The contraction hit so hard it felt like it split the world in two.
Just a second earlier, Chloe had been gripping the plastic side rails of the hospital bed, her knuckles white, her hair plastered to the back of her neck, trying to obey the nurse’s firm voice.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Don’t fight the wave.
Let it pass.
Then the wave became a wall.
Her back arched, her fingers slid across the smooth plastic, and her cry filled the delivery room at Hartford Memorial.
The fluorescent lights on the ceiling were too bright.
The smell of antiseptic made her nauseous.
The steady beeps of the baby’s heart monitor felt like a countdown she didn’t understand.
“Breathe, Chloe.
Slowly.
There.
One more time.”
“
The nurse, Linda Kowalski, held her shoulder.
She had a voice that seemed capable of holding someone back from the edge of an abyss.
For hours, Chloe had clung to that voice because she had no one else.
No husband.
No mother in the room.
No familiar hand to hold.
Only a competent nurse, a baby pushing toward the world, and a secret that had grown inside her heart for nine months.
“The doctor is coming,” someone announced near the door.
Chloe closed her eyes.
She just wanted it to be over.
She wanted to hear her baby cry.
She wanted to survive this pain, this night, this loneliness she had chosen because the other option seemed even more humiliating.
