The Baby Shower

The invitation arrived in a pale pink envelope with my childhood nickname written across the front.

Moth.

Nobody had called me that in fourteen years. I got the name because I used to sit too close to the porch light at Ada Reed’s house, reading until her mother came outside and threatened to make me pay the electric bill.

Ada and I had been inseparable until we were seventeen, when her family decided to move during our senior year.
I remember her calling me. I could tell in the way her voice cracked that she had just spent the last couple hours crying herself raw.
I hadn’t heard her cry like that since Tony Matthews broke up with her right before first-period calculus.

“Girl, what’s wrong?”

“Moth, I’m never going to see you again!”

My stomach dropped.

“What do you even mean?” I laughed, positive that I had misheard her.

“Why are you laughing?” she started to cry again.

Silence fell between us.

“Ada?”

“My mom got a new job upstate. It’s a lot more money. They told me today that we have to move.”

I felt sick. What did she mean we wouldn’t be graduating together?

“Can she not wait?”

I knew that question was unrealistic. Adults always had a way of being as inconvenient as possible.

Ada sighed.

“I promise we’ll see each other again, Ada. You can visit and use my guest ticket for homecoming. I’ll have my license soon, and I can come visit your new house!”

“I’d love that.”

So, we promised to visit, and we did what people do when they’re young enough to think promising counts as a plan.

Ada had always gotten along with pretty much anyone. It didn’t take her long to make new friends, get a boyfriend, and become consumed in her own world an hour away.
I got closer to a mutual friend we had and did my best not to feel abandoned.

Part One

I found the invitation between a water bill and a coupon for a mattress I couldn’t afford.

Please join us in celebrating Ada and the little life growing inside her.

Saturday, October 10. Two o’clock. At her new adult home in Briar Glen, three hours away.

At the bottom, in handwriting I recognized, Ada had added:

Please come, Moth. I could really use someone who knew me before.

I texted her immediately. I’m coming. Also, you have handwriting like a Victorian child with a fever.

Three dots appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.

Thank you. I mean it. Be there.

I hadn’t known she was pregnant. To be fair, I hadn’t known she’d bought a house, either. Every few months, one of us sent the other a picture of a dog or an article about something horrifying we’d survived as children, and we called that keeping in touch.

I bought her a set of soft yellow blankets and drove to Briar Glen that Saturday with the gift balanced on my passenger seat. Halfway there, my phone lost service. The road narrowed between fields of corn gone dry and a long stretch of woods.

Ada’s house stood at the end of a gravel lane, large and white and very old. Cars lined both sides of the drive. Pink balloons bobbed above the mailbox.

Someone had taped a sign to it.

WELCOME, HOSTS!

I assumed it was for the women throwing the party. It was a baby shower. Somebody had to be hosting it.
I thought it was pretty cool of them to be so gracious with their thanks.
I was a bit jealous. Not of her pregnancy, but the fact that I always thought I’d be the one helping with her big milestones.
I should be the one overdrawing my bank account to buy baby booties and decorations. For Christ’s sake, she had been my best friend since kindergarten.

But you weren’t hers.

I shook my head and disregarded the sentiment.

Inside, the house smelled of cinnamon, flowers, and something meaty cooking downstairs. A woman I didn’t know took my gift and set it with the others beneath a banner in the dining room. I glanced around the room at the women in attendance, dressed to the nines while I had chosen to arrive in a windbreaker and jeans.
From what I could remember, there was no dress code on the invite.

I looked up at the banner hanging above the gift table.

WE CAN’T WAIT TO MEET YOU, LITTLE ONE.

The letters were cut from glossy paper. Between them hung tiny paper beetles.

“That’s cute,” I said, because I couldn’t think of what else to call it.

The woman looked up. “Oh yeah, Ada made them.”

She had one hand pressed to her stomach. It was swollen enough that I glanced at her face to see whether she was pregnant too. She noticed. Her smile widened.

“Twelve weeks,” she said.

“Oh. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Her hand moved slowly over the fabric of her dress. “We’re very excited.”

In the living room, the guests wore name tags. Beneath each name was a date.

MELINA — APRIL 4

JANINE — JUNE 19

ROSE — SEPTEMBER 27

Maybe birthdays, I thought. Maybe expected due dates.

Melina and Rose looked about our age. Janine, on the other hand, looked sixty.
Maybe she was just a hard forty with a ‘geriatric’ pregnancy.
Fuck, I thought, that’s rude. I shook my head, trying to erase the judgmental thought like an Etch A Sketch.

Ada stood near the fireplace in a loose green dress, one hand holding a glass of water. She saw me and came over so quickly she nearly spilled it.

For a moment we were seventeen again. She smelled like the same vanilla shampoo. She hugged me hard, and I felt how thin her shoulders were beneath the dress.
She had always been dainty, but something about how sharp her shoulder blades were felt wrong.

“You came,” she whispered, the soft light of the room making her hazel eyes sparkle.

“Obviously. Someone has to make sure you don’t name the baby something like Amberleigh.”

She laughed into my hair. Then she drew back and held me by the arms.

“You look good, Moth.”

“And you’re glowing!”

She actually looked terrified, but you simply don’t mention that around an expectant mother.
Expectant mothers? I still didn’t understand what the dates meant on the name tags, but I didn’t want to call her out when everyone else seemed so at ease.
From what I remember, Ada had never wanted to be a mom, but fourteen years was enough time to change someone’s mind.

Her smile stayed in place. Her eyes didn’t.

“Ada?”

A man called her name from the dining room. He was tall, handsome in a way that felt carefully assembled, with dark hair brushed flat against his scalp.

