lightning crashes// Nonnie's birth// {Kheft}

She’s leapt onto the one piece of information and clings to it like a life preserver, I only hope that I can make this assurance a reality. What if it goes over my head, what if they rip the children away and send them to a foster home within the Capitol. Would it matter if she never even knew? My stomach twists and I’m suddenly without air, because I know. I know it matters more than anything. Lane…he would have been four…next month. If I had any hope in the world of seeing him alive…with someone to love him…a father to raise him. I bite my lip, and know in that instant that I will do anything to ensure this woman has that hope. She’s about to leave everything that matters in the hands of a stranger, and I will not let her trust me mistakenly. I will not be my mother.

***

So much blood, like the outpouring of my guilt, and pain wrestling to flip me inside out. I’m pushing, giving birth to nothing…to rent and mangled flesh that should be my child…what have I done? Like expelling my own heart out and watching it wash away from my grasp. Mama, what did we do? “It’s ok, baby…it’s going to be all ok.”

The oldest lie in the book.

***

“I promise you, Nonnie, I’ll take them to Jack myself.” It doesn’t matter that I might have just promised the impossible. There is no other outcome that I can live with. I’ve been paying penance for the last four years and it never seems to cleanse my hands, maybe this will be enough?

"Kori, Thank you."

She looks at me like I’m a savior, and the shame burns my chest like a live coal. I’m nothing; I’m no one, if she only knew…

There are no words in my mouth, nothing that can press its way past the stranglehold of my guilt. So, I let the silence hang, heavy with her fear and my resurrected pain. At least I am the only one bearing them both. It’s so much better this way; I give her the few moments of quiet to hug the swollen stomach and…smile. At least she can manage a smile. I watch and admire the calm she seems to embrace, letting it settle deeply into my bones as I lay out the equipment I will need. A bedside ultrasound machine flicks on with a brief glimmer of lights and low sonic intonations that signify it’s beginning to warm up. Stone age piece of machinery will take forever. While I wait, I go through the routine of gelling up a probe. Sensing Nonnie’s eyes following my preparations with resumed concern, my lips curve in a soothing smile.

“This part is a little uncomfortable, but it’s worth it. Would you like to see your babies?” Screen now flashing its warm blue readiness, I help Noreen into a more comfortable position, and begin my exam. It takes a few minutes of adjustment, and one or two pained expressions from my patient, but finally I have the angle just right. My finger delightedly traces a darkly shadowed shape on the screen. “There, see the head? This is…” I tilt the probe just a little to pan down the curled up body, “Your son.” A few more moments and I’ve brought the second fetus into view. “A girl…look at those fingernails. They both have good, strong heartbeats, and they are placed at the right position in your uterus.” A boy and a girl…for a moment I can’t control the fierce jealousy in my heart. For a moment, as their twin hearts beat a steady pattern of life on the ultrasound screen, I’d trade places with this mother on the brink of execution.

The moment hangs in the air, the whooshing of nearly synchronized heartbeats the only sound that makes an impression—until the steel door jumps open with a small explosion of metal slamming against the wall. A gurney is wheeled into the room by the two techs assigned to our case, already scrubbed and masked, they motion impatiently at Noreen who is obviously not as prepped as she should be.

“Kori, Knox is having a fit waiting for his patient. Why isn’t she ready?”

I hate that I have to rush this, that I have to take this momentary peace away from Nonnie, but surgeons are not known for their patience or bedside manners. So I hasten now, printing the ultrasound readouts and putting away the machine. The rest is a blur of activity. Noreen is assisted onto the stretcher; I’m placing an IV with the smooth skill obtained after hundreds and hundreds of similar processes. Twist the tourniquet into place, swab the skin with disinfectant—its pungent aroma stinging my nose—and slide the needle through skin into the blue vein just beneath. I can feel her wince briefly, but the routine is so swift that I know the sting lasts only a moment, and then I’m taping it into place. Spiking a bag of saline and dextrose solution to drip with a continuous infusion, feeding her metabolic processes during what may be her longest waking nightmare.

I squeeze her free hand, “I’m not leaving you, but they are going to take you to the operating room. I have to clean up, I’ll meet you in there.”

