Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 112 of 115

The pains came at dawn, close and hard. The midwife met Eduardo at the bottom of the stairs with a cloth in her hand. "It's starting," she said. "And it's wrong. Go up." Kiersten lay in their handmade bed, her face gray, her breath short. She gripped the frame they had built together. The midwife worked fast, her steady hands no longer steady. "She's bleeding," she said. "I can save one or both, but I need choices made, and she can't make them." Kiersten's eyes rolled back. Her grip went loose. The locket slid against her neck. "Kiersten." Eduardo took her face. No answer. The midwife looked up at him. "She's out. The baby's turned wrong. I can turn it, but it's rough on her. Or I cut. That's faster and safer for the child, harder on the mother." She waited. "Her husband decides. That's you." The old Eduardo would have frozen. He would have run for someone else to carry it. He stayed. He looked at Kiersten's face, slack against the pillow. For years she had decided everything. She had led because leading felt safer than trusting him. She had wanted him to take the weight. She had only feared the weight would fall on her alone. "What does she want?" he asked himself, out loud. Then he answered it. She wanted the baby they had named years ago. She wanted to live to hold it. She would not trade one for the other. "Turn it," he said. "Don't cut her. She fought eight years to get here. Give her the chance to come back." The midwife held his eyes a moment. "That's the harder road." "I know. Do it." She went to work. Eduardo knelt by the bed and held Kiersten's limp hand. He did not look away from the blood or the pain. He gave the midwife cloths when she asked. He wiped Kiersten's forehead. He did not break. Time stretched thin. Then a cry cut the room. The midwife lifted a small, red, screaming child. "A girl," she said. "Breathing. Strong." Kiersten stirred. Her eyes opened, dim, then found him. "Mellani," she whispered. Not a question. "She's here," Eduardo said. "You both are." The midwife laid the baby on Kiersten's chest. Kiersten was too weak to lift her arms, so Eduardo held the child in place with his hand over hers. "You chose," Kiersten said. Her voice was thread-thin. "I chose what you'd choose." "No." She looked at him, steady even now. "You chose. That's different. That's what I wanted." Her eyes closed, but her breath stayed even. The midwife checked the bleeding and nodded once. "She'll mend. Slow. She'll need tending for weeks." Eduardo did not move from the bed. He had led, at last, not to be seen, but because the room needed a man who would stay. Now the staying began.