Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,56
this. I’m going to die.”
I maneuver to spread her legs some more. My hands immediately get coated in blood. I have no idea what to do here. I’ve read books about all sorts of child births, but my mind is foggy with all the drugs they shot up my system and the agony I’m trying to keep at bay.
“You’re not going to die,” I whisper. It’s cold and I know Kristine’s in pain, but one thing is certain, the baby is coming right now. “We just need to deliver this baby and out looks like I won’t have to cut you. You just have to push.”
She shakes her head, her hands hugging her midsection as she lies in a fetal position that breaks my heart.
“What’s taking so long back there?” Sean or Shane shouts and they start laughing. I hear the clinking of bottles and realize they’re drinking.
“Oh God, Mia. How are we going to do this?” Kristine moans, her eyes wide. “I can’t do this! I want… I want drugs. This is too much!”
My heart is freaking pounding out of control and she’s panicking. I need to calm her down and hopefully, we can do this and find a way out of this hellhole.
“Hey, hey, hey, listen to me. I won’t pretend like I know how much pain you’re in right now, but we’re just going to pretend like everything is going to be fine.”
“How is pretending going to fucking help?” she snaps.
“Keep your voice down,” I whisper. “Pretending will help because we’re going to try and believe that everything’s going to be all right because you know what, we’ve both hit rock bottom and now, the only way we have left is to fight through the pain and have this baby.”
“Ahh, I hate this.”
“This wasn’t what I had in mind for my first day of senior year, but here we fucking are, Kristine,” I mutter, wrapping the extra sheet around her bottom so she’s somehow elevated. “We just have to deal.”
A sense of déjà vu hits me.
Julian said that to me before. When I was lying in his arms. He whispered it in my ear.
Life is unfair but we just have to deal and now, here I am, pretty sure I’m going to have to deliver this baby.
Looking around discreetly, hoping those jerks are still ignoring us, I kneel between Kristine’s legs. I grab the biggest knife I see in the bunch and tuck in the folds of the sheet I’m wrapped in.
“You’re not going to cut my vagina with that, are you?”
“Not even to my worst enemy. I told you, you’re going to give birth the old school, natural way.”
I see the doubt un her eyes first. “What if—”
“Kristine, you have no idea the number of what ifs running through my head right now and the crappiest part is, each one doesn’t necessarily have a solution.”
“Gee, thanks for… ah!” she screams.
With her screams, another noise erupts from out of nowhere from outside, that makes my heart stop.
“What was that?” Sean snaps.
“Go and check.”
“No, you go.”
Fucking cowards.
“Push Kristine.” I urge, looking around the warehouse. Whatever’s going on outside, please let it be some kind of intervention or help pf some kind. The pool of blood is getting bigger, seeping into the sheet that covers me and still, I can feel the baby’s head.
“Oh god, I can’t, please no,” she cries, tears streaming down her pale face. She’s shivering and I don’t think most if it is because of the chilly breeze in the warehouse.
“Yes, you can,” I whisper.
“It’s too early! It’s too early, Mia. It can’t be coming now. I’m seven months along.”
The impartiality of her words, referring to her baby as ‘it’ is so heartbreaking.
“We’ll just have to deal with it when we get to it, now lie down and keep your voice down.”
“You keep your voice down since you don’t have a ten-pound sack of human bone and tissue pressing down your vagina!” she grits out.
“Your math is wrong. A seven-month-old fetus can’t weigh—”
“Fucking stop nerding out on me and get this thing out of me!” she screams.
And that’s when I see the baby crowning.
“Someone’s here!”
Chapter Fifteen
Mia
“Fuck!”
I perk up, my back ramrod straight as my heart stops beating. My breath stutters out of my mouth with a raggedness to it.
Someone’s here! Oh God.
Even Kristine pauses, her eyes wide as she listens to the shocked silence that falls over the warehouse, like the silence before a storm and all hell breaks loose.