With no one else to comfort, I’m left to comfort myself…

***

She thinks I’m losing my mind, it’s slowly slipping free, loosed from its moorings and set sailing…sailing of bloody waves that throw sanguine tears in the air to spray my face, staining it red, my hands are red, everything about me is tainted with that wretched color. They all think that I’m gone, lost in a shroud of tears and blank-eyed stares. We had a casket made. After I spent the only scrapings of emotion I could collect from a hollowed out chest, the last shreds of energy pieced together into a crazed fit of temper.

He was my baby…and I’d bury him.

The box was so small, like a jewelry chest with its ornate latch, it fit in my hands. Big enough, they said, when I couldn’t help but wonder aloud at its size. Big enough for a baby…big enough for my heart too, I suppose. Because all that suddenly mattered in my world could fit into that ten-inch space. Locked up in a vacuum, packed away under layers of earth.

Silent, so, so silent.

Do I want to say something?

What is there to say? I want to scream until my lungs collapse and my throat bleeds. I want to throw myself down, fold myself up, until I can fit into that coffin, and be buried with him. How can I leave him alone in that hole? With the darkness closing in and the weight of the earth pressing down, it’s no place for a child; he’ll be scared and crying with no one but the insects to hear…

***

How long have I been here? Five minutes…ten? An hour? I pick myself up off the floor, uncertain how I got there to begin with. IV supplies are scattered all over the floor, and the tray lies tipped over a few feet away. I blink. Did I do this? I don’t have time to gather them all up again, instead, I turn on my heel and propel myself out of the room and down along the hallway. I step through the heavy double doors and am faced with a tiny, glassed in room.

Here I strip away anything unnecessary from my person, storing it all in the lockers that line one wall. Necklace, jacket, wallet, everything goes in and I spin the lock to secure them. Then one by one I slide paper slips over my shoes, a net around my hair, a mask comes last, strapping down over my mouth and nose and immediately restricting my breathing to the slow, rhythmic inhalations that will filter gently through the material. Warm, stale air already fills my nostrils. I hate these masks.

Lastly, I step into the antechamber, pausing as the beams sweep me head to toe. I hold my arms out straight from my body, bracing my legs shoulder width apart, and listen for the soft chime that will signal my bacterial eradication is complete and I can enter the sterile room. I can see through the door ahead as I wait. Noreen is already there, being prepped with her gown folded back from her stomach and big iodine scrubs being applied to her stomach, soaking and cleansing the skin for the surgeon’s knife.

The one who depends on the services she renders
To those who come knocking
She's seeing too clearly what she can't be
What understanding defies

My breath is so loud, a gale wind against the sensitive drums of my ears, caught and thrown back at me in a fog of warm, humid air by the mask that covers mouth and nose. The soft beeping and wailing of the monitors prevents the operating room from ever masquerading as a quiet retreat. I’ve only just stepped into its stark, sterile white field and already I want to flee. My knees buckle a little, and I take a moment to sag against the wall with my head spinning in a million directions.

I can’t do this…I can’t be this person…the strong, assured nurse who can make the crumbling world of a doomed mother into a secure place. I’m not strong enough; I’m the most pathetic creature. I wasn’t brave enough to save a helpless infant…one who needed my protection, depended on it…how can I possibly be the holding hand for Noreen? My fingers slide up the damp skin of my cheeks and into beneath the elastic band of my hairnet. I want to rip it off, strip my gloves and gown away, I want to run from this room and find a small space of quiet and darkness where I can hide from all the ugly realities this day is dragging to the surface of my dammed up life. I’ve worked so long and hard to sink my skeletons, weigh them down, and keep them hidden in the inky black depths of this glassy lake. One pregnant girl with her twin heartbeats is slowly churning up the waters until all the bones mix and rise, until everyone will see exactly the decay existing inside of me.

“Kori?”

The one muffled plea is so quiet and scared, a question hanging in the air, begging for someone to hear and answer. I promised. I told her I would be here. And here I am, every useless bit of me. I can do this…I can.

I take a step closer to the table, two, and the smell of blood slaps me across the face with its metallic shock. I nearly turn and vomit on the pristine floor.

The one who survives by making the lives
Of others worthwhile
She's coming apart
Right before my eyes

Her stomach forms a lurid hump on the stretcher, stained a sickly yellow from the iodine, skin stretched tighter than a drum. The surgeon holds a wicked looking scalpel, silver gleaming beneath radiant white spotlights. So much white, everywhere, it’s blinding…and then red. The knife parts her skin, sliding through its layers like my father carving open a bird at the dinner table. Blood streams from the open incision, hanging heavily in the air. I want to stand and stare, as though I’ve never before seen its color, watched a woman laid down and cut open like a sacrificial animal. I have though, so many times that I learned to disconnect my mind and my eyes, to forget the horror of watching someone rummage through her belly like finding the right shoe in a trunk of half-priced bargains.

