The contractions started long ago. They never stopped. Not after my dad’s phone call.
Now I’m propped up on a pile of pillows, drenched in sweat, gripping the sheets with shaking fingers as another wave tears through me. My hair sticks to my forehead. My throat is raw from breathing and screaming and trying to stay brave.
The doctor’s voice cuts through the haze, calm but sharp with urgency as she says, “Push!”
I try, but my body feels like it’s unraveling thread by thread.
Tyra squeezes my hand so tightly it feels like we’re fused. She sits pressed against my side, her face pale with worry yet fierce with determination. She murmurs encouragements, curses in between, and little jokes that almost make me laugh even thoughI’m crying. She is the best friend I never deserved, steady as stone when everything inside me feels like liquid fear.
The doctor glances at the monitor. Her mouth tightens, but she forces a smile. “You can do this, Peighton. You have to.”
Outside the open doorway, I hear measured pacing. Heavy footfalls. A man trying not to come undone.
Gustav.
He hasn’t slept in nearly a day. Eighteen hours of labor. Eighteen hours of him wearing a groove into the hallway floor while forbidding anyone inside unless absolutely necessary. Every few minutes he stops, listens, then resumes pacing like an animal trapped in a gilded cage. I know he’s barely holding himself together. I know the second he walks inside, his face will soften for me even if everything inside him is screaming.
“Peighton,” Tyra whispers, her thumb brushing my knuckles, “you’re almost there. I can see it in the doctor’s face.”
My chest trembles. “I can’t... I’m so tired.”
She leans close until our foreheads nearly touch. “But you will. Because you’re strong. A survivor. And that little baby is going to be perfect because she’s half you.”
A small sound comes from the doorway. I turn my head and find Gustav standing there. His eyes take in everything at once: my trembling body, Tyra steadying me, the blood, the doctor preparing for another contraction. He looks like he wants to tear the world apart because I’m hurting.
The doctor nods to him. “Talk to her. She listens to you.”
He moves instantly. In two long strides he is at my bedside. He’s beside me, bracing his hands on either side of my head, his forehead pressed to mine for a fleeting moment. His breath is warm against my cheek.
“Devushka,” he murmurs, his voice a rough whisper layered with fear and awe, “look at me.”
I try. His face swims in and out of focus, but the gray of his eyes pins me in place.
“You are almost there,” he says. “Our baby is almost here. You are bold like an American and tough like a Russian. You can do this.”
A sob escapes me and he kisses my temple, the gesture shockingly tender for a man who has killed with his bare hands. His lips linger as if he’s afraid to lose contact. His palm cups the side of my head with reverence usually reserved for holy things.
The doctor says, “Push.”
And something inside me breaks open. Fear turns into anger. Exhaustion into stubbornness. Pain into purpose.
I grip Gustav’s shirt with shaking fingers, brace my feet, and push with everything inside me. The pain is so sharp it steals the world for a moment. Then another push. And another. The doctor’s tone shifts from instructive to urgent. Tyra cries when she sees something I can’t yet.
“Yes! One more, Peighton!” she shouts.
I give everything I have left.
A sudden release, a rush of pressure leaving my body, and then—
A silence so thick it’s suffocating.
My heart stops.
Then a tiny, delayed cry pierces the air. Weak but alive. Fragile but real.
“She’s here,” the doctor says softly.
The world narrows to a single moment: a small, wriggling form lifted into view, slick and pink-blue and impossibly tiny. A head full of jet black hair. A face that looks scrunched in outrage at existence itself.
