the eastern garden.
Rest in my own room. See whatever absurd project Achille had hidden behind that pleased expression.
Sleep in our bed with his arm around me and complain the next morning when he pretended he had not spent half the night checking whether I was breathing.
Normal.
Or the closest thing to normal we had ever managed.
I had not expected to give birth.
Certainly not that day.
Certainly not within hours of returning.
I had been thirty-seven weeks along. There should have been time.
Perhaps not much, but enough to think. Enough to prepare myself properly.
Enough to see the nursery. Enough to ask the physicians questions I had been avoiding because the answers made fear feel too official.
Enough to sit with Achille and tell him I was afraid without immediately being forced to prove it.
Instead, I returned home, ate half a meal, fell asleep in a bath, denied being tired, and somehow began labor before the day had enough decency to end.
That seemed unfair.
More unfair still was how little anyone had managed to prepare me for what labor actually felt like.
People called childbirth pain.
That word was inadequate.
Pain was a cut.
A bruise.
A wound stitched without enough medicine.
Pain had edges.
This had none.
It had swallowed everything.
There had been nowhere inside my own body to hide from it.
No position that remained tolerable. No breath deep enough to escape it.
No hand strong enough to pull me free. Every time one wave ended, I had believed relief might finally become permanent.
Every time, another came, stronger and more determined, as if my body had taken each moment of rest as a personal insult.
Then the first child arrived.
For one beautiful, foolish moment, I believed it was over.
The relief came so suddenly that I nearly cried from gratitude alone.
My entire body collapsed backward against the pillows while breath returned in uneven pieces.
Every muscle seemed to loosen at once. The terrible pressure disappeared.
The room rushed back around me in fragments.
Veronica's voice. The physician moving. Achille beside me.
A small cry somewhere close enough to matter.
Done.
That was the word that filled me.
Done.
I had survived it.
I had brought our child into the world.
I had kept my promise.
For perhaps five minutes, I knew peace.
Then Veronica said there was another baby.
I remembered looking at her and failing to understand the sentence.
Another baby.
The words arranged themselves correctly, but my mind rejected the meaning.
Another baby where?
Whose?
Why?
I had already given birth.
There was already crying in the room.
There had been one child.
One heartbeat.
One cradle.
One impossible little life everyone had spent months protecting.
There could not simply be another one hidden behind the first like an uninvited guest arriving after the doors had closed.
I think I asked whether she was joking.
I do not remember her answer.
I remember Achille's face.
That I remembered clearly.
The horror.
The betrayal.
The way he looked toward my stomach as if I had personally concealed a second child from him for strategic purposes.
The way Elias, who had apparently returned at some point, whispered something about actually needing another cradle and was immediately told to stop speaking.
The way Veronica remained calm with a smug knowing look on her face.
Then the pain returned.
That was when I learned relief could be cruel.
It had allowed my body to understand what not hurting felt like before taking it away again. The second labor did not feel like beginning.
Beginnings suggested readiness.
Strength.
A fresh effort.
I had none of those things.
My body had already spent everything bringing the first child into the world.
My arms trembled. My legs felt distant and useless.
My throat burned from crying, breathing, and making sounds I had never imagined could come from me.
Sweat soaked my hair, my neck, the thin gown twisted beneath me.
Tears no longer felt emotional. They came because my body had apparently decided leaking from every possible place was efficient.
There was nothing left.
No courage.
No patience.
No strength.
Only the demand to continue.
The physician told me to push.
I hated her.
Veronica told me to breathe.
I hated her too, though less, because she at least had the decency to sound as though she understood that breathing had become an unreasonable request.
Achille held my hand.
Or I held his.
At some point the distinction disappeared.
I remember his face close to mine. Pale. Terrified. Trying so desperately to look calm that every emotion became visible instead. I remember him telling me I was there, though that made no sense because I was the one there and he was the one losing pieces of himself every time I cried.
I remember thinking he should stop saying my name because every time he did, it sounded like a prayer no god had answered yet.
Then came the final push.
There was no strength for it.
My body gave it anyway.
Pain filled everything.
Then vanished.
Gone.
The pressure released. The room widened. My body fell backward against the bed as though someone had cut every string holding me upright. My head turned to one side. My chest rose too quickly. Air entered but never seemed to become enough.
For several seconds, I felt nothing.
Not relief.
Not joy.
Only absence.
The absence of pain.
The absence felt holy.
The mattress dipped gently beneath the added weight, barely enough to disturb the daughters resting against my chest.
A heartbeat later...
Familiar arms slipped carefully around me. I knew it was Achille before I opened my eyes. No one else held me with such impossible care. His warmth reached me first.
Then the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my cheek.
One arm slid carefully behind my back while the other rested lightly around my waist, supporting me as though he feared even the weight of the blankets might become too much for my exhausted body.
The moment he pulled me against him...
The tears came back without mercy.
The sound tore through my chest until breathing itself became painful.
My fingers twisted weakly into the front of his shirt, clutching the wrinkled fabric while tears soaked through it.
I cried because the pain was finally over.
Because I had survived when so many moments convinced me I would not.
Because fear had lived inside my body for so many endless hours that now, with nowhere else to go, it spilled out through tears instead.
One hand moved slowly through my damp hair while the other rubbed quiet circles against my back, patient enough to let me grieve everything I had just survived.
Eventually...
The sobs became smaller.
Not gone.
Only quieter.
Enough that words finally found me again.
"I..." My throat burned. "I can't..." The sentence disappeared before it reached the end. I swallowed painfully. Tried again."I can't do that again."
The confession left me almost as broken as the crying had."I'm sorry."
The words escaped before I even realized I intended to speak them.
Another apology followed immediately afterward.
"I'm so sorry."
I buried my face deeper against his chest, unable to look at him.
"I know..." My voice shook. "I know you wanted a big family."
A weak, exhausted laugh escaped me. "You always talked about four children."
I frowned, trying to remember. "...Or maybe five...."
Another tear slipped free. "I only remember how happy it made you."
I closed my eyes. "I wanted to give you that."
The confession barely existed above a whisper "I really did."
My fingers tightened helplessly around his shirt.
"But I..." The words caught somewhere beneath another sob. "I can't."