Page 42 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)
‘Madam! You should sit up.’ The midwife helping Ellen was a bulldog. She was physically muscular and from the way she spoke, the woman thought she could merely shout at the child to make it come out.
Her grip rough and firm she pulled Ellen to an almost sitting position.
Ellen had been in labour for a day and a half, and exhaustion overwhelmed her, urging her to lie down and give up.
‘Madam!’
Ellen closed her eyes as she collapsed back. She was too tired to fight. Too much had happened to her, too many awful things. What was there to fight for?
‘Madam!’
She wished to die. Let it all just be over now.
‘Madam!’ The last was shouted as her next contraction came.
Ellen’s fingers clawed into the blood-stained sheet, gripping it tight as she cried out, longing for the one person who could never come – to come to her.
‘Paul!’ His name came on an agonised cry, not from the pain of labour, but from the pain of her broken heart.
It was shattered. She was shattered. ‘I cannot…’
‘You have little choice, ma’am, the child is within you and it must get out,’ the midwife told her bluntly.
‘Ahhhhhrrg!’ Ellen growled at the woman, baring her teeth.
In that instant she hated Paul for dying, and she hated fate for leaving her to survive alone and seek the help of a man who was cruel.
Four more times he had used her mouth as Paul had used her body, urging her to be compliant and allow it.
Each time he had been drunk, and each time, the day after, he could not look her in the eye due to his guilt.
Though, he would send Megan to insist she came down to dine with him and find some way to belittle and control her.
Each time she had sat at his table feeling – unclean – hatred and anger and repulsion.
The second time it had happened, she had ask him to take her home to England, or at least to pay for a passage for her.
He had refused. He may feel guilty after doing what he did, but not enough to give her the means to leave him.
Life – was cruel. ‘Ahhh!’ She screamed her pain out into the room.
‘Push,’ the midwife urged her.
Ellen did not wish to push, or try, or live.
‘Madam!’ The glare she received when she made no effort at all condemned her. She would be bullied into bearing this child.
Her eyelids fell again, and behind them hiding in darkness she saw Paul’s face. He leaned over the bed towards her. ‘Ellen.’ She heard him speak as his fingers touched her cheek, then brushed her damp, sweat-soaked hair away from her face. ‘Ellen, remember how strong you are. You can survive this.’
His image disappeared and she screwed up her eyelids, crushing them tightly closed as her heart poured out its misery. She was not angry with him; she missed him. She missed him so much. She opened her eyes and he was not there. Of course he was not. But his child was inside her, fighting to live.
‘Ahhh!’ She pushed.
‘That’s better, madam, and again.’
Ellen’s fingers fisted, clinging onto the sheet as another contraction clasped at her stomach, tightening her muscles in an excruciating hold. She did push, she pushed hard, and she kept pushing, as though pushing might bring sanity back into her life.
‘Oh, God!’ The blasphemy slipped from her lips as the pressure was suddenly gone. A child’s wail filled the air. She was panting, crying and laughing all at once as she looked at the little purple being curled in the midwife’s hands.
‘Hold your child while I take care of the cord and the afterbirth.’ The infant was covered in white slime. Its arms and legs stretched out as the midwife passed the child to her. The child had come early. It was lean and it was a boy. A son. Paul’s son.
Tears rolled from her eyes as she held the child to her breast.