Pump Six and Other Stories(100)

"You're insane." Justin lets the shower curtain fall into place.

I shove my face back into the cool spray. He won't admit it, but he wants me to keep doing this; he loves that I'm doing this for him. For our kids. Our kids will be able to spell and to draw a stick figure, and I'm the only one who gets dirty. I can live with that. I swallow more water. I'm burning up.

Fueled by the overdose of Purnate, the baby arrives in minutes. The mucky hair of a newborn shows and recedes. I touch the head as it crowns. "You're almost there, Maya."

Again, a contraction. The head emerges into my hands: a pinched old man's face, protruding from Maya's body like a golem from the earth. Another two pushes and it spills from her. I clutch the slick body to me as an orderly snips the umbilical cord.

The MedAssist data on its heart rate flickers red at the corner of my vision, flatlines.

Maya is staring at me. The natal screen is down; she can see everything we wish prenatal patients would never see. Her skin is flushed. Her black hair clings sweaty to her face. "Is it boy or a girl?" she slurs.

I am frozen, crucified by her gaze. I duck my head. "It's neither."

I turn and let the bloody wet mass slip out of my hands and into the trash. Perfume hides the iron scent that has blossomed in the air. Down in the canister, the baby is curled in on itself, impossibly small.

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

Ben's eyes are so wide, he looks like he'll never blink again. "It's okay honey. It wasn't either. That's for the next one. You know that."

Maya looks stricken. "But I felt it kick."

The blue placental sack spills out of her. I dump it in the canister with the baby and shut down Maya's Purnate. Pitocin has already cut off what little bleeding she has. The orderlies cover Maya with a fresh sheet. "I felt it," she says. "It wasn't dead at all. It was alive. A boy. I felt him."

I thumb up a round Delonol. She falls silent. One of the orderlies wheels her out as the other begins straightening the room. She resets the natal screen in the sockets over the bed. Ready for the next patient. I sit beside the biohazard bin with my head between my legs and breathe. Just breathe. My face burns with the slashes of Maya's nails.

Eventually I make myself stand and carry the bio-bin over to the waste chute, and crack it open. The body lies curled inside. They always seem so large when they pour from their mothers, but now, in its biohazard can, it's tiny.

It's nothing, I tell myself. Even with its miniature hands and squinched face and little penis, it's nothing. Just a vessel for contaminants. I killed it within weeks of conception with a steady low dose of neurotoxins to burn out its brain and paralyze its movements while it developed in the womb. It's nothing. Just something to scour the fat cells of a woman who sits at the top of a poisoned food chain, and who wants to have a baby. It's nothing.

I lift the canister and pour the body into suction. It disappears, carrying the chemical load of its mother down to incineration. An offering. A floppy sacrifice of blood and cells and humanity so that the next child will have a future.

THE END