Page 89 of A Seed Of Peril

My breaths came in shorter, faster bursts. My anxiety rose. Looking around at nothing in particular, I felt between my legs—wet there, too. It wasn’t urine. I didn’t wet the bed. My heart raced.

No… Not yet. It wasn’t time yet. Dominic wasn’t here. It. Wasn’t. Time.

“Shit,” I whispered, on the verge of tears, shaking. I dared to push myself off the bed and onto my feet, grabbing hold of the nightstand in desperation when my legs almost gave out from the debilitating back pain. My eyes widened as fluid leaked down my legs. The wet spot I’d left behind was clear on the mattress.

A silent cry left me when a burst of pain possessed my lower back, sliding into my tailbone and teasing down into my ass and thighs. The knives. Stabbing and stabbing. Blowing out another big breath, I held onto the nightstand and wall for support on my way to the bathroom. Luckily, it was next to our bed. But when the pain wrapped around my sides and lower belly, I stopped in my tracks.

Rethinking a trip to the bathroom, I carefully turned around, grateful for a moment of relief when the pain eased. I hurried as fast as I could, hunched over, to our couch and put on the nightshirt I wore before I stripped of it for a nap. No sooner did I pull the shirt over my belly did the pain strike again, nearly bringing me to my knees. It was as if tiny hands viciously tugged and yanked on my ligaments, wanting to rip them apart. An intense cramp spread throughout my belly, nothing like any of those Braxton Hicks contractions.

This couldn’t be it, could it?

Mindlessly, I moved over more toward the side of the couch, held its armrest, and rocked and swayed in a weird dance. Softly moaning through it, the pain intensified, bringing me on the verge of tears again. “Oh, God, this is it,” I whimpered. I thanked God when the pain waned, again taking advantage of it and hurrying to the door.

I reached the door, panicking more when I felt more liquid drip down between my legs. The moment I opened the door and my foot touched the threshold, I leaned against the doorframe, my hand on my mouth as I stifled a loud cry. Unable to tolerate the new sensation of burning and stabbing pain, I went weak in the knees and sank to the floor. Pressure spread around back into my rectum, like I had been constipated for days and my body decided to finally let it go. The pressure built as did what I admitted to myself was indeed another contraction. It felt as if a steel band wrapped around my belly and squeezed, bringing the stabbing sensation up toward my belly.

Crawling hurt. Moving hurt. My entire body screamed with each movement, each breath. A little bit of nausea bubbled within my gut. Waves of agony rolled through me alongside the grueling charley horses. For a moment I knew the suffering a piece of fruit endured when it was crushed under a juicer. “Oh, my God,” I quietly moaned, squeezing out tears.

Just when I thought the contraction seemed to relax, a new one hit on top of that. I did my damnedest to breathe, but it was a challenge. The urge to scream was almost as bad as the new urge to bear down. Someone might as well have been stepping on my insides with a steel boot. The baby threatened to pop out of me right here, right now. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t talk. All I did was whimper and silently pray for an endpoint. A finish line. And as if God Himself stood in front of me with his arms out, commotion came from somewhere down the hall. It sounded like the voices of my family. Bianca’s voice edged out above the rest.

My body temperature rose. Sweat beaded the lining of my forehead. I crawled toward the noise, but pain won again. The peak of the contraction glued my hands and knees to the floor. I tried to breathe like I read about, but it was useless.Oh, my God… What’s happening to me? Someone please help me… Please.

Feet away from the end of the hall, I bit my bottom lip and barreled on through the agony. My back pain was at its worst with the height of each contraction, like it was crushing my vertebrae. Seconds away from being able to find the power to cry out for help, yet another contraction started to form before the previous one barely began to ease. More liquid gushed from between my legs. My body burned hotter, and I physically began to shake, almost losing my balance. Like an iron fist that had been simmering in a sea of flames, it punched through my insides amid waves of ever-increasing abdominal charley horses. A burning sensation whipped around from my lower back to my front in a sick-to-my-stomach sort of way. Its peak came on so intensely and so rapidly, it knocked the air from my lungs. The tense combination of crushing and burning won out, and I laid on the floor, curling into myself.

