Page 85 of Chasing Never
“He can’t be ready,” I insist, gritting my teeth to bear through the pain, though it doesn’t seem to help all that much.
“The way your body carries is quite unique,” she says. “I’ve only seen it a handful of times.”
I don’t even have the energy to ask her what she means, the pain climaxing again as I dig my fingers into the sheet—the only thing between me and the ground—crumpling it up in my fist.
“You’re hardly showing,” she says. “Your child—he’s sitting so high up between your ribs. I suppose he doesn’t want to make himself known. Though from what you told Kendra, I can understand why he might wish to hide.”
It takes me longer than it should to process her words, to determine her meaning. I grapple to make sense of them, but I am doing well to cling to consciousness.
The only thing I can think is,it’s too early, it’s too early, it’s too early.
“Please, you have to help me,” I say. “Surely there’s some way you can slow it down. I can’t have this baby yet. He’s too small. He won’t live.”
“Listen to me,” Malia says, her voice going soft this time. “The child is ready. He’s grown. He’s ready for this world.”
“No, he’s not. You said yourself, only a few weeks ago, that I could at most be at four months long.”
Malia says nothing. She just watches me.
“You said—” But I trail off. “You lied,” I say, the realization washing over me. “Why would you lie?”
“You said it yourself: you’ve made a bargain. That you are compelled to give the child up,” she says. “I know that there’s a part of you who wants to believe that as a mother, you’ll be able to resist. That you won’t sabotage our plans. But trust me, everyone under a bargain makes decisions they never thought themselves capable of. It was better for you not to know how far along you were. Otherwise, you might have found a way to sabotage us. To weasel your way out of the plan you and your husband had made.”
I close my eyes, unable to argue with this logic, after what I went through under Peter’s bargain, under the Nomad’s bargain.
Even so.
“I can’t be that far along,” I say. “That’s the part I can’t wrap my mind around. I’m not even showing.”
“There are a few of you out there like that,” she says, patiently repeating herself from earlier. “A few who even go into labor without ever having realized they have fallen pregnant.”
“That doesn’t seem possible.”
“It doesn’t seem possible to them either. Not until well after it’s happened,” she says.
“And you’re sure?” I ask, plead. “You’re sure he’s ready?”
Malia nods her head, but says, “I can feel again, if you’d like.”
Tears stream down my face as I writhe on the makeshift cot. But I know it all the same.
The Seer places her hand on my belly and closes her eyes. “He’s turned. He’s head down. He wasn’t only a few weeks ago, but he’s flipped for you.”
“How could I not have felt that?” I ask. “How can I not feel him?”
“Your afterbirth is in the way. It’s in the front instead of the back,” she says casually, as if that’s supposed to make any sense to me.
“Is Nolan coming?” I say, my husband’s name coming out like a whimper.
“That’s not part of the plan,” she says.
“Not part of the plan?” My vision blurs at the edges.
I’m about to give birth to my son without my husband.
No.
As the next surge ramps up, as my body prepares for the agonizing pain, something snaps within me.
