“Irina,” I said. “You need to push now. The baby is ready to come out.”
Irina nodded, but I could see the look in her eyes. Sheknew. She knew we weren’t treating her any longer. At this rate, we were desperately hoping to save the baby.
Irina gritted her teeth and bore down, not making a sound.
“That’s it,” I said, my heart pounding. “One more, and we’ll have a baby.”
Another push, silent, steady, and the baby was out.
“It’s a boy,” I whispered to Irina. “A healthy boy.”
The newborn let out a cry, and I quickly wiped him up and placed him in his mother’s arms. No black marks on the baby. We’d saved him.
“I’m not going to let you go,” I told the new mother. “You will raise your son. Stay with me, Irina.”
“Henry,” Irina said, tears on her cheeks. “Please call him Henry.”
I took the vial from Lily’s hands, the so-called potion of swirling white in the vial. I poured half of it into the saline solution still pumping into Irina’s body, hoping that the combination of magic and medicine would be enough.
It wasn’t enough. Even as Irina stared at her baby, absorbing every moment with her son, the black continued to spread. It was at her chin, at her ankles, almost overtaking her body.
“It’s not enough!” Silas said. “You need to believe, Alessia. Medicine is not enough. You need to activate your powers.”
“How do I do that?” I shouted back at him. “I’m doing everything I can.”
“You’re not,” he snapped. “If you can’t break this curse, then nobody can. You are our only hope.”
“Please leave the room,” I instructed, deathly quiet. “Now.”
Silas opened his mouth to argue, but Lily stood and silenced him with a glance.
“She’s right,” Lily murmured. “This is not our place.”
The second Lily and Silas had evacuated the house, I regretted asking them to leave. I had very little experience as a practicing doctor, and even less experience with so-called magic. I stared at Irina and Henry, and wondered what I could possibly do to salvage this impossible situation.Alone.
I’d already delivered a baby without any real medical equipment, wasn’t that enough? As I stared at Irina, I knew it wouldn’t be.
I took the potion, the vial, and stared into it. In the quiet, the moment of calm between mother and son, I could feel it. Almost lyrical, a pull, as if the potion were calling to me, instructing me what to do, but in a language I couldn’t decipher.
I closed my eyes, let myself feel. If I didn’t try, Irina was as good as dead. I refused to let that happen.
I relaxed into this state, focusing on Silas’s words. Did I feel like I belonged here?
Yes.
I let the question roll off me.
Is this my home?
Do Iwantto be here?
Is this all real?
With each yes, I sank deeper into a hypnotic state.
Do I belong?
Another yes, this one coming from a place of hurt and desire I hadn’t known existed. I felt something unlocking inside of me, as if someone had turned a key to a safe inside my heart that’d been locked for decades.
