Chapter 2 Painful labour

AVA

The wave of nausea hit me like a sledgehammer. I barely made it to the public restroom before my stomach emptied itself violently. The smell of bleach and old urine made everything worse. I gripped the sides of the grimy toilet, my knuckles white, as another wave crashed over me.

The pregnancy test lay on the dirty floor beside me, those two pink lines staring up at me like an accusation. Two lines that changed everything.

"No, no, no," I whispered to the empty bathroom stall. My voice echoed off the cracked tiles. "This can't be happening."

But it was happening. I was pregnant. With his baby. The stranger who'd made me feel wanted for one perfect night and then vanished like smoke.

I picked up the test with shaking hands and stuffed it in my purse. Maybe my mother would understand. Maybe she'd help me. Maybe things would be different now that I was carrying her grandchild.

I was so wrong.

"Pregnant?" My mother's voice was ice-cold when I told her an hour later. She didn't even look up from her soap opera. "You stupid girl. You're just like me, getting knocked up by some man who doesn't give a damn about you."

"Mom, please." I stood in the doorway of our cramped living room, my heart pounding. "I need help. I need somewhere to stay until I figure things out."

She laughed, that same harsh sound that had haunted my childhood. "Help? You want help? You made your bed, now lie in it. I'm not raising another bastard child."

"I'm not asking you to raise the baby. I'm asking for a place to sleep."

"And I'm telling you no." She stood up from the couch, swaying slightly from the wine she'd been drinking. "You're not my problem anymore. You're eighteen, you're pregnant, and you're on your own. Just like I was."

Tears stung my eyes. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"That's not my problem." She walked to the door and opened it wide. "Get out. And don't come back."

The door slammed behind me with a finality that echoed through my bones. I stood on the cracked sidewalk, my small bag of belongings in one hand, nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

The women's shelter smelled like disinfectant and desperation. It was a place for the forgotten, the abandoned, the broken. I fit right in.

"You can stay for thirty days," the intake worker told me. Her name tag read "Sandra," and she had kind eyes that had seen too much. "After that, you'll need to find other arrangements."

My bed was a narrow cot in a room with five other women. The woman next to me, Maria, was in her fifties with gray-streaked hair and burn scars on her arms.

"First time?" she asked quietly that first night.

I nodded, afraid to speak.

"It gets easier. Sleeping, I mean. The rest..." She shrugged. "The rest you just survive."

I took whatever work I could find. Cleaning offices at night, scrubbing floors on my hands and knees until my back screamed. Washing dishes in restaurants that paid cash under the table. Every dollar went toward saving for when the baby came.

The morning sickness didn't stop at twelve weeks like the free clinic pamphlet said it would. It followed me everywhere. I threw up in restaurant bathrooms, in alleyways, behind dumpsters. I learned to carry plastic bags and mints, to time my meals around work schedules.

"You're getting fat," sneered one of the other women at the shelter. Her name was Kelly, and she had mean eyes and a meaner mouth. "Must be eating too much of that free food."

I didn't tell her I was pregnant. I didn't tell anyone. The shame was too much, the judgment too heavy to bear. I wore baggy clothes and hunched my shoulders, trying to hide the growing evidence of my mistake.

After five months, I couldn't hide it anymore. My supervisor at the cleaning company, Mr. Harrison, cornered me in the supply closet.

"You're knocked up, aren't you?" His eyes were cold, calculating. "Can't have pregnant girls working here. Bad for business."

"Please," I begged, my voice breaking. "I need this job. I'll work twice as hard, I promise."

"Sorry, honey. Nothing personal." He handed me my final paycheck, two days' worth of work. "Good luck with the baby."

I was six months pregnant when I was forced to leave the shelter. Thirty days had turned into sixty through Sandra's kindness, but even she couldn't bend the rules forever.

"I'm sorry, Ava," she said, her eyes filled with genuine regret. "I wish I could do more."

I spent the next three months sleeping wherever I could find shelter. Park benches when the weather was warm. Twenty-four-hour laundromats when it was cold. The public library during the day, pretending to read while I dozed in the back corner.

People stared at me, the pregnant homeless girl with ratty clothes and hollow eyes. I heard their whispers, their judgment.

"Probably on drugs," one woman said as I walked past a coffee shop.

"Should have kept her legs closed," muttered another.

"What kind of mother will she be?" a third voice added.

Each comment was like a knife to my chest, but I kept walking. I had to keep walking. For my baby.

The hunger was the worst part. I was eating for two but could barely afford to feed myself. I learned which restaurants threw out food at closing time, which churches served free meals, which grocery stores didn't check dumpsters too carefully.

My baby deserved better than this. He deserved a mother who could provide for him, who had a home and a job and a future. Instead, he was getting me, broken, homeless, alone.

:::::::

The contractions started at 3 AM in a gas station bathroom. I was cleaning the toilets, trying to earn enough money for a meal, when the pain hit. Sharp, overwhelming, impossible to ignore.

"No," I whispered, gripping the sink. "Not yet. Please, not yet."

But the baby had other plans.

I made it to the free clinic just as my water broke. The nurse, a tired-looking woman named Janet, took one look at me and rushed me to a room.

"Do you have anyone we can call?" she asked as she helped me onto the narrow bed.

"No," I gasped between contractions. "There's no one."

The labor was long and brutal. Eighteen hours of pain with no one to hold my hand, no one to tell me it would be okay. Just me, alone, bringing a life into the world that didn't want either of us.

"Push, Ava," Janet encouraged. "I can see the head."

I screamed as another contraction tore through me. "I can't do this!"

"Yes, you can. You're stronger than you know."

When the baby finally came, Janet placed him on my chest. He was perfect, tiny fingers, perfect toes, a small cry that sounded like music.

"It's a boy," she said with a tired smile. "What will you name him?"

I looked down at my son, my heart breaking and healing at the same time. "Eli," I whispered. "His name is Eli."

As I held him, studying every perfect feature, something stopped me cold. His eyes opened briefly, just for a moment, and I saw them clearly.

They were gray. Storm-cloud gray.

Exactly like his father's...