by Jaden Wilkes
“I don’t feel movement,” the doctor said and she looked up at him. She caught the expressions on the faces of his staff and knew the baby must be dead. “He’s frank, one leg down the canal, the other tucked up inside. I am going to force the leg back in and attempt delivery.”
The situation seemed grim, judging by the faces on his staff.
“He’s fine,” Boian said out loud to nobody in particular, “he’s a fighter, like his mother and his father.”
He smiled at her and squeezed her hand, but she watched the doctor and his staff. They weren’t so certain.
“I’m sure everything will be just fine, my dear,” an older nurse told her and moved to her side. She rubbed Ioana’s thigh and added, “You just push when the doctor tells you, okay?”
Ioana nodded and waited. The doctor applied a horrible pressure inside of her and she yelped. He was sweating with the effort.
“Do we deliver the fetus whole?” another doctor asked. This one was young and looked fresh faced and eager at the thought of dragging a dead baby into the world.
“We might have to amputate if I’m unsuccessful,” the doctor said. Ioana’s stomach clenched at the thought. Did he mean cut her baby apart? Was it already dead? When did it die?
Her mind raced, trying to remember the last time she’d felt the baby move. It had been hours. Panic was starting to set in and her tears flowed faster.
“He’ll be okay,” Boian said, “I promise.”
How could he promise such a thing, she thought, he wasn’t God, he couldn’t decide something like this.
She resigned herself to the inevitable stillbirth and let herself grieve.
She felt a shove and a popping sensation deep inside of her and the doctor exclaimed, “Got it!”
He pulled his hand out and told the younger doctor, “Get the forceps, we have to deliver now, or she’ll go into shock.”
She felt her legs pulled farther apart and lifted in stirrups. She couldn’t have fought back even if she’d wanted to. She had nothing left.
She looked up at Boian and saw tears in his eyes. He noticed her and did his best to smile. “It’s not over yet,” he said and squeezed her hand again. He looked back down at the doctor working on the delivery. His tears flowed steady now; he apparently no longer cared who knew. She felt a strange bond with him through this.
Just when you think life is the worst it will ever get, something happens that knocks you down and leaves you breathless.
This was their moment, the worst they would ever live through, she was sure of it.
She felt her body prepare for another contraction and the doctor looked up, offered her a grim smile, and said, “When it hits, I want you to push. This baby is coming out now.”
She nodded and gritted her teeth when it washed over her. She felt lightheaded from the effort and grunted like an animal as she felt the forceps sliding against her vaginal walls. Her vision started to blur, and she saw flares of light along the edges. She thought she saw the angel again, amongst the flashes in the corner of her eye.
The angel coming to take her baby. Take him home.
She started to sob, unable to control herself. She lost all sense of purpose and wanted to give up, to stop pushing. What was the point? Her baby had died; she was delivering a corpse ready for a casket, not a crib.
Her breasts ached, full of milk for the baby who would never suckle.
“Please,” Boian said in her ear, “you’re almost there. You can do this, beautiful girl, you can do this.”
“It hurts,” she said, finding her voice. She was no longer concerned about attracting the angel; it had already followed her. “It hurts so much.”
“It will be over soon,” he said, “when this is finished, we can find us a house. We have the money now; we can move somewhere and be happy. Okay? I know you’ve wanted a place of our own. Now we can have one.”
“It will be so empty,” she said and looked down. The doctor stood up, braced himself and dragged her baby from her womb.
“Nurse,” he yelled, they clipped the umbilical chord and set the baby on a small table. The team gathered around and Ioana couldn’t tell what was happening.
“Can you see what’s going on?” she asked Boian. He stood and walked a little closer, watched them and turned back. He shook his head and looked gutted. He came back to her and they cried together as the doctor announced the death.
She felt Boian’s tears on her face as they joined with her own. She saw a light flare up behind him and imagined her baby’s soul was exiting, taken away on the wings of the angel she had seen.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I should have never left you.”
“I should have swallowed my pride a week ago and taken the money. You never would have been in this situation.”
They paused in the midst of the horror and held each other, forgave each other and silently pledged their intent to grow from this, together instead of apart.
“Would you like to hold him?” the older nurse asked. She handed Ioana a bundle wrapped tightly in a little blue blanket. “Sometimes it helps…”
Ioana took him carefully, as if he could break. His little face was perfect, but his lips were blue. Boian choked down his tears and touched their son’s cheek.
She said, “You were right, it’s a boy.”
She heard him choke back a sob, a dry sound full of hopelessness and longing. She loved him more for it.
Ioana’s breasts strained with milk and she wanted to touch him, feel her baby on her skin. Instinct took over and she unwrapped him from the blanket, his little body was still covered with a fine white coating from his birth. His skin was cold to the touch. It felt unnatural to keep him exposed, so she opened her hospital gown and laid him on her chest, skin on skin.
She closed her eyes and the staff cleaned up, fussed around and the doctors finally left. She didn’t care what they thought; she just wanted to hold her little boy for the last time.
