I never get tired of seeing Little Love on the ultrasound machine. She's looking more baby-shaped these days, but even when she was just a little blob on the screen I loved staring at her. This life, growing inside me, the culmination of...
I choke back a sob.
"Here you are, sweetie," the tech says, and hands me a box of tissues. "Hormones, eh?"
"My husband left me," I blurt out, gripping the box in my hands. "He left us because the world is going to end and I can't stop thinking about how my little girl is a part of him but he won't be here to see her!"
The tech shifts, still clicking around to take all the measurements.
"I can't believe he did this to me, to us."
She pushes down on the sensor, squeezing my bladder, and I nearly let it all go right there. Not letting a pregnant woman piss for four hours is cruel and unusual torture. I clamp my legs together, breathing through the sensation. If I let go, then she won't be able to get her measurements. If she can't get her measurements, I won't know how Little Love is progressing. I want her to be healthy. I want her to be healthy and happy and loved.
I dab at my eyes with a tissue, though no tears are coming. "I've cried so much over him, over everything. It's amazing my body can even produce tears anymore." I know I'm babbling. I know this woman is probably uncomfortable listening to me bear my soul, but I can't stop the verbal diarrhea. I never can. "How could he abandon his child, especially when the world is going to end? I don't even have a job anymore. I tried to apply for early maternity leave but the government doesn't even know what to do about benefits and stuff like that, with the economy. Who knows if I'll even get it? Who knows if I'll have a place to live when my baby is born?" Oh, there are some tears. I try to blink them back, then give up and use the tissue. "I hate all of this."
The tech clamps her jaw shut, muscle working in the side of her face. She looks like she wants to say something, like she's holding something back.
That usually means it's nothing good.
"Is the baby okay?" I ask.
"She's fine," the tech replies, tone clipped. "Everything looks good. I'll pass the information on to your doctor, and if you have any specific questions you can address them." She pulls off her gloves and all but throws a towel over my exposed sticky belly. "Take your time cleaning up, and the bathroom is across the hall."
She disappears from the room before I can get another word in, and I gape at the door.
Then my bladder protests again. I consider just letting it rip all over the table for the tech to clean up after being so rude to me, but instead wipe myself clean and waddle off to the bathroom.
Post-ultrasound pissing is heaven. I let myself feel the release, relaxation, the joy.
Those moments are hard to come by.
A month passes. A month of trying and failing to get monetary help. Trying to contact my old coworkers, see where they went and what they're doing. The call centre had been an easy job for me. I like talking to people.
I got hung up on a lot, and that stung, but for those that stuck around, I had a pretty good rate of getting them to donate money to whatever cause we were pushing that day. As long as they didn't ask what percentage of their donation actually went to the charities. Part of the script was giving them the web site with the stats and then sending them on their way. The percentage was dismal.
I guess in this day and age there's no need for charities. I could use some charity right about now.
There's a guy that's moved in down the hall from me... well, I say moved in, but he's just taken over an empty apartment. I guess whoever lived there—I think it was an older woman? I don't remember—took off when the news broke like so many did.
This guy creeps me out, though. He keeps offering me rides but he looks at me like I'm something to eat. It would be nice to ride in a car, definitely safer to get around, but the way he looks at me makes my skin crawl. Sometimes at night I get up to double-check the locks on my door. Sometimes I even look through the peep hole, half-expecting to see him standing there, staring back at me.
I need to keep us safe, Little Love.
It's hard, these days.
Some stuff is still functional, lots of people are just trying to get by, but so many have taken to just anarchy. Sometimes the grocery store has food, and a lot of the cashiers just let me have things. I try not to do that... but the stash of cash here is running low.
Sometimes I go to the food bank. There are lots of people there, but they make way for the pregnant girl. I try to talk to them. Try to connect with someone, anyone. But everyone has their own shit going on.
Two months. More ultrasounds. I get different techs every time. I probably don't need so many, but I am comforted hearing your heartbeat. That strong tha-thump that tells me soon I won't be alone anymore.
I visit my parents when I can, but it's scarier and scarier getting places. Too many people around that look at me like prey. I'm so desperate for human connection, but there are so many humans I don't think are safe to connect with. The nurses at the home want nothing to do with me, they're too busy and tired. My parents act like nothing is wrong in the world. They'll still be dead before everyone else and they've made peace with that.
