Chapter Twenty
Before
The contractions woke her from a deep sleep, a painful tightening in her abdomen that radiated around her back before loosening once more. She groaned, pulling herself into a sitting position as she waited to see what would happen.
She’d been having contractions off and on for weeks, though the one that had just woken her up was the strongest she’d experienced yet.
The pain faded, and she started drifting to sleep again, head lolling, when another sharp contraction hit her, a groan rising to her throat.
She lay down again, bringing her knees to her belly.
Oh God, this is it. With every feminine instinct she possessed, she knew it was.
It was early, she thought. Two or three weeks, maybe, though she’d been sleeping a lot lately again, too much probably, and she’d lost track of the days.
It was the depression—the fear, the hopelessness—but there wasn’t much she could do about that except turn inward where life was flourishing, somehow, impossibly, blooming under a sunless sky.
She’d taken control of her food intake, and there had been plenty of water lately as the weather had turned cold, melting snow running down the crack in the wall and providing her hydration.
She’d done all she could to help her malnourished body support her pregnancy and bring her baby to full term, give him or her life.
And now, here they were. She’d done it—or very close, close enough that he or she would be healthy, or so she prayed.
She had nothing. No one. But she couldn’t stop this from happening.
Her baby was coming.
She ran a hand over her belly, feeling the tiny beloved being move within. “We’re going to be okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this together, you and me, all right? We’ve come this far, we just need to go a little bit far—”
She groaned, curling into herself as the pain stole her words, her breath.
She labored through that day and into the night, alone and terrified, the pains coming faster and stronger, crushing.
Josie panted and groaned, dripping with the sweat of exertion as she reached blindly for anything to hold on to.
But there was nothing, just the empty air.
So she dug deep and held on to herself, gripped fast to her control, her courage, the baby within her who was depending on her to bring it safely into the world.
She would not—could not—think beyond that.
As the stars appeared in the slip of lavender sky she could see outside the small window, her water broke in a gush of warm fluid, soaking into her mattress, the next contraction gripping her so hard she screamed with the intensity.
She floated between contractions, drawing inward, existing in a space that was both half-conscious and razor-focused.
When the burning of her body stretching began, Josie hauled herself into a sitting position so she could reach between her legs with her unshackled hand.
Her other hand gripped the mattress behind her, pressing into the foam as she suddenly curled forward, her muscles contracting as her body began pushing of its own avail.
She’d watched shows before where people around the laboring woman instructed her when to start and stop pushing, but that must have been inaccurate, or maybe that’s what pain medication allowed for, because Josie experienced nothing of the sort.
Her body simply took over, bearing down with each contraction, working to push her baby out, whether she was ready or not.
She panted and wailed through the pain, feeling herself tear as her baby’s head emerged.
She reached down with her shaking fingers, running a hand over her baby’s wet head as another contraction gripped her, and she curled forward, the rest of the infant sliding out and landing gently on the mattress beneath her.
Only Josie’s sobs filled the space, her heart slamming against her ribs.
She picked up her baby from between her trembling thighs, bringing him—him, it was a him; she had a son—to her chest and rubbing him dry with the pile of napkins she’d saved.
He was so slippery, and she was exhausted, but she managed to get him to her and lean back so he didn’t slip down her shirt.
She patted his back gently, fear rising when he didn’t make a sound.
She turned him over and ran a finger inside his mouth.
His little chest rose suddenly as he inhaled and his eyes opened to gaze at her.
Josie stared back, her entire being filled with relief and gratitude, love like she’d never felt before. She wrapped him in a corner of the quilt and covered his head, scooting up on the mattress so she could continue to gaze into his tiny face.
Caleb.
Her son. Her reason.
He didn’t cry, though he seemed fine, his chest rising and falling as he continued to breathe in the air of the hell he’d been born into. He blinked at her, his tiny lips puckering, and her heart constricted so tightly that it was a physical pain.
But then another contraction tightened her abdomen.
It wasn’t nearly as strong, but she cringed through it.
The placenta. She still needed to deliver the placenta.
She curled around her newborn as she delivered the organ that had kept her baby alive, filtering the small, rationed meals she’d fed her body.
Josie had no tools, nothing sharp, so she brought the umbilical cord to her mouth and used her teeth to bite through it as an animal would, and then pinched it between her fingers until it stopped pulsing.
Josie put her infant to her breast and collapsed back onto the mattress, bringing the quilt around them both with her unshackled hand.
She knew she had to do something to stop the bleeding, but what?
What could she do? In her overwhelming fatigue, all she managed was to feed her baby.
Caleb’s warm mouth suctioned her nipple, and he stared up at her with curiosity, trust. Josie watched the tiny miracle in her arms for a moment, his eyes drifting shut. She felt so powerless…small. Forgotten.
She raised her gaze to the window where she could see the stars far, far away.
One twinkled brightly, and for a moment, Josie almost believed some benevolent force looked down on mother and infant where they lay on a blood-soaked mattress in a bitterly cold cement cell.
“We did it,” she whispered to her baby boy. “We did it.”