Next Time Away novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Greta

They let Jonas into the operating room in blue paper scrubs that stopped above his ankles.

He sat on a stool by my head, where the anesthesiologist told him to sit.

My lower body had gone numb, and a green curtain hung at my chest.

"You don't have to hold my hand," I said.

"I know."

He held it anyway, in his big scarred one, and I let him.

"Talk about something," I said. "Anything. I can feel them pulling."

"You can't feel anything. They told you that."

"Then talk."

He thought about it.

"There's a gutter on the east side of your grandmother's roof," he said. "I've been meaning to replace it for three years."

"Why haven't you?"

"Soren said he'd do it."

I laughed and then felt my stomach muscles do something I could not feel.

"The gutter sags at the corner," Jonas went on, very seriously. "Right over the back steps. Every spring it drips on the cat."

"We don't have a cat."

"The neighbor's cat. It's been through a lot."

I was still laughing when I heard it.

A thin, furious cry, high and cracked, and it filled the whole room.

"It's a girl," said the doctor behind the curtain. "A small, loud girl."

Jonas's hand squeezed mine hard.

I looked at his face and found him looking at the curtain.

His eyes were wet.

"Four pounds, fourteen ounces," a nurse called. "She's breathing on her own."

They held her up for a moment above the drape.

She was red and wrinkled, with her fists against her face and her mouth wide open, shouting at all of us.

"Greta," I said.

It was my grandmother's name, and I had not told anyone.

"Hello, Greta," Jonas said, and his voice cracked in the middle of it.

They took her away to the NICU before I had held her.

A nurse promised I could see her within the hour, and I held on to the promise while they stitched me.

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