A metal bar came straight at my face and I fell backwards onto the floor, blood gushing from a cut across my cheek. The pain of the cut was barely noticeable compared to the contractions. A sticky, cold, liquid spilled all over my front. My legs buckled, I knew that was it, I could go no further. I closed my eyes.
“Oh God, I’m sorry. Rosa, Rosa, are you all right?” Someone was shaking me.
A hand was at my face, warm and familiar. Was I dead?
I daren’t open my eyes. I kept them shut as the hand attached to a strong arm pulled me into a lap.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t be dead as the sudden and acute need to push was upon me. Someone steadied me as I pulled my legs up and pushed for all I was worth. I opened my eyes narrowly. Apella was facing me. Her eyes were focused as she looked into mine and said, “Rosa, try not to push.” Something was wrong.
“What? What is it?” A frantic voice whispered as I held my breath.
“The cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck.”
It hit me and the urge to push again was so strong I wasn’t sure I could fight it, it felt wrong. Then that voice uttered deep and low in my ear. “Hold on. Just hold on.” If I was imagining it, I didn’t want to know. I just closed my eyes and listened. Letting the words wash over me, sprinkling gold dust over my eyelashes. Panting and clenching my fists, I kept fighting. I was always fighting.
After what seemed like forever, Apella said, “Ok, next one you can push.”
I couldn’t keep going. If this ended, would my delusion disappear? I would be alone again. My energy was gone. Let it kill me, I thought.
“I can’t,” I replied, listless, I let my arms fall to the floor. My legs relaxed. I gave up. “He’s gone,” I said and I wanted to go with him.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard Deshi say, confused.
“She’s under too much stress,” Apella replied.
I felt warm hands take up my bleeding face.
“Open your eyes,” he said
I shook my head, “No.”
“You are so stubborn,” he said with a weak laugh. I felt warm breath on my face and anticipated his lips touching mine. The kiss was unlike anything I had felt before, intense and sweet, painful and almost frightening. The lips pulled away. “Open your eyes,” he asked again.
I opened one eye briefly. I saw a flash of blond curls. His scruffy face was as grey as breakfast but the smile on his face was real and full of smashing color.
“One more push, Rosa, then it’s over,” the man in the white coat said kindly, but urgently.
Joseph put his arms under my own and entwined his fingers with mine. I summoned what I could, sure it would not be enough, and pushed.
It was out.
Finally.
The release was tangible. The flood of relief overwhelming.
I waited to hear a cry. With Clara, Hessa had cried almost immediately. Apella was holding it in her arms, rubbing its body down fervently with a towel. We were all silent, watching, waiting. She concentrated her fingers on its chest, rubbing gently in small, circular motions.
“Waaaaa!” it cried and announced itself to the world. An unearthly caterwaul that hurt my ears. I turned away.
I shivered, feeling cold, my body retreating from the trauma. They covered us both in a thick, fur-lined blanket. I lay there in his arms on the corridor floor.
“You did it,” he whispered, his chin resting on my shoulder. I turned. He looked sick, his face pasty and pale, but he was alive. My brain gave up trying to understand how this was possible. Questions could be answered in time. “You look beautiful,” he said, not taking his eyes off me, despite the commotion going on around us.
He was attached to several machines that he had dragged down the corridor with him. The metal bar that had hit my face was lying next to us, a stand for a fluid bag.
“Ha, I was sure you would tell me I was a mess!” I laughed.
“You are,” he said, “but a beautiful one.”
I rolled my eyes, looking over to the others, all smiling down on us. Apella held a child swaddled in cotton. I raised my eyebrows, questioning.
She understood. “He’s fine.”
The leech was a boy.
Five minutes after the birth of our son, Joseph’s heart stopped. As he had before, outside, he clutched his chest in pain, tried to breathe but couldn’t, and then he fell to the side of me.
I sat there in shock and watched as they dragged him away. His usually large form looked oddly small. They put metal pads to his chest and yelled ‘clear!’. His body pulsed unnaturally, rising as if attached to the pads by magnets. They did this again and again. His heart would start and then it would stop, over and over. I sat there shrouded in a blanket, an onlooker to the chaos, barely noticing the people fussing around me.
Now I sit in my room. Pieces of the puzzle slowly filter through as visitors come and go, feeding me small bits of information. They had me in with the baby to start with, but after two days, I asked them to take him away.
One thing I knew, Apella was right all along. These people were the survivors. They were not from the Woodlands and, as of yet, I didn’t exactly know where they came from.
Joseph lay in the bed next to mine, breathing with the aid of a machine. It pumped air in and out of his lungs for him, squeezing in and out like a concertina. The blip of the heart monitor, a comforting noise, let me know, for now, he was alive. How had it come to this, so quickly, so violently?
The kind doctor, who introduced himself as Matthew after all the confusion had subsided, explained it to me carefully, repeating it several times, as it took a while to sink in. Joseph had been bitten by a spider.
“A spider?” I raised my eyebrows dubiously.
“Yes,” he said running his hand through his hair casually. “Think of it as a tiny, microscopic killer with eight legs, smaller than a grain of sand.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, scowling.
A warm smile spread across his face and I felt my temper calm. He tipped his chin, “You asked me, remember?” His voice was the timbre of honey, slow, deliberate. Sure. I crossed my arms and listened. “Joseph would never have seen it. They are translucent and live inside the rings of the tree trunks.” Guilt stabbed me, jagged and pulsing. It must have come out of one of the trees I had asked the boys to fell for the cabin.
Matthew moved to Joseph and pointed to his ragged arm. “The venom started here, eroding the skin as it went.” I covered my mouth, feeling the heave of a cry creeping up my throat. They had left it open so the wound could breathe. The muscle was gone and it was a concave mash of red flesh. It hurt me so much to see him this way.
Matthew returned to me. I watched his lips moving, the way his mouth turned up on one side as he spoke, “The poison worked its way through his system, arriving at his heart. Usually it takes a long time to get to the heart, but because he ran so far, the blood was pumping faster around his body. It sped the whole process up.”
“So he should have died,” I said, feeling deadened myself.
Matthew nodded, his hands clasped across his lap. He lifted his hand and I thought he was going to touch me but he just rearranged the covers around my knees. “We got to him in time,” he said.
While I was in labor, Joseph was in the other room, close to death but fighting. They administered the anti-venom and began the process of cleansing his blood of the poison. He was awake. He had asked for me and they had told him I was safe. They didn’t tell him I was in labor.