But there's no comfort for me. I'm on the list for a midwife because doctors are so busy these days. I haven't met her yet but I hope I can soon. It seems silly to have a birth plan in a time where plans are useless. There's no plan. Everyone is just doing what they want to do.
Meat makes me nauseous. All I've been able to eat is fruit and yogurt, bread if I can find it. Which is good because there doesn't seem to be any meat anywhere. People are going crazy, buying up all the pickled sausages and canned ham. I'm gagging just thinking about the smell.
What I crave the most is white cranberry juice. I don't know why. I can't remember the last time I had it. But my tongue wants that sweet tang, that burst of bitter fruit. I suppose it's you that wants it, Little Love. I want to get it for you. I check every store I go to. I guess the factories just aren't shipping it anymore.
Three months. I've figured out how to bake flatbread. Flat because there's no yeast to be found anywhere. I have a good stockpile of flour from rummaging around empty apartments in the building. I've been trying to make a sourdough starter, so I don't need yeast, but it's harder than it sounds. And the attempts smell so bad to my pregnant nose that I near vomit in the jar every time I open it.
There's noise outside all the time, now. Sometimes sirens, sometimes car horns, sometimes hoots and hollers but always noise. So many shops downtown are busted open, closed due to the end of the world and now broken irrevocably.
I stand in my bedroom, rubbing my belly. Trying to provide comfort to the baby who I hope will comfort me one day. That day is coming soon. The midwife still hasn't contacted me. If worse comes to worse, I'll have to walk to the hospital and demand to have the baby in the emergency room.
It's not what I ever envisioned. None of this is. I wanted to have a team of doctors, Bruce holding my hand, soft music and lighting and essential oils to relax me. Little Love would come into the world squalling for me and I'd nurse her while Bruce cuddled me and told me what a good job I did. How much he loves me. How much he loves her.
Why couldn't the world start to end just a little bit later? It wouldn't be so hard to swallow if I'd at least been able to have the birth I'd always imagined for us. And maybe Bruce wouldn't have been able to walk away from his baby if he'd met her first.
It's different for us. You're a part of me. We already have this bond. It's not like it is in the movies for fathers. They don't immediately drop to their knees and kiss their wife's belly and cry with joy and rub her feet and treat her like a beautiful precious vessel for their beautiful precious child.
I guess that doesn't happen when the husband doesn't want the baby in the first place. This beautiful precious vessel was a reminder to him of the life he didn't want.
My stomach churns and my jaw clenched, and I draw a deep, ragged breath through my nose. No anger. I don't want to be angry. I don't want my hatred of Bruce and what he's done to me to stress you out, Little Love. I don't know if you can feel my emotions, if the physical manifestation of my anger or happiness affects you... but I don't want to give you anything negative. I don't want to give you my fear or anxiety. I want to give you happiness, sweetness, love... hope.
I want to give you everything because I can't give you anything.
Four months. So close now. I'm sore and fat and tired and I just want to meet you, Little Love. My ankles are swollen and I have to piss every five minutes and I still can't find a midwife and I'm constantly sweaty and every second of this pregnancy is a gift because you're safe in there. You're safe and warm and not out in this dangerous world.
You're not learning to walk and talk and hear about how we only have years to live. You're not old enough to ask questions about why the world is ending. You're not a young teen doing mental math and figuring out that I chose to have you knowing your fate. You're not a fifteen year old, scared of dying and hating me for doing this to you.
No, you're safer in there, but you don't know that, and you want to come out. My body has been cramping all day, tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing, and it doesn't hurt too bad, so those can't be contractions, right? I don't have anyone, I don't have anywhere, nobody is here to deliver this baby and I should have walked to the hospital sooner but I'm not ready for you to be out in the world. How am I supposed to take care of you?
I don't know how long it is before it starts to hurt. Like a bad period cramp. My lower belly is hard as a rock and I hiss through the pain.
I need to go. It's time to go. I can't do this. I have to do this but I can't do this. The hospital is a half hour walk, and that never seemed so far. now, I'm dreading even making it outside.
