Bay just screams and screams. But I can’t be irresponsible. I won’t let him touch a corpse.
I close my eyes and rest my head against the car, trying to steady myself, but Bay keeps wailing.
"Oh Aiden, please wake up…" I whisper, because it all feels so heavy and lonely.
Finally I sigh and open my eyes, and I see that my stubborn little Bay has pounded the blanket for so long that he pushed it aside.
Before I react, his tiny hand with its splayed fingers clumsily grabs the pale hand of the dead newborn.
The moment those two hands touch…
A sudden burst of light floods everything, so sharp and blinding that it sends a shock through my whole system.
I lose consciousness.
When I come to, for a moment I have no idea what happened, but then it returns in fragments.
I don’t know how much time has passed, maybe five minutes or maybe half an hour. I blink and then I realize I hear sounds.
Quiet whimpering.
Right… right! I gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
I blink again and lower my head, surprised that the whimpering seems doubled.
In my arms lie two little bodies.
And I clearly hear two newborns’ voices.
They’re both mewling softly, the second one probably from the cold, because the blanket covers only Bay.
I stare in shock at the tiny face of the other newborn, no longer that pale.
He was dead!
I was absolutely certain he was dead. The bruise, where is it? I look the baby over, but I don’t see it.
Was I hallucinating?
But that’s not the only sound reaching me. From far away I hear something like distant calls, as if several people are shouting, along with the crackle of branches and the forest floor being trampled.
I cover both babies with the blanket, but my eyes keep drifting to the gap in the wall of bushes, the path carved out when the car rolled down the slope.
A couple of minutes later I see several figures in rain jackets making their way toward us.
"Hello, over here!" I shout.
I don’t have time to think about what just happened, about the strange miracle that occurred, because I have no idea how to wrap my head around it.
"Help, over here!" I call in a breaking voice.
I hear raised voices and the crack of branches under their feet, and soon a group of people runs closer toward us.
They aren’t first responders, as it turns out. They’re drivers who noticed the broken shrubs and marks on the road and decided to check if an accident happened.
When they see us they look terrified, especially when they realize I’m the only conscious one and the driver is dead.
For a moment everything is chaotic. One of them climbs back up the slope to call the police while the others pull Aiden out of the car and lay him next to me after I tell them we’re True Mates.
