Originally Published by Free Flash Fiction in 2013
Sweat drips from my forehead, and the pain in my abdomen obliterates all sense of time. The minutes dash by with such fervor it becomes evening before I know it. The curtain of night descends and blocks the sun.
Fourteen hours of labor.
What was I thinking? Why did I put myself through this?
Forty is too old to have a child or raise one alone.
I should have ended it, like everyone suggested. But this was my last chance.
I could have done without this pain. This wretched feeling that I’d never be enough for her. This fear that she might not even be normal.
Pain ripples through my abdomen again. I can barely breathe and my heart races. Wasn’t the epidural supposed to help?
“You’re doing fine,” the doctor says in her Virginian accent. “Just a little more.”
I can’t see her over my mint green hospital gown or the shuddering hill of my abdomen. I don’t want to see her, much less imagine what she might be seeing.
A poking, piercing burn joins in, and I cry out again. Tears roll down my face. But the pain subsides as everything is expelled from my body and my scream deflates. Exhausted, I fall back on my pillows.
So tired.
The nurse brings my daughter to me – alabaster limbs and joints unfolding like origami. But she’s okay. I’m okay. She’s perfect, but all I can think to say is, “her feet are huge.”
Because they are.
