Chapter 16: April

Eight months later, at three in the morning on the ninth of April, I told Elin I was going to kill her.

"That's fine," Elin said. "You can kill me after. Breathe."

"I am breathing."

"You're yelling."

"It's the same thing!"

St. Brendan's had given me a room with a window on the harbor, and the lights of the ore docks were on, small and yellow.

I had been in labor for fourteen hours.

My left hand was clamped around the bed rail, and it held.

That was the one thing that night I was sure of.

Dr. Koski had told me in March that I was at eighty percent of what I had been.

I had played two concerts in the little Lutheran church on Fourth Street since Christmas, with the cello propped on the swell of my stomach.

Nobody had said a word about the bow arm.

The midwife was Dr. Koski's younger sister, a broad, calm woman with her brother's glasses and none of his dryness.

She had met me at the first appointment and said, "I'll catch your baby, and I'll tell you if my brother says anything stupid."

He had not said anything stupid yet.

"Linnea," she said now, and put her hand on my knee. "I need you to listen. Next one, you push."

"I can't."

"You can."

"I've been saying I can't for an hour."

"And you keep doing it anyway," she said. "That's the whole job."

The pain came up again, and I could not see past it.

I put my chin down and pushed with everything I had.

Elin's hand was in mine, and she was counting, and I heard her voice crack on seven.

Keep reading free with an account. Start When He Finally Chose Me I Was Gone from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.