I smiled and nodded, then dropped my head back as another contraction came.
Two hours went by with no baby, my body drenched in sweat, exhausted, weakened by my efforts and lack of sustenance for the past month and a half. A couple of women came in and out, bringing Jelena more water, antiseptic, sheets, and gauze.
“I can’t,” I whispered for what had to be the hundredth time as I stared at the barren white walls.
“You can,” Jelena said, her voice calm as she said the same thing she’d said each time I proclaimed I was giving up. “Try and relax. Let the body do its job.”
“But I’m tired,” I cried, my clothes soaked with sweat. “I just can’t anymore. It’s not coming. Please.”
She wet a cloth and wiped my brow.
“Be strong, Lena. Be strong for your baby.”
I whimpered, and this time when the contraction came, I gave myself over to it. I didn’t try to resist, riding the wave of pain, crying out as my body pushed in a way it hadn’t before, the pressure moving, heavy,more.
“That’s it, Lena!” Jelena said. “Again!”
But I shook my head. That wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. It had just happened. And before I could catch my breath, it happened again, my body straining, pushing, a guttural, animal-like sound roaring from my throat until I was spent, my limbs going weak.
And then a cry rang out.
Somehow in my exhausted state I raised my head and then struggled to lift myself up on my elbows, staring at Jelena, who was smiling as she wrapped a clean sheet around something pink and moving, and then lifted the bundle toward me.
“It’s a girl,” she said.
And as I looked down at the baby on my chest, it was as though William were looking up at me, his pale blue eyes inside a tiny pink face.
I inhaled, and then I started to laugh and cry all at once.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Hello there.”
I was in awe as I stared at her, barely aware of Jelena still tending to me, my attention taken solely by the baby in my arms. She had no place being in this horrid camp and this terrible situation, and yet here she was, blinking, staring, confused.
Mine.
“What will you call her?” Jelena said, moving so that she was sitting beside us, staring with me at the tiny human with rosebud lips and a crinkled nose.
I shook my head. I had no idea. In all the turmoil since realizing I was pregnant, I’d never once given thought to a name, the idea that I’d actually give birth seeming like an impossibility. The thought of getting excited when so much could go wrong paralyzed me from giving the baby much thought at all. But now here she was. Perfect and beautiful and her father’s daughter through and through.
I grinned and looked down at the precious life in my arms.
“I think,” I said, running my fingertip over her downy-soft cheek, “I’ll call her Willa.”
Jelena fashioned a sling out of a sheet and that was where Willa lay, snug against my body every day while I hobbled about, checking on the injured while Jelena took over taking care of the sick, many of whom were better now and able to help with those who still needed care.
But with our food supplies running low, and a baby who got her nourishment from me, I could feel my energy waning with each passing hour. That combined with a lack of sleep, by Willa’s third day in the world, I was beginning to forget things.
“You need to rest,” Jelena said, her hand on my arm, steadying me as I restitched a wound that had needed to be reopened and washed out, then left open to heal before being sewn shut again. With barely any anesthetic left, I’d had to use it sparingly, making my shaking hands harder to mask.
“There’s no time,” I muttered, shifting to get a better angle and waking Willa, who shrieked her displeasure.
“Let me take her.”
But I didn’t want to hand the baby over. Jelena spent all day with the sick. If Willa got something, she most likely wouldn’t survive it.
I whispered to my daughter as I continued to sew, breathing a sigh of relief when the wound was closed and the thread knotted.
Rising slowly, I gasped as my back muscles seized and eased myself back into the chair until the spasm passed.
