Page 87 of Night Songs

Hess returned to her spot by my head and gripped my hand. She said I could squeeze as hard as I needed to.

At the other end of me, a harsh voice told me to stop pushing. I could feel it. Something was wrong. His hands were probing inside me and creating sharp, pinching pains where before the pain had been more global, like tectonic plates moving.

Then they were wheeling me down the hallway, and Hess refused once again to leave me. No one told us what was going on. In the operating room, I was strapped down like a mental patient and administered drugs without anyone asking me. As I tried to struggle against it, I fell back into a familiar oblivion.

I’d have thought it would be a relief to finally return to that place.

But the nothingness felt wrong. I couldn’t see or hear very well, like a glaze had been applied to my perception, and my thoughts came slow and syrupy. When I tried to move my body, it was no longer under my control.

A panic seized me, but I was locked in, unable to articulate this to even Hess. Not even able to squeeze her hand.

I sank into the panic, and at some point I was lost to a deeper nothing.

Next thing I remember was hearing a little melody in my head, and for a moment, I thought music had returned to me. I lay there, trying to soak it in. There was something familiar about it that I couldn’t place yet.

I opened my eyes, and I saw a fuzzy Hess pacing in front of the bed with a bundle cradled in her arms. That new melody hummed from her throat.

She saw that I was awake, and she smiled at me. Everything was softer about her, like God had rounded her edges and mixed light with her colors. The bundle gurgled, and I saw that it was the baby. Small and red and swaddled in white cotton.

Hess swayed toward the side of the bed, and I could see the baby better now, covered in fine, dark hair and sleeping peacefully in the nest of his mother’s arms.

“Meet our daughter, Rhea. Named for the Greek goddess.” She smiled shyly. “Only if you like it, of course, but it feels so perfect—”

“You mean our son.”

“No, darling, she’s a girl.”

“No. I had a boy.”

“Lou—”

“It’s a mistake. It has to be. They gave you the wrong baby.” My face was cold, and I couldn’t get enough air.

Hess frowned softly. “I saw them pull her out of you with my own eyes.” She folded back the blanket to reveal a dark-purple birthmark reaching across the baby’s collarbone like the devil’s gnarled finger. “She’s hard to miss.”

My stomach churned, and my mouth filled with saliva. I leaned over and vomited onto the linoleum.

Hess jumped back and clutched the baby to her chest. “Oh, honey, let me get you a nurse.”

I lay back on the bed. Cold sweat beaded on my cheeks.

How had I let this happen?

Shame oozed into my hollow stomach, and I thought I might be sick again.

Another demon child. Another soul brought into this world, cursed from the start.

Hess, still holding the baby, returned with a nurse, and she cleaned me up and gave me fluids. She said it was perfectly normal, but I doubted most mothers got sick at the sight of their own babies.

When the nurse left, Hess tried to put the baby in my arms. “She’s hungry, darling. She needs to be fed.”

But I couldn’t look at either of them. I turned over and pretended to fall asleep, and Hess gave up.

Later, I woke to a room blue with dusk. Hess was gone, but the baby was there, sleeping in a bassinet next to my bed.

She stirred and wriggled. Then she opened her black eyes and stared hard into mine. An understanding passed between us like electricity, crackling through my insides and filling me with charged love.

She was such fragile magic. It felt wrong that she should be outside me now, where she was vulnerable to the elements. The cold, abrasive air. The stinging smell of the hospital. The intrusion of its noises. It had been so much easier to protect her when she was inside of me.