Free Chosen by Chandra Hoffman Page A

baby?” He keeps one hand on her shoulder as he unzips his dirty jeans with the other. “You’re my baby. I don’t need no other babies.” And he lets go of her shoulder, moves his rough hand to cup under her jaw, the calluses scraping her cheek, brings it around to the top of her head, holding her there. “That’s right,” he grunts softly, “you’re my baby.”
    Okay, Penny thinks, gagging a little, okay, then.
    Just so long as nothing’s changed.

9
Blood Relations
PAUL
    “P ush, honey, PUSH!”
    Poor sweetie has been pushing for the last two hours, two hours where she both shit and peed on the bed, two hours where they heard the nurses remarking over her incredible hemorrhoids at the shift change, but the worst of all, two hours where she has been unable to push the baby out.
    Nineteen hours of labor and now in the homestretch, the baby’s heart rate dipping with each contraction, seconds away from an emergency C-section, and with all of her glorious might, when Dr. Woo gives his final nod, Eva roars to life and pushes her son out.
    “Darling!” Paul has never called her this before, he realizes, as he watches the doctor lift the baby, covered in blood and smears of blackish green, onto Eva’s soft belly.
    The baby is Wyeth Edward Nova, named after Eva’s favorite painter, her father, and Paul’s family name.
    “Six pounds twelve ounces, honey! All fingers and toes accounted for, whoa, and a whopper of a willy!”
    Paul already has his finger in his son’s fist; he marvels at the baby’s strength. Then the nurse takes over, handling him too roughly, Paul thinks, and then she is plopping him right in Paul’s arms, and he is struck by how important this moment is. The first time in elevenyears, since his mother, brother, and father died within ten months of each other, that Paul has had skin-to-skin contact with an immediate blood relative.
    When his eyes meet Eva’s, they are slick with tears, and he says quietly so that only she can hear, “This has been a long time coming.”
    Paul moves close enough so they can both touch him, marveling.
     
    I T TAKES THE DOCTOR almost forty minutes to stitch up Eva. Paul passes the foot of the bed, and like driving past a car accident, can’t stop himself from glimpsing the carnage. It will be a long time before he will be able to prepare red meat, pat raw ground beef between his palms to make hamburger patties.
    Wyeth is exactly one hour old, Paul notes, realizing that after watching the clock obsessively for the past few hours, he has been inattentive. Its familiar white face with black hands ticks back at him like an old friend. On the bed, Eva has the baby in her arms, her gown open, Wyeth alternately suckling and sleeping. Paul is amazed at how their room feels different now, drained of adrenaline, their edgy exhaustion replaced with a serene sleepiness. The nurse has efficiently turned the place from a delivery area to a mid-range hotel room. When Dr. Woo has finished with his wife—“Twenty-two stitches, sweetheart,” he says, patting her knee as he leaves. “Don’t be shy about asking for painkillers, okay?”—all traces of blood leave with him.
    “I can turn the lights down, if you like?” the nurse offers, and Paul realizes they are really going to leave them alone with this baby. He looks to Eva, panic juicing his heart rate, but she doesn’t return it. She is blinking, long, slow blinks, her head bent over Wyeth.
    “Okay, that would be nice,” she mumbles, and her eyes close before the nurse has even shut the door. Paul looks at her, his son at her breast, her hair a tangled mass behind her on the pillow, the blood vessels in her cheeks and eyes broken from the pushing. During the last hour of labor, she had complained of itching, scratched deepraspberry-colored welts into her neck and chest—it looks like she has been lashed. Paul runs his hand lovingly over her forehead, leans closer to examine his son, his tiny throat moving like a