Page 45 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Thirty-Two

But—she mentioned California, right? That must mean she’s driving west, toward the sinking sun barely visible through the snow.

Eventually she’ll have to turn on the headlights and pray the roads don’t get slick in the night.

Crane doesn’t want to think about that, or the fact that she’ll have to get past the Tennessee hive enforcers, or that the price of gasoline might stop her before she gets out of the state at all.

He wants to think about her in a motel in boring middle America, drinking shit coffee on a ratty bedspread, cutting her hair to a bob in the bathroom and studying the scar on the inside of her wrist, wondering if it will ever go away.

It will, though. It’ll fade with time, like Crane figures most things will once you make it past twenty-two, or whatever age Jess is, close enough to his own.

She’ll reach the West Coast—he doesn’t know shit about California, but if he had to pick, he thinks she’d like Santa Cruz, probably, or San Diego—and step out onto a beach that is seventy degrees in the depths of winter and stare in awe at the rush of water at low tide.

She’ll sit in the truck bed and watch the sun rise, or set, whichever.

Maybe she’ll send a letter back home to Cleveland, but more likely she won’t, and she’ll sell the truck for cash and scrape together enough money for the worst room in the worst apartment complex and get the worst job, and every morning she’ll sit by her window with a cup of coffee and watch the sun.

She’ll go to the beach every weekend and never get sick of it, no matter how many times a seagull swoops too close or steals her food.

She’ll probably adopt a cat. Maybe she’ll get a nerdy boyfriend fleeing the Cali tech sector or realize she’s a lesbian in a hot butch’s bedroom.

She’ll make friends. She’ll take shots of cheap liquor in cramped kitchenettes and play stupid card games, sleep on warm couches, and make dinner for protest-buddies getting out of jail and discover she’s actually a great cook, she really has a knack for it, would you look at that.

For the rest of her life, for all the sixty more years Crane prays she has, she’ll step on every fucking worm she sees on the pavement after a good spring rain.

“We’re pushing, we’re pushing,” Tammy says. She’s sitting beside him because her knees can’t take the kneeling anymore. Levi continues to pace. Stagger reminds Crane to breathe. “I know it sounds like horseshit but, swear to god, your body knows what to do. Just do what it tells you.”

It’s infinitely cruel that his body has been keeping this secret from him—that it knows something he doesn’t.

The head is so low in the birth canal that it feels like it’s already out of him, but it’s not.

It’s got to be the third time he’s thought that, but the head just keeps getting lower and it keeps not being out yet.

The hive has gone quiet. The pile of slick mucus membranes and calcium piled in the closet is silent. It breathes with him.

What about Mom and Dad? Crane can’t think of why they would be passing through Wash County of all places, but it’s hard to think anything at all.

Catching a thought is like trying to hold loose brain matter, slipping between his fingers but still coagulating under his nails.

Did Dad’s job have them driving to Morgantown for some reason?

Do they still have family in Ohio, or Michigan?

Mom and Dad must’ve gotten their tank filled by now, and maybe they’re— push , Tammy says, don’t waste the end of the contraction, just like that— sitting in the parking lot of that other gas station, debating if it’s safe to drive with the snow coming down this hard, with both of them crying this hard.

They can’t pay attention to storm-blurred road signs when they’re busy reconstituting the last several years of their life from scratch.

Had they always held out hope that their daughter was alive out there somewhere, or had they found more comfort in an imagined corpse?

Are they fully capable of comprehending the new version of this child they met?

Perhaps they’re testing the name Crane until it comes as easily as Sophie did, updating their mental image of their baby’s body with tattoos and broken fingers and burns and short hair, wrapping their heads around being grandparents.

Together, they vow they will take their phones off silent, and they will not turn down the volume until they finally, finally get that call. Whenever it comes.

The lizard-brain urge to push stops, and Crane collapses onto his hands, fingers wrenching into the blankets and towels. The towels are soaking wet. Stagger whines.

“Lucky motherfucker,” Tammy is muttering, taking Crane by the back of his neck. He can’t decide if, once this is over, he’ll miss her or not. “Hey now. Stop holding your breath. Not gonna have you passing out.”

