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Instead, it comes again, stronger and deeper, and this time accompanied by a sudden warmth between my legs. When I look down, the floor is wet, and I realize that my water just broke.
For one suspended second, I stare at the mess, frozen. Every part of me wants to panic. To cry. To call someone. To scream.
But I don’t. I do not have anyone to call.
I press both hands against the counter, grit my teeth, and begin the breathing exercise that I was taught. In. Out.
As soon as the wave of pain subsides, I grab the packed duffel bag from the hallway—clothes, ID, cash, a blanket I stitched myself. I slip into flats, pull a cardigan over my loose maternity dress, and dial the number for a local taxi service.
Ten minutes later, I’m climbing into the back seat, gripping the side handle with each contraction. The driver, a middle-aged man with gentle eyes, doesn’t ask me anything except which hospital I want him to take me to.
On my way and in between contractions, I call the hospital, and when I arrive, I find a room waiting for me. The walls are white, and a nurse is present who speaks little but works efficiently. She helps me out of my clothes, into a gown, and onto the bed.
The contractions are coming harder and more frequently now. Each one is a wave that crashes through my spine and hips, stealing air out of my lungs.
I bite the inside of my cheek, clench the rails, but I don’t scream. Seconds blur into minutes and minutes into hours.
Sweat pours down my back as the pain become more frequent, and before I know what is happening, the nurse is counting down. The doctor is telling me to push.
I obey and push with everything I have. Everything I am. Every ounce of regret and love and fear that’s been coiling inside me for months. I push until the room tilts, and my body feels like it’s splitting open.
As I give a final push, I hear his cry. A long, sharp wail that cuts through the room like thunder. I collapse back against the pillows, tears springing to my eyes, but a shaky laughter bursts from my lips.
A broken, relieved, trembling sound I didn’t expect.
The nurse wraps him, swaddles him tightly, tucks a knit cap over his soft head, and places him in my arms.
He’s warm and heavier than I expected. And so impossibly small. His eyes open just barely, storm-gray and unfocused, and even in their haze, I see his resemblance to Zasha.
The resemblance is not just in his eyes, but also in the set of his mouth. The stubborn line of his brow. The quiet calculation in the curve of his little face.
Tears slip down my cheeks because he won’t know his father, and his father won’t know him. However, I still want him to carry something of his father’s culture.
I press my lips to his forehead.
“Dobro pozhalovat',”I whisper in the little Russian language that I know. “Welcome.”
His eyes flutter closed again, his lips parting in sleep. I cradle him tighter and whisper the name I’ve carried in my heart for months. A name pulled from the same cold soil that shaped his father.
“Maksim.”
It means the greatest. And I am not naming him that because of his background, but because he is the greatest thing that has happened to me.
I spend hours memorizing his face. His toes. His mouth. The crease in his brow that mirrors a man who doesn’t even know he exists.
He’s perfect.
Too perfect.
I trace the baby’s cheek with my finger, then whisper softly, “You are my greatest gift, and I will always love you.”
My little Maksim stirs against me, his fist brushing my collarbone. I kiss his head again and hold him tighter.
And for the first time in months… I don’t feel completely alone.
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Chapter 25