Page 78 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Levi balls up the soiled towel and removes it from sight.
The hive murmurs,You’re so close you’re so close.
“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Tammy says. “Every midwife and labor nurse has seen more puke and shit than you’d ever imagine.” Stagger hums, rubs Crane’s back, refuses to leave his side. “When you’re pushing, damn near everything comes out. It’s how you know you’re doing it right.”
Crane tastes bitter juices down the back of his throat. He wants to grab Levi by the face and crack open his jaw and spit it all down Levi’s tongue so he has to taste it too.
Push.
Scrambling. Levi is saying something. “Hey,” Tammy says, “hey. Careful.” She’s touching him. “The head is about to come out. It’s right there. It’s gonna start burning, you hear me? Ease up, don’t hurt yourself.” Crane can’t hear her until she grabs him by the hair. “If you push, there’s a chance you’re gonna tear. You hear me? Just take it easy. Let it happen.”
Okay. He stops pushing. Not pushing is the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life. He times his breaths to Stagger’s. He almost vomits again, but there’s nothing left to come up, just a gross dry heave.
“Almost here,” Levi tells the hive.
Almost here.
He’s right. Crane repeats it over and over. It’s almost over. Almost almost almost.
He finally reaches down and, oh, just like Tammy said. There’s the head. Wisps of hair, wet mucus, too-soft butterfly skin. It’s bulging out of him. Liquid trickles over the head and drips all over his thighs and the blankets.
He wants to push. He’s so close.
Oh our child, you’re so close, we see our little one.
Fuck it,fuck it, who gives a fuck anymore, he doesn’t care if he tears, who gives ashit.
He bears down.
The head comes free, and then Tammy’s taking hold of a tiny pair of shoulders and pulling, and it’s like she’s wrenched everything out of him at once. All the water and baby that had been inside him isoutsidein a gush and it’s over.
It’s over.
The baby makes a gurgling noise. Tammy passes it into Crane’s arms. It’s burning hot. It smears insides and phlegm across his bare chest.
“What is it?” Levi demands.
“Hold on,” Tammy says, leaning in.
“What is it?”
It’s so small. The choking cry turns to a wail.
Tammy says, “A girl.”
Thirty-Three
Adaughter,the hive cries,a daughter, how beautiful, how perfect.
The baby—Crane’s baby—is the color of a bruise and scrunched like balled-up paper. She’s smeared with waxy pith and blood. Her head is a strange shape and her patchy dark hair is plastered to her flat, ugly face. Her crying isn’t even real crying. It’s a desperate croaking noise as her lungs expel amniotic fluid and fill with real, true air for the first time.
It has to hurt. It has to be so strange and so cold out here, outside her father’s body.
Crane’s next breath comes out as a shudder. He collapses, falls against Stagger’s chest. On instinct, somehow, he cradles the back of her head, supports the weak chicken-neck tendons as if he knows she’ll break if he doesn’t. She’s so soft too. So much sturdier than the twenty-week creature in that grocery bag. A twisting blue cord protrudes from her belly and leads right back between his legs.
She croaks again. Wails. Nuzzles her tiny face against Crane’s bare chest.
She is so so so small.
