It’s cold, so I wrap him in a second blanket.
I look toward what is still hanging from the other omega.
A bluish head with bluish lips.
To be honest, I’m afraid to do anything. Fear rarely paralyzes me, but it does now, and then another contraction rolls through the unconscious omega’s body and a gray little body slips onto the blanket.
I stare, just stare.
My lips tremble, tears spill down my cheeks because a tragedy has just happened to that other omega. He not only lost his husband but also his firstborn child.
The way the baby looks… I have no hope.
Taking a deep breath, eventually I manage to break through the paralysis.
Slowly I lean to the side, and I touch the tiny body.
The baby is so very small. Is it premature or just tiny? Compared to my son, he’s half his size. On the side of his head, his arm, and his back there’s a huge, bloody bruise.
Was that what killed him? During the accident? Were the seat belts that Albert Strada fastened himself with what crushed the baby?
With an uncertain motion I draw the baby toward me. He’s still warm because he was inside the omega’s body. I listen for a heartbeat, but there’s only silence. The only fast, frantic beat comes from my own son’s heart.
I’m lying, or half-lying, propped against the side of the car.
It’s one of those strange suspended moments. I lift my eyes to the gray sky and feel a wave of deep sorrow.
A tiny life was lost. He will never know love, happiness, the small daily joys, the smile of his parents, the starlit wonder in their eyes turned toward him… and he will never be held.
For a while, I look at the pale gray body. Something inside me twists in pain.
Slowly I reach for the little one. It isn’t easy to lift a stillborn while my own son lies against my chest.
But I manage to pull the dead baby up onto my other shoulder.
It’s all I can give him, one last embrace before he disappears into the depths of nonexistence.
I look at his tiny gray face.
I’m no expert in first aid, but I’m certain nothing could help in a situation like this. The baby is gone, and I have no doubt about it. The energy of life has left his body.
"Poor little one," I whisper. "You will not know what life is, with all its pain and all its sweetness."
Some people say it’s better not to exist, that it’s the kinder alternative, but I disagree, because beauty does not exist without the eyes that look at it, without the ones that pull it out of nothingness, without someone who will write a poem about it or paint a picture. The world becomes empty, a place of formsdrifting through it without meaning or purpose beyond simple being.
Suddenly I notice something strange.
My tiny son begins to squirm in an odd way, almost as if he’s trying to turn toward the dead baby.
A ragged cry tears out of his throat.
"Easy, Bay, it’s all right, we’re alive. I just need to gather my strength and find a way to get someone’s attention, but I’m afraid I’ll have to climb the slope to catch a signal, and for now I need to rest a moment because I just gave birth to you, and you are such a big boy…" I murmur to him in a soothing tone.
But Bay won’t calm down. He chaotically wiggles and stretches his little hand, almost like blindly reaching out, toward the stillborn newborn.
It’s so strange and almost unsettling that for a moment I build a barrier of blanket between the two babies, but little Bay screams louder and louder, and he has quite a set of lungs. His tiny fist keeps hitting the blanket barrier. How odd this is?
"My sweet boy, this is a poor dead little baby. It’s not a good idea for you to touch him."