I stagger to the door, pausing to breathe through a contraction. That's what I'm supposed to do, right? There are no birth classes anymore. I watched videos online, looked up so many things online. So many complications that can happen with a birth, so many horror stories, I need to get you out of me safely, Little Love.
Thoughts of screaming pain and episiotomies and hemorraging and strangling umbilical cords swirl in my brain as I stagger into the elevator, punching the button for the main floor.
I should be timing the contractions. They'll ask at the hospital. But all of my careful research, careful planning has gone out the window, and I've forgotten my phone. I don't have a watch, who has a watch anymore? I can't go back in there, I can only move forward, I'll just count, I'll just count and it'll give me something to focus on.
Why haven't the doors closed yet? Still gripping my belly, I look up, quivering.
The man from down the hall is there, his hand wrapped around the door to keep it from closing. "Are you okay?" he asks, and my blood runs cold at his tone. He smiles, but it doesn't reach his bloodshot eyes.
I shrink away from him. "I'm fine, thanks," I grind out. I'm not fine. I am far from fine. I should have taken the stairs.
"Are you in labour?" he asks, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips.
Of course I'm fucking in labour! I want to scream at him but alarm bells ring loudly in my head and I don't know how to navigate this. I don't know what to do.
"Are you going to the hospital? I can drive you." His tone is level, even kind, but his eyes are round and excited and my breath catches in my throat. "Come back to my place so I can grab my keys."
"Thanks." I force my voice to stay steady, appreciative. My customer service voice. My call center voice. "I'll wait here for you."
"No no, you don't want to have to stand here while I rummage," he says, and his smile looks sinister now, like something out of a comic book, as he reaches for my hand.
"I'm really having trouble moving around, it's okay, I'll just wait here," I babble, and call centre Blair is gone, all that's left is panic, my voice high pitched and strained.
His hand clamps down on my wrist, prying it away from my belly, and I scream at the contact and my abs seizing, the contraction is so bad, it's so bad and all there is is pain and he's dragging me down the hallway now, what the fuck oh god—
My pants are soaked all of a sudden, did I just piss myself in fear? What the hell is happening to me? Oh my god we're almost at his door...
"Your water broke," he says, and it sounds hungry, like he's salivating, and now his arms are around me and my struggles are nothing how the fuck is he so strong?!
The contraction finally eases—thank you, Little Love—and I find strength from somewhere, flailing my limbs. I've never been in a fight before, I don't even know how to throw a proper punch, but I know enough to aim for the balls.
At his grunt, I know I've connected with something useful, but he still has a death grip on me.
"Bitch," he spits, and I recoil at the rage in his eyes. His lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl. "I haven't had meat in three fucking months."
Confusion momentarily stuns me, long enough for him to pin me against his apartment door, and then realization washes over me in a wave. I can't... ohmygod. Meat.
Meat meat meat.
Another contraction grips me and a scream tears its way out of my throat, drowned out by the intense buzzing in my ears. Meat.
All we are is meat.
He manages to get the door open and something inside me snaps—this is it. I've been so worried about the end of the world when the real danger is right here, right now, being hacked to pieces by a deranged cannibal.
I shove against him as hard as I can, contraction be damned, and there's shock on his face as he slams into a side table. He flips onto his back and I don't think, I just grab wildly, my fingers finding the drawer handle from the table. I bring it down hard onto his face. I swing again and again, and the buzzing in my ears is back, the pain in my uterus is back, the squish of my wet pants as I move is back, and then all is silent and still and I realize the drawer in my hand is broken and everything is red and the man is dead and the man has no head.
My stomach doesn't even have time to heave before I retch, the drawer hitting the linoleum with a clatter as I bend over, stomach acid burning my mouth. I sputter and turn my head to avoid looking at the mess I've made—the man I killed, I killed a man—and the stomach acid is back, because the dining room table has straps on it. Straps for wrists and ankles and a fucking meat cleaver sticking out of the wood.
My uterus seizes and I stagger back into the hallway. It feels like my belly is trying to tear the rest of my muscles from my bones, Little Love, my sweet Little Love, I need to get us to a hospital. You need to hold on.
Mommy's got you.
***
Note: Don't forget to go and add Jyvur_Entropy's book to your library if you want to read a companion novel set in this same world!