An eighth scream in the room
Soon after, I felt the contractions again.
I was breathing when the voices of the doctors became louder. I breathed as the devices emitted increasingly frequent sounds. Everything around me seemed to accelerate, while I was just trying to follow the teacher’s instructions.
Then another scream sounded.
He was weaker than the previous ones.
But this time, when that sound spread through the room, no one immediately gave a sigh of relief. They all looked frozen.
He’s alive.
Eight screams and eight little hearts beating
I don’t remember what happened immediately after. What I remember above all is the immense wave of emotion that suddenly overwhelmed me.
It was no longer just pain or fear.
I saw my kids being settled in the incubators. I saw the doctors move from one to the other, focused on each of them.
The master himself still seemed upset about what had just happened.
I’ve been working for forty years. I’ve seen a lot of them. But something like that…
He shook his head.
“Something like that, I’ve never seen it before. You know what you just did? You gave birth to eight children. Eight.
I remembered all those nights when I couldn’t sleep and I counted the movements, terrified that one of them could suddenly stop.
Seven incubators had been organized in regular rows. And then there was this eighth baby, little one who had not anticipated the birth.
I looked at him.
You were waiting, I whispered. All this time, you were waiting for others to come into the world to show you in the end. You wanted to be the last one.
My life, which for months had been filled with fear and uncertainty, was now occupied by eight voices and eight little hearts beating.
