Page 140 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“Were you bitten or scratched?” Dave asked, taking in my presumably ashen appearance.

“No, I ... aaargh,” I groaned, doubling over as the hot wire grasped my womb once more.

Underneath my hand, my belly turned impossibly hard before softening again.

“Renny ...?”

They both sprang back up with speed that belied their less-than-athletic figures. They took a few steps back.

“Damn it, you idiots,” I told them once I caught my breath, “I am not infected. You are doctors. I’m a heavily pregnant woman ... what do you think is happening?”

Comprehension dawned on Dave’s face, and he went pale. His eyes widened, eyebrows disappearing under the brown waves of his hair.

“Shit,” he said simply.

“Yeah,” I told him, already feeling the wave of the next contraction crashing through me. “That’s likely coming very soon.”

Sweaty and grunting with effort, all three of us, Dave and Kevin managed to transfer me to a bed in the guest room. They propped me up on the starched white pillows and closed the cream curtains on the arched windows for privacy. The whole apartment smelled faintly like very old people.

I lay on my back, convulsing, my body no longer my own.

“No exceptions to the quarantine? Not even for medics?” I asked as they both bent over me with concern in their faces.

They shook their heads in unison, and I clenched my jaws shut and closed my eyes, waiting for another contraction to pass.

“No way to get me to another hospital?”

“No, hun. I’m so sorry,” Dave answered softly, his hand on my clammy forehead.

Kevin said something about grabbing towels and hot water and scuttled away.

I took a deep, determined breath. As I had already established that day, it is a mother’s primal prerogative to sacrifice any other life for the lives of her children. Including her own.

“You know what you have to do.” Unsmiling, I looked deep into Dave’s eyes. “You are going to take a knife and you are going to cut me open.” I grabbed his collar and pulled his harmless round face closer to mine. “And you are going to save my babies.”

In truth, despite my bravado, I had not fully appreciated the gravity of my situation until I saw Dave hesitate for just a split second in consideration.

My heart skipped a few beats, and I let go of his collar.

“No, I’ll do no such thing,” he said carefully at last, a worried crease between his brows.

“Yes, yes you will,” I gasped, and suddenly I knew it to be inevitable. “Dave, be reasonable. You know what the odds are of this going well for me. I am a small woman with a weak, patchwork uterus, pregnant not with one but two babies fathered by a very large man. Youknowwhat the chances are of my surviving this. Youcannotsave me. What you can do is save my children. Youmustcut me.”

It was getting dark outside, and with the curtains closed, the room was cast in shadows. Dave’s face became less and less visible to me from where I lay.

“Not yet, I won’t.”

A shiver ran through my body. Just as Einar’s tone changed to the master’s during our intimate moments, so did Dave’s then, transforming him from my best friend into a doctor. As such, I was viscerally terrified of him, shirking away from his methodical gaze, his sterile voice, and his cold, assessing touch.

“Not while there’s a chance. We know from your scans that neither twin is in a breech position and that, due to being twins, they’re slightly undersized. Your contractions are already seven minutes apart, and you’re showing no signs of uterine rupture. Those are all promising signs. I think there is a strong possibility that you’ll be able to give birth naturally despite the contraindications.”

“Dave, I don’t want a chance! Nor a strong possibility! I want certainty!”

But as he bent over me, his round face was a stranger’s grave visage, indifferent to my pleas.

Hours passed, and I gave myself over to the pain entirely, letting it rule over me, body and mind. I was drenched insweat and feverish. The whole act of labour seemed to be an act of withdrawing back inside my centre, of losing grasp on the outside world until my thoughts and the sensations of my tortured body seemed the only palpable thing in the universe.

Dave and Kevin became nothing but spectres, shadows existing without any objects casting them. I was lethargic and slow, as if I were submerged in a thick, sugary syrup.