Her planner laid open, broken at the spine, on the counter. She glanced at it. The nagging feeling that she had in her stomach from earlier returned. She flipped through the past few weeks. Black hearts marked several days each week, but then about four weeks back, they stopped. There was a gap. And then approximately eight weeks ago, there were three red hearts in one week.
Vanessa flipped frantically backward, looking for another black heart and not finding one. Her heart raced. The blood drained from her face and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.
She tried to calm herself. She gathered up mail and opened it. She’d let it slide for months. She came across something from the fertility clinic from when she and Tom had been trying so hard to conceive. She opened it.
It was addressed to him.
And it confirmed something that Vanessa had feared for a long time.
Tom was sterile.
BIRDIE
Her thighs are slick with a mixture of fluid and blood and Birdie reaches down for her abdomen, grabbing it as a contraction seizes her. Her legs glide, the liquid making them move like velvet against glass. She grunts, biting her cheek until it bleeds, trying to keep herself quiet. She collapses against the wall of the art studio.
Her breathing quickens. She needs to move. She can’t stay here beside the door. The contraction abates, and she seizes the opportunity for mobility. She drags herself to her feet, her legs shaky and her shoulder aching. She stumbles past stacks of paintings, rotten and weatherworn, neglected for years and never displayed like they should have been.
Absurdly, she suddenly feels a sadness come over her for the person that used this studio. She wonders what they must have been like. But the thought is short-lived when her shirt sleeve snags against a painting, knocking it to the ground and tugging at her wound.
The pain is enough to make her vomit. She retches and heaves, whatever her last meal was comes up and lands at her feel, a wet splatter. The sight of it makes her heave again until there’s nothing left. And then another contraction reaches out and grabs her deep inside her abdomen. She can feel it in her back like a seizure. She wonders briefly if this is normal.
Fear spreads as she begins to breathe too quickly. She can feel herself losing oxygen, hyperventilating. She’s having a panic attack and she’s in labor. She can’t calm down.
The darkness seems to close in around her, the stacks of paintings seeming to grow in the gloom. They tower over her, threatening to topple and spill on top of her. The pain in her shoulder is eclipsed by the contraction. Her body feels like it’s breaking under the weight of all her decisions. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She bites down hard on her cheek and blood runs between her teeth and out over her lips, dripping onto the floor. A bitter laugh escapes as the contraction slows down.
She pants for a moment, like a wild animal fresh off a chase. The room seems to spin, the pain in her shoulder once again booming to the forefront of her mind. It’s an airhorn in the silence, ricocheting off the sides of her skull, making it hard to remember that she’s about to have a baby.
She tries to focus, bringing her attention back to the present—to her surroundings. The paintings tower around her, stacks of moth-eaten canvases like ancient sentinels in the darkness, warning her of what’s to come. She breathes deeply, trying to calm herself. She remembers something someone told her once about drinking water to stave off a panic attack.
Just then, as things begin to come into a clearer focus, she hears the creak of the door. Its old hinges protesting against whoever has pushed to inward.
“Birdie?” The voice is instantly familiar. And suddenly she remembers who told her that tidbit about panic attacks. Ione.
But it’s impossible.
She claps a hand to her mouth to quiet her ragged breath, hoping that whatever delusion she’s suffering will pass. It’s most likely Vanessa. God, she hopes it’s just in her head. That there’s no one there at all.
But she hears the door creak shut. She hears this interloper step cautiously through the canvases just as she might have if she’d been in any condition to use caution.
The person calls her name again, this time with more confidence, less fear. It isn’t Vanessa. The voice is lower. Female. Familiar.
“Birdie it’s me,” she says.
Ione, Birdie thinks. It is her. This can’t be. This is all in her head. The pain has overwhelmed her and seized any ability that she had to differentiate fiction from reality. There’s no way that Ione is here. It’s absurd to even think it. But such are dreams.
Birdie groans.
Footsteps quickly make their way to her and suddenly a hand is on her arm, warm and alive. She opens her eyes, closed against the hallucination, and staring down at her she sees blue eyes that she would recognize anywhere.
It is her.
Ione’s eyes fill with fear at the sight of her old friend. Birdie laughs once again.
“We need to get you out of here,” Ione says.
“No shit,” Birdie replies.
The irreverence makes Ione smile, and Birdie remembers the way it felt to make her smile. The intensity of the friendship that they shared. It was so long ago, and crow’s feet crinkle in the corners of her friend’s eyes as she pulls her lips back, baring her perfect teeth. Time has reached out and touched her, just as it has Birdie.
In the midst of the pain, she acknowledges that unsettling moment of seeing someone again from the past. Acknowledging the way that time withers us all. Ione is as beautiful as ever, but she’s changed. She’s known pain. Birdie can tell because once upon a time they were sisters.
A contraction comes, seizing her back and abdomen, making her breath quicken. Ione kneels beside her.
“Breathe, just breathe,” she says.
“You ever delivered
