When it still kicked against my palm.
When those tiny movements had felt like silent promises.
I used to whisper to it in the dark.
“I’m here.”
“Stay strong.”
“Mama will protect you.”
The memory slammed into me without warning.
Labor had come in the eighth month.
Too early. Too violent. Too cruel.
I had been dragged to the prison infirmary in chains, wrists raw from metal cuffs that cut into my skin with every step.
The contractions had started as a dull ache.
Then intensified.
Then became unbearable waves that ripped through my abdomen like knives twisting deeper each time.
I remember collapsing halfway down the hallway because my legs gave out.
Guards laughed.
One of them grabbed my arm and yanked me upright.
“Walk,” he had ordered.
The prison guards who had turned authority into a weapon and cruelty into entertainment.
Harlan had stood at the foot of the delivery table that night — the one who had orchestrated every fresh hell inside those walls.
Arms crossed. Watching.
His eyes fixed between my spread thighs with a sick fascination that made my skin crawl.
The two nurses on duty were his. They answered to him.
They never once told him to leave. They never asked for privacy.
They barely looked at me like I was human.
The fluorescent lights above burned harshly into my retinas.
Cold metal restraints locked my wrists to the rails.
No epidural. No pain relief.
No monitoring equipment beyond the bare minimum.
Just my body. My pain.
And their indifference.
