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“She’s not a horse, man! Lower the dosage!” she said.
The doctor hastily made alterations to the device. No doubt he was used to administering medicine to much larger creatures than Harper. He did so and handed the device to Lily, who checked the reading before injecting it into Harper.
The moment she did, the intensity of the pain lowered by several orders of magnitude. Still there, but at least now it was manageable.
A crowd of scientists amassed outside the padded cell, watching, but made no effort to get involved.
“Now, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of movies about birth, right?” Lily said. “It will be a bit like that… but with more screaming and pain and pushing and… other things. When I say, push.”
Harper gripped my hand so tight and she almost crushed it.
The minutes dragged by as blood-soaked towels were removed and replaced and the pushing exercise went on and on, until I wondered if there would ever be an end.
“A little more!” Lily said. “Push!”
Then came the most glorious sound I’d ever heard.
The wailing cry of the baby as it was born, its skin red and wet. Lily cut the cord and immediately wrapped the baby in a small towel.
She smiled as she held the baby in her arms and made soft cooing noises. She checked the baby over to make sure everything was as it should be.
The doctor at her side quickly passed a device over it. The device beeped and a blue light flashed on the top.
“He’s healthy,” he said.
“Of course, he’s healthy!” Lily said. “You don’t need a fancy device with flashing lights to tell you that! Use your eyes, man!”
The doctor seemed taken aback, not least because he wasn’t a man at all but a slimy-skinned alien species called ghoptats.
Lily rounded the chair and handed him over to an exhausted Harper. She took the little baby in her arms.
“Hello there,” she said. “I’m your mommy. And this is your daddy. It’s nice to meet you.”
Her baby.
My baby.
It was the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on. And right then, in this tiny cocoon of a cell, I felt the bond that held us together. A family, joined by some powerful but unknowable link spanning eons.
Was it love?
The sense of belonging that only came when you were joined together as a family?
I’d never had either of those things—a family or a home. I had a roaming existence but that wasn’t the same thing.
Exhausted as she was, Harper turned to look up at me. Her skin glowed, wet and blotchy, but she had never looked more lovely than she did right that moment.
We did this. We made this little baby. We fashioned this family. Not on purpose, of course, but it existed and was real in either case.
And it belonged to me.
“Show’s over, folks,” an austere voice said from behind the crowd of onlooking scientists.
They dispersed, revealing Annas, Rarr, and Tus standing shoulder to shoulder. Only Tus had the appearance of someone who didn’t want to be there. The others wore the blank expressions of those ordered to carry out their duty.
Annas’ eyes dropped to the baby clutched in Harper’s arms and all the warmth seeped out of me when I thought about what was going to come next, the fear of knowing what would happen if Harper got pregnant.
The inevitable nature of it didn’t shock me.
