Five hours.
A day.
Time had lost all meaning.
Between contractions, I raised my head off the padded chair and saw Luther standing between my legs with a knife, cutting away my pants.
“Am I close?” I gasped. I didn’t want him anywhere near me, but I was faced with the horrible realization that I needed him.
I felt his fingers inside of me.
“Your water broke,” he said, holding up his hands, his latex gloves glistening with amniotic fluid.
“Am I close?” I asked again.
He squatted down, this bastard staring between my legs, and I didn’t even care.
Just wanted this baby out of my body.
It was such a burning need, it shut out everything else.
“You’re close,” he said, “so when the next one comes?”
“Yes?”
“Push with everything you’ve got.”
• • •
It came.
I screamed.
I pushed and I pushed and I pushed and I pushed.
Nothing happened.
• • •
“You gotta give me another hard push.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Imagined it was Phin in here with me.
Phin holding my hand, instead of me clenching my fist.
I pushed with all I had.
“One more, Jack! I can see the head!”
• • •
IpushedandIpushedandIpushedandIpushedandIpushed-andIpushedandIpushedandIpushedandIpushedandIpushed-andIpushedandIpushedandIpushedandIpushedand—
• • •
“Come on, Jack, don’t you quit on me. You’re almost there!”
Almost there.
Almost there.
How many times had he said that?
Was he doing something to me? Something that kept the baby from coming out?
• • •
I gathered up every last molecule of air I could force into my lungs and pushed. Pushed like my life depended upon it, because it did. I couldn’t take another contraction. I had reached the end of my endurance. I would lie there and die after this.
And then it came—the ring of fire.
So perfectly named.
Ten seconds of agonizing, world-ending pain, Luther shouting, “She’s crowning! She’s crowning!” and then—
Release.
The sound of a baby crying.
I raised my head, and I stared down at Luther, holding in his arms a purple, squirming thing covered in white paste.
It looked hideous—
—and absolutely beautiful.
My baby.
Mine.
“Give her to me,” I gasped.
He released my wrist restraints, said, “Open your jacket.”
My fingers trembled as I found the zipper and tugged it down. I sat up and pulled my arms out of the windbreaker.
“Cut my bra off,” I said. He came around behind me, and I felt the knife slice through the fabric. He pulled the sports bra away and laid my child on my chest.
The pain had vanished.
I was flooded with a rush of what could have been pure heroin it felt so good.
Joy bursting.
Eyes flooding.
“I’ll give you both a minute,” Luther said.
I didn’t watch him leave, because I couldn’t take my eyes off this perfect, precious angel in my arms. She stared up at me, red-faced, crying, mad, helpless, completely out of sorts.
“Hi, little thing,” I said in a tone that sounded too high-pitched and saccharine to be mine.
She stopped crying and opened her eyes.
Phin’s bright blue eyes.
Unbelievable.
My voice had calmed her. She recognized it.
I brought her to my breast, and it took her a moment, but she finally glommed onto my nipple.
“Are you getting anything?” I asked, cradling her tiny head.
She began to suck.
“Oh my, you’re very good at that, aren’t you? Yes you are.”
I reached over and grabbed the windbreaker and covered her with it.
She stared up at me while she nursed.
The endorphin blast intensified.
Like nothing I had ever experienced.
Euphoria.
She nursed, and I stared and stroked her face with my finger.
“I’m your mother,” I said. “But I bet you already know that, don’t you?”
It occurred to me as I held her that even if we somehow escaped this, if I returned to Chicago with her and Phin, nothing would ever be the same again. And it wasn’t the terror of the last day that was changing everything. It was her. In five minutes, this little thing had come into my life and stared into my eyes and turned me into a different woman. What had I feared? The loss of identity? My time? How stupid and selfish, because holding my child, watching her suckle, every doubt and fear I had about her vanished.
I fell, instantly, irreversibly, in love.
McGlade was chipping away at the concrete wall using the metal chair leg, giving it all he had, but Phin really wished he would step away for a minute.
Harry’s wet pants were making Phin’s eyes water.
“I got it from here, Harry.”
“You sure? We’re almost through.”
“I’ll finish. You go rest for a minute.” Phin casually pointed to the other side of the hall. “Have a seat on the stairs back there. You’ve earned it.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
McGlade began to walk away, but then stopped and turned. “This isn’t because I smell like piss, is it?”
Phin quickly shook his head. “No. Of course not. I can’t smell anything.”
“You sure? Even my socks are soaked.”
“You’re fine,” Phin lied, turning away quickly so he didn’t taste the air.
Harry walked off, and Phin noted with each step McGlade made a squishing sound. Finally able to breathe, Phin attacked the door with renewed fervor. Thirty seconds later he’d broken away the masonry around the deadbolt. One swift kick, and the door groaned open.
“You can wash leather shoes, right?” McGlade said. “These are Bruno Maglis.”
“Bruno Maglis? I thought they were yours.”
“Funny. They cost five hundred bucks. But if they smell like piss it will greatly reduce their sex appeal.”
“Let’s try to stop talking about piss for five minutes, okay?”
“Sorry,” Harry said. “Didn’t mean to piss you off.”
Phin took the lead, heading through the doorway and into an unlit corridor. His head was still smarting from the fall down the stairs, and his right knee was beginning to swell up. He kept one hand on the wall, the other in front of him, moving as quickly as he dared. The walls were cold, concrete. Once again, Phin wondered where they were. Some kind of abandoned factory or warehouse? He stopped for a moment, letting his ears tune in to the environment. No traffic noises. No planes flying overhead. No people sounds at all.
Well, no sounds except for McGlade’s squishy footsteps.
Phin sniffed the air, crinkling his nose. He smelled sewage.
“That wasn’t me,” Harry said. “I only went number one.”
Phin guessed they were underground, either in or near the sewer. But his guess proved wrong when they came to another door, which opened up into a room filled with brownish, foul-smelling water. It stretched out for maybe twenty meters, a faint orange glow at the other side.
“Luther needs to clean his pool,” Harry said.
“There’s a light there.”
“You’re not thinking of going in that shit, are you? I already smell bad enough.”
But Phin was already wading in. This wasn’t the sewer line, or a cesspool. Phin knew this was created by Luther, for some deranged reason.
The water was cold, and Phin held up his hand and felt the circulating air. He listened for a moment, caught the hum of a large air-conditioner.
What the hell was this place for?
“I’m so sorry, Bruno,” Harry wailed, trudging in after Phin.
The duo stuck to the perimeter. It took longer but wasn’t as deep, not going higher than the thigh.
McGlade kept Phin company with a constant barrage of complaints.