Page 97 of Evan and the Alpha

Things go from bad to worse by the time night falls. Ge-Ro’s ankle is more swollen, and he can’t catch anything. We didn’t find any fuel for a fire, nor did we find the river. The wind’s picked up and it’s plucking at the sand shelters Ge-Ro had us dig—little holes in the dunes that we can encase ourselves in. The dirt’s still warm and our body heat will help keep us warm all night.

Doesn’t change the fact all three of us are dehydrated and hungry and in pain. Min and I are both sunburnt. Ge-Ro’s doing his best to keep our spirits up, telling us he can smell water, hear it, that we’ll reach the river in the morning.

I still can’t feel the baby moving inside me. I’m awake almost all night, staring up at the starlit canopy of the sky, watching unfamiliar constellations wheel around overhead, desperately waiting.

There’s nothing. I want to cry so bad.

We do reach the river in the morning, so that’s a bit of a relief. We drink and wash down, then lie in the warm sunshine on the bank for a little while, letting the heat of the sun thaw the night out of our bones. Ge-Ro tries to hunt for something in the water; he says his ankle will be less of an impediment in the water, but I’m not sure if I believe him.

I have bigger problems anyway. Baby’s still not moving, and now I’ve got a sharp, stabbing pain in my pelvis, burrowing in between my hipbones, then stretching up my distended abdomen, up my spine. It’s a deep, pervasive ache, for the most part, and then it catches, like someone twisting in a knife.

Not that I’ve, uh, actually been stabbed or anything.

Min frowns at me, but I shake my head. Ge-Ro comes back empty-handed, so we plod on down the riverbank.

Enochtra is sinking in the east and Nomantru is high overhead. We’ve been walking for hours and I’m suddenly swallowed up by pain so bad that my vision patches out and I drop to my knees. I fall onto my hands and stare at the ground underneath me, panting.

I feel like I’m being ripped open. It’s worse than when Sobek made me take his knot.

“Evan?” Ge-Ro asks.

Min crouches beside me, her hand on my shoulder. I sit down, lean back on my hands and push my legs apart.

“Ah, fuck,” Min says, her voice wavering through my ears like heat dances on the afternoon air. “You’re in labor.”

I look up at her with no small amount of horror curling through me, twisting around the pain. “Labor? But—”

She lifts her brows; her face is grim. “I should have guessed,” she murmurs, more to herself than me. “You hit your head pretty good. I wouldn’t doubt you took a bit of internal damage too.”

I want to scream, but the pain steals my breath and the fear steals my voice. Her hand on my shoulder is clinical now; she’s switched to doctor mode.

“I’m not due yet,” I protest weakly. I know it doesn’t matter, but I feel like it should. I’m only seven months into this. It’s too early. Way too early.

I start to cry at last. I can’t feel my baby moving and now this. Now I’m in labor in the middle of the fucking desert with one blanket and nothing else, and Min’s a doctor, but what can she do when we have nothing?

And my baby’s probably already dead.

Knowing that makes the pain so much worse. I cry freely, big, gut-wrenching sobs.

Min and Ge-Ro find a relatively flat patch of riverbank and spread out the blanket there. Ge-Ro has to pick me up and lay me down on it. I’m useless. All I can think about is how bad the pain is, how scared I am about giving birth, and that my baby’s dead and I have to give birth to a dead baby.

“Sh,” Min says to me at one point, ranking a hand through my hair, “Evan, sh. You’re just dehydrating yourself.”

I cry more.

At some point, she tells me to get undressed, and then Ge-Ro has to help me as I fumble with my clothes, then curl up, wishing I could escape the pain somehow.

I can’t. I’m sure I’m ripping open inch by painful inch, every contraction an incremental tear in my body. I feel like I’m wide open already, but Min says I’m like two or three centimeters dilated.

I didn’t even know it was possible for me to dilate. I don’t know where the hell the baby is coming out. I don’t want to think about it.

I don’t want to think about anything at all—not this, not the baby, not the pain, not anything.

The sun sinks in the north; shadows sweep over the land. I’m freezing. Ge-Ro and Min argue aboutwhether to build a little sand fort over me; Ge-Ro says yes, because it will keep me warm. Min says no, because it might give sand a chance to enter my body and cause an infection.

I just wish this was over.

I spend another sleepless night under the stars, trying to focus on them and not how my body’s getting ripped apart from the inside. Occasionally, the pain gets really bad and I start screaming, thinking that this has to be it, but it’s not. Then I lie on my side with my cheek in the sand, trying to catch my breath and sobbing instead.