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“Listen. Katie, you’re going to have the baby. Today. Like, right now. You’re about to go into labor,” she said so matter-of-fact.

“What? How can you...Oh, that’s right...Oh my,” Katie said and seemed a little startled and took a deep breath.

Paul seemed even more scared than Katie.

“It’s going to be ok, your baby will be fine, but...it’s going to get a little rough. I wanted to tell you so you’d know and be prepared. I’ve seen the baby, it’ll be ok so just, don’t freak out.”

I noticed Marissa didn’t say ‘he’ or ‘she’ would be ok. I found I was glad that she didn’t ruin the surprise for them and in their fright of the news they didn’t think to ask her either.

“Your scaring me, Marissa. Why would I be worried?”

“Because it’s going to take a while and we don’t have medicine and...it will be a little rough,” she repeated.

“Oh. Ok. Ok, I can do this. We’re ready.”

She began panting as if in labor already and Paul, moving out from behind her, scrambled and tried to prepare what to do and where. Really he was just turning frantic inadequate circles in the middle of the room.

Trudy came over and grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Daddy, calm down. Go get me some towels out of the wash room. Momma, come with me. Let’s go get you situated and comfortable in your new room.” Trudy helped Katie up and took her the opposite direction of the halls.

“Our room is that way,” Katie said, pointing down the new hall.

“Not anymore. You’re gonna have my room. You two can’t stay in that little room with a baby. My room’s not terribly bigger but it’s at least three times the size as yours, with a real bed. I already had Merrick and Ryan put the baby’s things you’ve been getting together in there. I’ll take your room.”

They rounded the corner and I could no longer see or hear them. Wow. There was going to be a baby in there in a couple of hours.

It wasn’t long until the labor started, just as Marissa predicted.

Lana kept Calvin and Franklin in the back room to play as they didn’t need to hear that and also Katie needed her sister, Laura, with her during delivery. This way she wouldn’t be worried about Frank.

After her first real whimpers started, we turned on the record player but even that couldn’t drown it out completely once the labor came full blast.

It started that early morning right after breakfast and stretched on until well after supper. Some of the others went to their rooms. Most of us stayed in the commons room. Everybody pretty much just munched for supper on whatever we could find.

I sat with my legs under me, wide eyed, on the couch with Merrick. How could someone survive thirteen and a half hours of constant pain and it still wasn’t over. Some people went to bed but I was too fascinated.

I tried intently not to hear the screams. Merrick sat beside me, looking a little sickly himself. It felt strange, hearing someone scream and not feel the need to go save them.

After two more hours of screaming I saw Mrs. Trudy come around the corner by the stairs.

“Sherry. I need you,” she said quickly and I froze.

“Me? Why me?”

“I just need you, come on.”

“Mrs. Trudy, please...”

Her serious face was on, so I slowly got up and moved towards her. I peeked back to look at Merrick and he was smiling sympathetically.

No one said no to Mrs. Trudy, no one.

When I entered the room, I saw Katie. She looked terrible. I mean terrible in the nicest way possible. She was sweating, screaming, yelling, red faced, clenching fist and gritting teeth, hair a piled and sweeping mess and...she was spread eagle.

I tried to keep my eyes averted which was surprisingly easy.

I was there for at least another hour, maybe longer. I couldn’t believe it took this long to have a baby. Then, Mrs. Trudy handed me a towel and told me to stand behind her there and wait. I did. I couldn’t do anything else because I was frozen in fear and had no idea what I was doing in there.

Katie started to scream louder and louder. Paul looked almost as exhausted as her but urged her on, coaxing her to give it all she had. He looked so sweet pushing her hair back from her forehead, murmuring in her ear that it was almost over, they were finally gonna have the baby they have been trying for for years, he loved her and she was doing great.

Then I saw it under Trudy’s arm, the baby! It was coming! I saw the head of shiny black hair.

Trudy leaned back to me.

“Sherry, I’m going to hand the baby to you. I want you to take him or her over there to where they’ve set the warm water out and clean him up a bit. Then go for a walk around with him for a little while. She’s torn so I’m gonna have to sew her up and I’ve got no medicine to do it. Paul and her sister need to stay with her for this. I
need
you to do this. Can you do this for me...and don’t freak out?”

