Chapter 30: Thirty-Two Weeks

Clara's POV

The ambulance reached Westbrook General at twenty to four, and Lydia was already screaming for me.

I ran beside the trolley in my funeral dress with sawdust still on the hem.

"Don't let go," she said. "Clara, don't go anywhere."

"I'm here."

"Thirty-two weeks. She's too small."

"She's thirty-two weeks, which is fine. I've seen puppies do worse."

"I'm not a puppy!"

"No, you're much louder."

She laughed and gasped at once, and a nurse in the corridor said, "Good, keep her laughing," and pushed the doors open with her hip.

They put me in a gown and a paper cap.

The doctor on the ward said the baby was coming whether anyone liked it or not, and that the neonatal team was on its way.

Miles stood in the corridor with my father and Mrs. Ashworth, who had come in a taxi from the inn in her coat, with her hair coming down.

I saw them through the door window.

All three looked frightened.

Then the door closed, and it was Lydia and me and the lights.

It took four hours.

I held her hand, and she crushed it, the left one, with the bent finger.

I did not mind.

"I can't do this."

"You're doing it."

"Mom would have been better at it."

"Mom was cross for most of it, remember? She told you."

"I want her here."

"I know."

I wiped her face with a cloth.

"I'm here," I said. "I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not leaving after. You know that."

"Promise."

"I promise on the wall."

She looked at me with her wet hazel eyes.

"That's not a real thing."

"It is in this family."

At five past eight, with the sun coming up gold behind the blind, my niece was born.

She came out furious.

She was red and wrinkled and tiny, and she screamed once, loudly, with all of her lungs.

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