Boian held her hand through it all, through her goodbyes and her broken dreams. He was lost in his own internal world, this they could not share, but must suffer on their own.
Later they could talk about it, but for now it seemed sacrilege to say a word.
She cursed everything that had lead to this point, and promised herself she would seek revenge on those who had wronged them. Those who had used her body and crushed her spirit. She would make them pay, if she ever healed from this broken heart, she would find them all.
Boian started singing in a low, melodic voice, a Romanian lullaby. His mother used to sing it to him; he had shared that with her one night a couple weeks ago while washed in the wonder of his baby kicking in her belly.
She heard another tiny sound, like air being drawn through a straw.
Boian stopped singing, squeezed her hand tighter than before and simply breathed out a single word. “Ioana.”
She opened her eyes and saw her baby move. The smallest motion, just a flick of his finger, but he moved.
“Nurse,” he cried out. “Doctor! Somebody!”
She sat up and Boian helped her move their son to her arms, his little body still pressed against hers. She had thought he was warmer from her own heat, but now understood he was keeping himself alive.
Could it be? Dare she allow herself to hope?
The older nurse who had rubbed her thigh and assured her it would be all right came rushing through the door.
“Is she–?” she started to ask, thinking something was wrong with Ioana, but her question was cut short by the baby’s movement.
He turned his head towards Ioana’s breast, seeking the nipple. She cried then, tears of joy and disbelief. Boian kept repeating, “Oh my god,” over and over again.
“I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said and ran from the room.
The baby’s little face screwed up and his mouth worked against her nipple. She pinched her fingers together to flatten it out and let him latch on.
It was a tickle, a
flutter of butterfly wings against her skin, but her baby sucked and her milk started to flow.
It was as though a great dam had become unblocked, her sorrow and anger flowed from her as her milk let down. She could have screamed in joy at that moment, but was too conscious of the delicate little being at her breast.
“He’s so beautiful,” Boian said and touched his face again. “What shall we name him?”
“I was thinking Sorin, it means the sun,” she replied, remembering the flashes of light she’d seen all along. Mistaken them for an angel of death, when in fact they’d been the arrival of her little boy.
“It’s perfect,” Boian said and leaned to kiss his son.
The doctor came in, red-faced and flushed. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “we didn’t know…we thought him dead.” He came to them, mother and child, and said, “He looks healthy, but we still need to examine him.”
Ioana pulled her nipple from Sorin’s mouth to hand him to the doctor.
His face twisted and his little hands balled into fists and he bellowed with all the might of any newborn baby denied his meal.
It was the most joyous sound Ioana had heard in all her days.
The sound of new life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
DIMITRI
Dimitri groaned and drew himself together, every cell in his body worked against him, but he forced himself to act. He let Columbia pull away, slide her mouth off his cock and leave him coiled with tension.
He was desperate for release¸ to finish. He was mad with desire for his little dove and would fall on his knees and beg for her cunt if he thought it might work.
He knew it wouldn’t, he knew something was wrong and it went deeper than he could settle with a good, hard fuck. This was something he couldn’t heal, but he wished she would share it with him so he could make it all feel better.
He was useless though, helpless and horny and gritting his teeth as he sat on the bed next to her. He let her cry; let her get it out. He touched her and offered her empty platitudes, but it was all he could do.
He couldn’t fuck his girl while she cried. He had somewhere along the line developed a heart, and wanted to heal her, not harm her.
He kissed her head and let her calm down, let her tears dry while he nuzzled her neck and held her in his arms.
Then she told him and the world dropped out from underneath him.
She’d been pregnant and hadn’t let him know. She’d been pregnant in Vienna and had lost her baby. Their baby. His baby.
He had no words left. No kindness, no gentle soothing tones, he was, quite suddenly, cut down at the knees.
He tried to hide his reaction from her, to keep holding her and not let her see his face, but she immediately knew something was wrong. She was too intuitive.
“Do you hate me?” she asked. Her face was misery, her nose was red and her eyes swollen, but the worst was the look she gave him. She hated herself for this; she blamed herself.
He wanted to say something, he wanted to let her know it would all be okay, but he couldn’t speak.
He was so full of hot, red rage that he couldn’t function, couldn’t give her what she so desperately needed.
He’d failed her, and he’d failed her baby. Their baby.
He’d let her go, let Mace spirit her away from right under his nose. And Mace had destroyed her, broken her body and left her shattered.
Until that moment he hadn’t known how broken she was, how much she’d been carrying around with her.
He would do anything in his power to kill Mace twice, really draw it out the second time. Carve him up for stealing their future, ruining their family before they had a chance to have one.
His tongue wasn’t working, words choked in his throat, unspoken.
He had to say something; she was blaming herself. She thought it was her fault, when in reality Dimitri was the one who’d let her down.
He gathered his strength and said, “I am sorry. For letting you go, for losing you. I’m sorry you had to go through this on your own, alone in that cell–” His voice choked off, grief squeezing his throat shut.