“Yes,” is all I could say.

What else was there to say, so I braced myself. I had never in my life, other than Danny, held a baby and that was a long long time ago. I
was
freaking, but I wouldn’t tell Mrs. Trudy that.

I watched and waited, each time I thought this push is the one, it still wasn’t. It was cruel and unusual. Oh, how did women do this? Why, when you knew this would happen, would you purposely get pregnant? I was almost thankful God spared me from this by making me sterile.

Then there it was. There
she
was. It was a girl! Katie got her girl. I was so happy tears welled up in my eyes.

Mrs. Trudy held the baby up for Paul and Katie to see for a few moments then handed her to me. She was so tiny. So very tiny compared to what I would have imagined. So pink and perfect and a little patch of black curls on top of that rounded head.

I walked over to the pallet holding her head. I remembered my own advice to my mother about baby Danny very well, ‘Hold the head’.

I talked to myself since no one was around and they couldn’t hear me anyway.

“You can do this, Sherry. It’s perfectly natural. Back in the day, people had babies at home all the time and they didn’t even have diapers. You can change a diaper.”

After I got her cleaned up, I placed a teeny diaper on her. I was only guessing which way it was supposed to go on but it stayed on when I picked her up so I went with it.

“There. See. We did it,” I told the baby but she just squinted her little eyes.

I wrapped her in the smallest yellow blanket I’d ever seen on the makeshift changing table Trudy had made out of her dresser top. I held her tight and secure and walked slowly out of the room without looking at the others for fear of seeing something gruesome.

Panic set in all around me like a fog and it wasn’t even my baby, my flesh. Katie said her name was Sky, on the account that she probably wouldn’t see the real sky much in her lifetime. My slow scared rocking pace was a lull and she, little precious Sky, fell right back to sleep.

As I turned the corner around the stairs I heard happy gasps and awe’s of the ones who stayed up to wait for this moment. I couldn’t help the smile on my face. I never imagined how warm and perfect this would feel. Marissa, Celeste and Kay were right there in a second, cooing and sweet talking, even though Sky’s eyes were closed. The others slowly gathered around.

Jeff and Eli walked up too. Jeff was in a trance in the truest since of the word. He couldn’t remove his eyes from her.

“Katie named her Sky,” I said, my voice cracking.

“She’s beautiful like her mamma,” her uncle Eli said, tilting his head and running a finger down her cheek.

Jeff stepped even closer and looked at her intensely. I saw Eli start to make his way to the back room.

“Eli, you probably don’t want to go in there yet. Trudy’s sewing her up but, she’s doing fine. Laura’s with her still.”

“Ok, I’ll just wait by the door,” Eli said and hurried off.

Then the baby talk commenced.

“Ah, look at her. What a sweet baby.”

“She’s precious, yes she is. Adorable.”

“I bet she’s got sky blue eyes too. She’s gonna be gorgeous!”

“Wow. I’ve never seen a real baby before.”

The baby talk could literally have gone on forever. I realized I had a tear running down my face, then another. I felt Sky’s little breaths against my chest and I wanted to sob at the surreal ease of it all, but held back. I looked up trying to find Merrick. He was standing by the couch where I left him and he was looking at me with a face I couldn’t decipher.

I’m so sorry, honey. I’m sorry that you can’t be a mother yourself. I wish you could see what I see, right now. You are so beautiful. Baby, please don’t cry.

I saw him walking to me at normal human pace, coming to stand behind me, feeling his hands on my waist. I was not crying entirely for my own reasons. I was just so happy for them. To see life come full circle with all this death was like a miracle.

I was still smiling though the tears were falling. It was such a strange sensation. I was utterly devastated yet so incandescently happy in the same moment. No, I wouldn’t ever have this for myself and yes, I wanted it. She was so beautiful and fragile.

Merrick tentatively put his hand on her head. He smiled. He’d never touched a baby either.

What a wonderful father he would make. I couldn’t help but let it flash before me. A new life; me, Merrick, a wedding, my pregnant belly, Merrick on a craving ice cream run, a new baby, late night feedings, Merrick teaching Jr. to ride a bike, Jr. meeting a girl... It was so perfect and yet so impossible and unreachable.