“Help me!”

Every muscle and fiber of my being tensed. I was scared my spine was actually ripping apart one vertebra at a time. The heat in my back flared and cascaded throughout my body. “Help me, please!”

“Lilith!?” Bianca’s voice was heaven sent through the rush of footsteps that came my way. I curled my knees toward me with every bit of my strength, and out of nowhere, I began rocking on the floor. Beads of sweat start to roll, even in places I never thought possible. My soft, almost silent cries turned into loud, teary moans.

“Oh, my God,” Bianca said, immediately kneeling next to me. She wanted to hold me, but I was too heavy and too tense for her to lift.

Whimpers, little grunts, and erratic breaths were all I could manage. Tears fell in a never-ending stream. When I thought one contraction was ready to end, another one piled on top of it. It just kept circling in a monstrous, unrelenting cycle. Somewhere in its midst, I wondered if this was some kind of punishment from God. Every nerve ending, every fiber, and every tissue felt as if it were being struck with a taser of the highest voltage known to man. The pain spread so harshly and so quickly it was hard to breathe. Invisible elephants stepped on my lower back and stomach.

“Oh, fuck,” Dino said. “Get Katrina outta here.” More voices shouted and hollered for the man I needed most. Katrina’s frantic, worried voice reached my ears as someone urged her away from the scene. “Dom!” Dino shouted at the top of his lungs.

Pressure in my pelvis and rectum built to an all-time high. The urge to pee and push increased. A hot flash rode through me with the contractions.

“Is it time?” Bianca asked, her mouth to my ear. Her touch and soothing shushes made things a little easier, but all I wanted was one person. The only person who could help me survive this misery.

“I want Dominic,” I sobbed. My voice quivered like the rest of me.

“He’s coming,” she reassured in a soft tone. She maintained her warm embrace as I shook and fought to control my breathing. My urges to push.

It was getting harder to breathe. I wondered if Vincenzo was literally tearing me apart. He kicked, and in turn, ramped up the pain. With each tightening and squeezing of my uterus, it also wrapped a tight, hot band around my back and encompassed me in a sensation of my bones and muscles being crushed under the sudden implosions.

“Lilith!?” Dominic hollered, his voice gruff and riddled with worry like everyone else’s. His pounding footsteps drew closer. Momentarily lost in happiness to hear his voice, knowing he was coming to my rescue, a big gush of lukewarm liquid gushed out from between my legs. Bianca let me go and scooted back enough to see whatever aftermath that left. The urge to push grew tenfold. The way the contractions had no end point, just piled one on top of the other, was almost rhythmic. With their peaks, I think I felt my cervix literally open and pull back.

Dominic took his mother’s place beside me and lifted me up into his arms. I cried out and groaned, taken hostage by the crippling pain. Every movement or breath was a task in itself. I couldn’t get myself to breathe during the contractions—just cry, moan, and wail. Breathing alone shot even more unimaginable, excruciating pain to my uterus. Sometimes, it got to a level where I hoped I would pass out to give me a break from it all. Finding his tie, I grabbed it and yanked so hard, it jerked his body close. We were face to face. His blue eyes were inscrutable, though I thought I saw a hint of his own kind of agony in them.

“He’s c-coming,” I gasped between breaths. “Vincenzo’s coming.”

Dominic’s eyes widened with panic. Pain gripped and shot down my legs, and it felt warmer the stronger the contractions got. Vincenzo descended further down my pelvis.

When I thought the pain couldn’t get any worse, the contractions seemed to be double on top of another. I wanted to die. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to just give up. I shook and sobbed violently in Dominic’s arms. After reading so much and doing research, it became aware to me what phase and stage I was now in and that I needed to let my body go and surrender to what was happening, but I was afraid if I did, I’d let go too much and cross over to the other side.

“Someone call in some nurses now!” Dominic ordered. His voice carried off somewhere else.

A loud, croaky groan escaped me when Dominic adjusted me in his arms.

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