Crane does as he’s told like always. Tries to take advantage of the lull to clear his throat, wipe his eyes, get air into his lungs. He feels like he’s been running for hours. He tastes copper in the back of his throat.

And Luna—oh, Luna is probably asleep right now, taking a nap, cuddled up in her low-set princess bed with the gauze canopy, tucked happily between a plush unicorn and a blanket made out of her dad’s old sweater.

Her hair has to be longer now, the kind of mess that Birdie carefully untangles every morning with a wide-toothed comb.

A few strands would stick to her tiny lips as she sleeps.

Aspen can’t leave her side sometimes. They’re on the floor beside her, making sure her tiny lungs are working.

Birdie would come in, holding a mug of hot chocolate, and settle onto the floor with them in silence.

What do they talk about? Nothing good. They’re both exhausted and rudeness gets the better of them.

“You really think the FDA’s going to go?

” Birdie might ask, borderline snappish after reading an upsetting news article Aspen forwarded an hour ago, and Aspen will retort with, “You’re the one that thinks Crane will text us. ”

She gets quiet.

Aspen probably thinks, by this point, that Crane is dead.

Or that he might as well be. Can’t work for journalists so long without returning to that baseline pessimist bitch they’d been in high school.

Still, sitting on the floor of their daughter’s room, they consider picking up their old college smoking habit, and switching from L&Ms to Marlboro Reds because Marlboro Reds are, were, Crane’s favorite and, fuck it, they’re allowed to be pathetic sometimes.

Push.

Levi has a palm on Crane’s collarbone, Stagger holding Crane’s hand. Crane’s vision is swimming and if he’s making noise he can’t tell. Tammy wipes sweat from his shoulders and pours cold water on a cloth to press to his temple, and checks between his legs one more time.

“We’ve got a head up there,” she says.

The contraction peaks and it’s the worst one he’s had.

Crane vomits. It’s all burning stomach acid.

Levi recoils, but Tammy grabs him by the shirt, tells him to clean it up, whispers to Crane that this happens sometimes, it’s okay, it’s okay.

Almost there. Does he want to reach down and feel the head?

Feel the baby for the first time? No, Crane doesn’t.

Levi balls up the soiled towel and removes it from sight.

The hive murmurs, You’re so close you’re so close.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Tammy says. “Every midwife and labor nurse has seen more puke and shit than you’d ever imagine.” Stagger hums, rubs Crane’s back, refuses to leave his side. “When you’re pushing, damn near everything comes out. It’s how you know you’re doing it right.”

Crane tastes bitter juices down the back of his throat. He wants to grab Levi by the face and crack open his jaw and spit it all down Levi’s tongue so he has to taste it too.

Push.

Scrambling. Levi is saying something. “Hey,” Tammy says, “hey. Careful.” She’s touching him.

“The head is about to come out. It’s right there.

It’s gonna start burning, you hear me? Ease up, don’t hurt yourself.

” Crane can’t hear her until she grabs him by the hair.

“If you push, there’s a chance you’re gonna tear.

You hear me? Just take it easy. Let it happen. ”

Okay. He stops pushing. Not pushing is the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life. He times his breaths to Stagger’s. He almost vomits again, but there’s nothing left to come up, just a gross dry heave.

“Almost here,” Levi tells the hive.

Almost here.

He’s right. Crane repeats it over and over. It’s almost over. Almost almost almost.

He finally reaches down and, oh, just like Tammy said. There’s the head. Wisps of hair, wet mucus, too-soft butterfly skin. It’s bulging out of him. Liquid trickles over the head and drips all over his thighs and the blankets.

He wants to push. He’s so close.

Oh our child, you’re so close, we see our little one.

Fuck it, fuck it , who gives a fuck anymore, he doesn’t care if he tears, who gives a shit.

He bears down.

The head comes free, and then Tammy’s taking hold of a tiny pair of shoulders and pulling, and it’s like she’s wrenched everything out of him at once. All the water and baby that had been inside him is outside in a gush and it’s over.

It’s over.

The baby makes a gurgling noise. Tammy passes it into Crane’s arms. It’s burning hot. It smears insides and phlegm across his bare chest.

“What is it?” Levi demands.

“Hold on,” Tammy says, leaning in.

“What is it?”

It’s so small. The choking cry turns to a wail.

Tammy says, “A girl.”