“You want to hold her?” I asked Merrick.

“Uh...no...no...that’s ok,” he stammered nervously.

Lies. So, I handed Sky to him, ever so gently, which he didn’t protest to just like I knew he wouldn’t. He held her like she was breakable but, in her case he was right.

She was breakable and beautiful and breathtaking.

She grabbed my pinky finger so tight in her sleep her little fingers turned white. I looked at Merrick’s face. Just like me I could tell that he could sit there and hold her all day and be perfectly happy.

It was too bad Merrick would never have this either. He looked so perfect holding her.

He finally pried his eyes from her to look at mine. I laughed a silent laugh at his awe of her, wondering if that was how it started with me. Wonder and awe. His smile widened like he could read my thoughts and he continued to look in my eyes and hold this precious cargo.

Some of the others made their way out of their rooms to meet the new little black haired beauty that added to our growing crew. Sky got passed around a few times before Trudy finally came in and said it was all clear. The faces on those people as Sky and I walked away was that of those you would never see again. They were heartbroken like me. It would be so hard to let her go.

About as soon as I saw Paul’s face I immediately knew how to let her go. He needed her, I could tell. It was more heartbreaking than anything I’d ever seen.

I handed her over and he immediately whispered his love to her. His face lit up so I left to give them their space to get acquainted with their new little one.

Merrick waited for me and as soon as I turned the corner he grabbed me and pulled me to him in a hug.

I’m sorry if I upset you before, by what I said.

“You didn’t. I was already thinking about that before you said anything.” I sighed remembering what if felt like to hold her. “She’s so gorgeous.”

“Yes. Yeah...she is. Wow. I had no idea,” he said looking off into space in a daze.

“You looked adorable with her,” I told him and he immediately looked back into my eyes.

“So did you. I’m so sorry, honey.”

I felt them again, happy tears with a twing of regret. He pulled me in tighter, wrapping his arms all the way around my back and letting me soak his shirt front with useless but warranted tears. His warm hand smoothed the back of my head to soothe me.

I didn’t have to explain to Merrick because he understood completely. I wondered if Trudy had known I couldn’t have children if she would have found someone else to help her. I was glad she came and got me though. That was so wonderful to be a part of.

“I’m ok. Silly but ok,” I whispered finally, wiping my eyes with his sleeve but he stopped me and wiped them with his thumbs.

We turned in for the night, saying our goodnights. Seeing Merrick hold Sky was so sweet. Actually, I couldn’t think of anything more sexy.

As I shut the door and flipped the switch off I felt him behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. He kissed my neck up and down from my ear to my shoulder scar. Then he tugged me down.

As we climbed into our sleeping bag I reached over to kiss him. He kissed me back eagerly. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I had been.

I hovered over him which he never allows. I kissed him with all the wiles of the seductress I was, which I had to admit to myself weren’t much.

His hands were on my waist just under the hem of my shirt on my skin, tight and tingling. I pulled upward at his shirt hem and pulled it over his head. He grabbed me as soon as he was free of it and kissed me harder, pulling me under him and then we rolled back to me on top.

For a moment I thought he was finally giving in, but no. He slowed his enthusiasm and lips but I didn’t want to and I tried to pull him to me tighter. He grabbed my face between his hands so gently and pulled it away just a bit. Looking into me.

“Sherry. Baby, you’ve got to stop. One more night. Please...behave,” he breathed, pleading with me.

I laughed a frustrated chuckle and he gently lifted me off him with incredible ease, folding me into his chest under his chin. I couldn’t argue with one more night and a perfect warm embrace to last me until then.

Oh, how I loved it when he said ‘behave’, like I was capable of misbehaving. Like I was tough, rugged and maybe not so fragile and breakable. I calmed my thoughts. If I was actually going to behave I’d better just enjoy the warmth and go to sleep. Immediately.

The next morning, my eyes burst open as soon as I woke. I was wide open, coherent and eager. I knew exactly what today was before I could think of anything else. I turned to see Merrick’s wide awake face too, just as happy and anticipatory as mine.