Night Road(78)

The guard nodded, radioed the news to someone else, and then told them to go back to their cell. “Someone will come for you, Baill.”

Lexi let herself be led down to her cell. There, she curled up on Tamica’s lower bunk and made it through the rising pain. Tamica stroked her hair and told her silly stories about her life. Lexi tried to listen and be polite, but the pains were sharper and coming faster now.

“I … can’t … take … it. How do women take it?”

“Baill?”

She heard her name through this fog of pain; when the cramp ended, she looked up groggily.

Miriam Yungoh, the prison doctor, was there. “I hear there’s a baby who wants to come out and play.”

“Drugs,” Lexi said. “Give me drugs.”

Dr. Yungoh smiled. “How about if I examine you first?”

“Yeah,” Lexi said. “Whatever.”

Lexi hardly paid attention to all the things that happened next. It was probably just as well. There was the pelvic exam that any prisoner walking past the cell could see, the strip search in receiving (to make sure that she wasn’t trying to sneak something out of the prison in her vagina—ha!), and the reshackling of her wrists and ankles.

She didn’t relax until she was lying in the gurney in the back of an ambulance, shackled to the bed’s metal rails. “Can Tamica come with me? Please? I want her at the hospital,” Lexi said between pains.

No one answered her, and when the next pain hit, she forgot everything else. By the time she got to the hospital, her pains were coming so fast it was like being in the ring with a prizefighter. She was in a private hospital room, with guards stationed both inside and outside the room. She wanted to roll over or walk or even just sit up, but she couldn’t do any of that. She was shackled to the guardrails of the bed on the left side. One ankle and one wrist. And they wouldn’t give her drugs because it was too late for that. Whatever the hell that meant.

Another pain hit. The worst one yet. She screamed out, her belly tightening so hard she thought she was going to die.

When the pain abated, she tried to sit up and then spoke to the guard. “Get a nurse or doctor in here, please. Something’s wrong. I can tell. It hurts too much. Please.” She was panting now, trying not to cry.

“My job isn’t—”

“Please,” Lexi begged. “Please.”

The guard looked at Lexi; her eyes narrowed. Lexi wondered what the woman saw: a murderer chained to a bed, or an eighteen-year-old girl, giving birth to a baby she’d probably never know.

“I’ll check,” the guard said and left the room.

Lexi fell back into the pillows. She tried to be strong, but she had never felt so alone. She needed Aunt Eva here, or Tamica, or Zach or Mia.

Another pain ripped through Lexi; she strained against the restraints, felt the cold metal bite into her wrist and ankle. Then it was over.

Sagging back into the pillows, she exhaled. Her whole body felt wrung out.

She touched her belly. She could feel her baby in there, wriggling, probably trying to find her way out of this pain. “It’s okay, little girl. We’ll be okay.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to imagine the baby inside of her. For months now, as she’d lain in her lonely prison bed, she’d dreamed of this baby, and in her dreams it was always a girl.

When the pain came again, she cried out, certain this time that her stomach was going to split open like that scene in Alien. She was still screaming when the doctor came into the room, with a nurse beside him.

“Chained to the bed? Where are we, medieval France? Uncuff her. Now.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I can’t do that,” the guard said. To her credit, she actually looked sorry.

“Hello, Lexi. I’m Dr. Farst,” he said, coming to her bedside.

“H-hi,” she said. “I think I’m dying. Do they ever rip you in half?”

He smiled. “It just feels that way. I’m going to examine you now.”

“Okay.”

He pushed her gown aside and positioned himself between her legs.

“Can you see her yet? Aagh—” Lexi arched up in pain again.

“Okay, Alexa, it looks like someone is ready to be born. When I say push, you bear down as hard as you can.”

Lexi was so tired, she could hardly move. “What does that mean, bear down?”

“Like you’re constipated and trying to go.”

“Oh.”

“Okay, Alexa. Push.”

Lexi strained and pushed and screamed. She lost track of how many times the doctor told her to stop and start and stop again. She hurt so badly she could hardly stand it, and she wished someone were beside her, telling her she was okay, that she was doing great. That was how it happened in the movies.

And then a baby cried. “It’s a girl,” the doctor said with a smile.

Lexi had never known before that a heart could take flight, but that was how she felt suddenly; the pain was gone—already forgotten—and angels were lifting her up. She saw the doctor hand the baby—her baby—to the nurse, and she couldn’t help reaching out to hold her. One arm lifted; the other clanged against the restraint.

“Uncuff her wrist,” the doctor said to the guard, pulling off his blue surgical cap. “Now.”