This isn’t my cue, it’s not my turn, and I finally bridge the tiled gap between myself and the bed, forcing my mind to ignore the gruesome incision, the sanguine rivers, the flashes of mockery my mind is trying to impress. I find Nonnie’s hand, small and shaking, and I grip it tightly. Whether I mean to comfort her or myself, I don’t know. I just know that I might float away into these nightmares that are licking at the corners of my mind, this self-recrimination that wants to swallow me whole.

Her eyes are wide and dark, staring fixedly at the ceiling as if it might fade and show her whatever her mind is clinging to now, whatever it is that Noreen Lyvers most desires.

She turns up the light
Anticipating night falling tenderly around her
Watches the dusk
The words won't come

I can see the surgeon’s arms nearly disappear into her abdomen, scarlet spreading up to his elbows as he works urgently now, parting flesh and pushing the coiled intestines back to open her uterus, birth the babies into this frigid and unfriendly world. Sweat forms patterns on his forehead, as he wrestles with Mother Nature’s design.

"Male twin born at 7:28pm"

The words follow closely on the red, wrinkled heels of a tiny body, dripping its bloody baptism, being wrenched free of his mother’s womb. The puckered ears and closely curled limbs are so heartbreakingly perfect, and I have to let go of Nonnie’s hand to reach for him. The baby fits easily in my palms. Tiny, he’s so very small. The cord is swiftly clamped and severed, freeing the child of its physical ties to mother, and release me to carry him quickly towards a scale set against the wall.

“1.3 kilograms in weight thirty-six centimeters in length…” I call out the numbers in a clear voice, hoping that it will calm the frightened girl whose eyes I can see are anxiously straining to locate her baby. My fingers slide over the miniature torso. His skin turns a rosy pink with stimulation, and his little legs and arms begin to flail, I’m checking the hummingbird pulse at the inside of one bent arm, and as I do, he opens rosebud lips and begins to wail. “Good cry, strong muscle tone, apgar score of eight.” I hasten to bundle him tightly into a blanket, fitting a cap snugly on his head. Then I cradle Joshua Jack in my hands and lift him into his mother’s arms, laying the squirming, crying baby against her chest.

She carries the act so convincingly
The fact is sometimes she believes it
She can be happy with the way things are
Be happy with the things she's done

With one child delivered successfully, I turn for the next, and see a look of concentrated anxiety on the surgeon’s face. He’s wrestling with the child, trying to turn her and get her free of the mother’s pelvis, but she’s wedged low. Seconds tick by and I can feel my own face starting to settle into grim lines. With the uterus open, the longer the baby remains trapped, the worse its situation becomes. A second set of hands from one of the nurses join Knox’s, applying pressure to the internal organs, trying to give more room, and it appears to work. One tiny leg slides free, and then she’s out and flying into my waiting arms.

This time my announcements aren’t as gleeful. The little girl is painfully small, and her skin is a dusky, mottled color that drags my heart down into my own stomach. Her legs curl close, but limply, barely fighting against my fingers’ assault. Wake up little one; let’s hear your voice. I take the blanket and scrub at her chest, using its soft fibers to pump rub her dry and warm, hoping to wake her reflexes. “0.89 kilograms…thirty five point five centimeters.” So underdeveloped. I apply suction to her nostrils, clearing them of any fluid, and turning her over, I give a few, brisk pats. At last, a weak little cry sounds, and she squirms unhappily, her skin blooming into rosy life. Tears prick my vision, and relief is a strangled gasp in my throat as I gladly bring her over to join her brother. “Apgar score was five, it is now a seven.”

It is too little time before I must take the twins back and settle them in the heated canopies, letting an aid wheel them both towards the recovery room where we will join once Nonnie’s stomach is put back together. So quickly, as if that was all it takes. I feel my world tilt again as I watch the infants disappear, and the blood is a vivid haze against my vision. A few stitches, some staples, and that is all it takes? All science needs to repair the emptiness of her stomach, the gaping hole in the very core of her. Close her up…she’ll be good as new.

Then we can send her out to die with a clean conscience.

I need not to need
I've always been the tower
But now I feel like I'm the flower trying to bloom in snow