She’d been alone in the dark when she’d lost their baby. God, if he could go back he would. He should have known something was up before they went to Vienna. She had been sick, unable to hold much food down. She’d been exhausted, losing weight and…glowing. It sounded so cliché, but she really had been.
“I couldn’t keep it alive,” she said. Her voice quavered when she spoke. “They beat me, I think that’s what did it. I should have told you, you never would have let me go to Vienna. I just wanted to get Sergei’s successor so damn bad.”
She was right. He never would have let her put herself into danger if he’d known she was pregnant. He didn’t want to add salt to the wound, so he said, “You did get him, right? You saved a lot of people. I should have saved you, I should have been there.”
“But you weren’t, there was nothing you could do.”
“There was nothing you could do either, little dove. This is nobody’s fault except the man I slaughtered on the helicopter. If I could, I would butcher him again and again for this atrocity.”
“I never knew I could get pregnant,” she said, “I truly thought I wasn’t fertile.”
He knew what she meant, why she never imagined herself as a mother. He didn’t want to bring it up, to add to this painful situation. “Obviously we work pretty well together,” he said and smiled. He lifted her face to him, to look at him when he added, “All I know is that I love you, and you did nothing wrong. If we’re meant to have a child, it will happen. Otherwise we’ll have fun practicing.”
She smiled, and everything felt realigned. He could see it in her eyes; this horrific experience had worked to bring them together somehow, made their bond stronger. She frowned and said, “Don’t you think it’s irresponsible for us to have a baby? We aren’t exactly…safe.”
“I think you would make an amazing mother,” he replied, “and I would probably be an okay father. We would do our best to keep the wolves at bay. No baby is born into a perfect situation, and we’re miles ahead of most.”
“There is so much shit in the world,” she said and dropped her eyes again. Her voice sounded defeated and Dimitri’s heart broke to hear it. “What’s the point, you know? What happens if somebody finds us, or kidnaps our child, or they turn out evil because we’re so fucked up?”
“What if our child is beautiful like her mother, and kind and brilliant? What if our child is the one who unites the world and brings an end to war and destruction?” he countered. “There is also so much good in the world, little dove. So much good. Before I met you I would not have agreed. I know what it’s like to wear the dark cloak of despair. To not feel the warmth of the sun on your skin even though you can see it shining. I know how it is to only see rot and decay.” He slid down off the bed, onto his knees in front of her. “But now I know how to see the good, the beauty in the ruin. I see this, because I see you. Let me take care of you, tell me what you need to feel better and I’ll do it. Please,” he said. He knew he really was begging her to open up, but he didn’t care. He would do anything for her, say anything, be anything.
She smiled and looked down at him. She ran her hand over his freshly shaved head, playing with the stubble as she loved to do. “I’ll be okay,” she said, “I think the worst part’s over. I was so scared you wouldn’t want me after you found out. I love you for your forgiveness, and I can see the light through the darkness now, because of your love.”
She pulled at him and brought him up towards her. She fell back on the bed and dragged him with her, his body pressing her into the soft mattress. “I need this now, Dimi,” she said and laughed. “I need you to fuck me, to make me feel like everything will be all right again. I need to…feel.”
He kissed her and ran his hands down her body, feeling each new curve and bump. Her ribs would never heal properly; she’d always have the up thrust of badly healed bone. He
moved his lips down and kissed her there, as if he could offer a healing succor through his love, his touch.
He moved lower and massaged her body as he went. He kissed her abdomen, the belly that lay flat but would have swelled with his child had she not lost it. It was surreal, almost magical to think that their love and lust had produced a little being that had existed inside her for a short time.
He felt a surge of paternal protection, and once again wished he could torture Mace again for taking it from them.
He moved lower, traced the curve of her leg to her foot, held it up and kissed the spot that had been infected. Nothing was left except for a small pucker of skin and a bump where the metatarsal hadn’t fused smoothly.
She was lying on her back with her head up, watching him. She smiled again and said, “I love you Dimi. You were the only reason I didn’t fall down and die in the cell. You were the reason I made it through. I’ve been through hell and back, but only found my way out because you were waiting for me on the other side.”
She let her head fall back and sighed as he kissed his way to her cunt, found her soft cleft and stabbed his tongue inside.
Her clit was swollen and waiting, his cock was hard in response to her opening up to him.
She tasted sweeter, as though her sorrow had flavoured her with experience, not bitter but strong. He ran his tongue along her slit, found her clit and worked it over, sucking and nibbling it.
She moved her hand to his head and hung on as she bucked against his face. She called out his name, “Dimitri,” in such a breathless, joyous voice that he felt it in some deep, primal place inside.
She was his woman, and he would take care of her until his last breath. She was his family, children or not, she was it for him.
She cried out and came, a hard shudder shook her body and she almost hurt him with her hands on his head. He kept at her clit, tackling it until she was whimpering and weak from orgasmic aftershocks.
He loved her, this much he knew, if everything else in the world turned out to be a lie, he knew this simple truth.