“I’m okay. I have you. You’re all I need.” I bite down on the lie. I desperately need Max. I don’t know why, I just do.
I look out the window at the plain butter sky stretched like a crisp sheet. A car drives up the street, unassuming and banal. Dew beads over the calla lilies sitting beneath the window as their phallic protrusions nestle proud in their white cocoons—the bleeding hearts with their curled pink tails dangle in rows. I want to galvanize this moment into my memory—the last of our world that Mitch knew—the one without the baby. I seize the scene, logging random events into an imaginary file that falls in the timeline after Mitch’s death. My whole world is rearranging without my husband by my side. Not even the house will look the same once the baby is born. It never looked the same without Mitch, and now he’s coming back to me in the form of a child—a phantom with his face. I don’t know if I can bear it. How can I have Mitch’s beautiful eyes, his perfect structure, staring at me day after day? It’s nothing short of genetic cruelty. At least with Colt, his personality offsets the startling resemblance. He’s always been Colton, the wild donkey of a brother, but the baby might be Mitch through and through, and it scares me.
Another hard pull of pressure erupts at my waist.
Maybe I should pretend it’s Colton’s baby. That would make it easier for sure. I could harness all of my pain into anger at Colt for impregnating me. God knows I have enough rage stored in me to deliver ten babies at least.
A gush of liquid warms my thighs and floats up around my bottom.
I look up at Kat and blink into a smile. “I think we’d better get to the hospital.”
“ Dry birth. ” The nurse squints into me with the face of a beetle.
I shrink in the bed with my bare bottom cool against the sheet, the thin hospital gown rising in all sorts of unflattering directions.
“Dry birth?” I look to Kat in a panic. I need to get out of here—as in out of my body.
I make wild eyes at Kat, signaling her to do something.
“It doesn’t sound comfortable.” She shakes her head, devoid of her smartass superpowers at the moment.
This is all affecting me on a disturbingly horrific level. It’s all real—there’s no turning back. This baby has to pass through my so-called birth canal, i.e. my very narrow vagina. It’s no wonder television portrays birth like some scene out of a horror movie with nothing but blood curdling screams and bodily fluids soaking the sheets—because it happens to be factual. I do want the screaming and the blood, but I want all of it to belong to Mitch. Suddenly knocking me up seems like a horrible act of cruelty, and he’s responsible in the worst way.
“I changed my mind,” I say it so cool it almost sounds plausible. “I’m not doing this.”
Kat and the beetle share a laugh in light of my newfound misfortune.
“You’re going to do fine,” Kat squawks with no real evidence. “You’re not in pain now are you?” It comes out accusatory, and I suddenly feel the need to shove her face in the urine filled bedpan.
I glare at her.
Kat is mistakenly convinced I can do this without the aid of high power pharmaceuticals. She’s gone over the ramifications of a drug-induced delivery at least a dozen times these past few months and twice on the way to the hospital. Of course, I foolishly agreed before I was enlightened to the magnificent amount of torture my body was capable of inflicting. And, now, I rather look forward to having a blessed-by-narcotics birthing experience. If anything, this builds a strong case for Colton and his self-medicating. I might join him in the effort should I survive the trauma.
“Here comes another one.” The beetle tracks her finger over the tiny monitor in an upward motion.
My entire person seizes with panic.
“I think I need something to take the edge off.” Like a bullet, but I decide to leave assault weapons out of