“My husband,” she said. “Cal.”

I didn’t know she was married.

Cal came over and shook my hand with both of his. His palms were warm and damp.

“Ada’s told us so much about you,” he said.

“Has she?”
That was hard to believe. I wasn’t even invited to the wedding.

“Yes, she said you were like sisters.”

Were.

Ada looked at the hand he still held. Cal let go.

There were snacks shaped like baby animals, pink lemonade, and a cake decorated with a sleeping infant curled inside a flower. Everything about it would have passed for a normal shower if I hadn’t noticed the little cards beside the food.

PROTEIN FOR TWO.

HELP THE LITTLE ONE GROW.

A platter of deviled eggs carried a sign that said FIRST HOMES.

I looked at Ada. She was watching me read.

Cal followed my gaze and smiled. “She has a dark sense of humor.”

“She always has,” I said.

We used to make our Barbies die of elaborate diseases so we could hold funerals in the backyard. Once, Ada buried a doll so deeply we never found it again. For years we told people the yard had taken her.

I took a deviled egg. Ada’s hand shot out and closed around my wrist.

“Don’t,” she said.

Cal was looking at us.

“I already had three,” Ada added brightly. “They’re terrible. Try the cake.”

I set the egg down.

We played a game where guests guessed how large the mother’s belly would get. Someone passed around a length of ribbon, and people cut pieces to their chosen size. Mine was a little longer than Ada’s waist.

The woman from the door cut a piece nearly three feet long.

Everyone laughed. Ada didn’t.

Next came a game called Who’s the Host? Cal handed each guest a card with two columns: symptom and stage. The symptoms included hunger, warmth, dreams, bleeding, and the sensation of being watched from the inside.

I read that last one twice.

“These games are intense,” I murmured to the woman beside me.

She had a round, gentle face and a name tag that read ROSE — SEPTEMBER 27.

“First shower?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you’re lucky you came for Ada’s.”

“Are all of you, you know, expecting?”

The young woman beamed.

“Yes, actually. All of us met in a support group for first-time mothers on Facebook.”

Across the room, Cal called time. I hadn’t filled in a single answer.

People began opening gifts. Ada got diapers, a white knitted hat, a baby monitor. Then Cal handed her a narrow wooden box wrapped in a pink ribbon.

“Oh,” she said.

“Open it,” someone urged.

Inside lay a silver bracelet with a charm shaped like a tiny house. Ada held it up while everyone admired it.

On the inside of the bracelet, where her wrist would touch it, I saw a row of short metal prongs.

Ada closed the box.

“Put it on,” Cal said.

Her gaze found mine.

When we were children, Ada had a signal for when she wanted to leave somewhere. She tapped her finger twice against her thigh. We’d invented it during sleepovers at girls’ houses where we didn’t feel welcome.

She tapped twice.

My mouth went dry.

“Do you mind if I steal her for a second?” I asked. “I brought an embarrassing present that needs an explanation.”

Cal looked between us with narrowed eyes. “Of course.”

I took Ada’s hand and led her toward the kitchen. The woman at the door moved aside to let us pass. We stopped at the sink, where dirty glasses stood in cloudy water.

“What’s going on?” I asked quietly.

Ada turned on the tap.

“I need you to leave.”

“What?”

“Ursa, I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

She never used my real name.

“Then come with me.”

She could hear the sudden desperation in my voice.

“I can’t.”

“I have a car.”

She shook her head. Water ran over a glass she wasn’t washing.

“Then tell me what this is.”

Ada looked toward the kitchen door. “You saw the games.”

“Yeah. They’re awful.”

“They’re instructions.”

A cheer went up in the living room. Somebody had won a prize.

Ada shut off the water. “Cal brought me here after we got married. I thought his family was weird. His mother talked about women being blessed. About making room. I thought it was religion.”

“What is it?”

Her hand went to her stomach. Until then, I had assumed she was early in the pregnancy. Beneath her dress I could see only the slightest curve.

“Ada.”

“I went to a doctor in the city. She couldn’t find a heartbeat. She found four.”

The kitchen door swung open.

Rose stood there holding an empty pitcher. “More lemonade?”

Ada’s face changed. She reached for a dish towel.

“In the fridge,” she said with a smile.

Rose opened it. I saw six pitchers lined up on the shelves, along with bowls covered in plastic wrap. Rose took a pitcher and gave me a friendly smile on her way out.

Ada waited until the door shut.

“Cal’s mother put something in my food,” she said. “I remember being sick. Then I remember waking up, and she was sitting by my bed with a calendar.”

I stared at her stomach.

“They can hear us now,” Ada said.

A squelching sound came from beneath her dress.

I stepped back. Ada caught my hand before I could pull away.

“Go outside. Get in your car. Drive until you have service and call the police.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“Please, Moth.”

The kitchen door opened again. Cal stood there with the bracelet box.

“Everyone’s waiting,” he said.

Ada released my hand.

We followed him into the living room. I kept my phone in my palm, though the screen still showed no service.

Cal fastened the bracelet around Ada’s wrist. She flinched. The guests applauded.

“There,” he said. “Now we can begin.”

He turned to me.

“Ada wanted you here,” he said. “We were touched when she told us.”

I looked toward the front door. The woman who’d taken my gift stood beside it.

Cal saw me looking.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We should have explained more before you came.”

He held out a small card. On one side was a picture of a smiling cartoon baby. On the other were the same symptoms from the game, listed in order.

Warmth. Hunger. Dreams. Bleeding.

At the bottom, in smaller print: Please note the date of first contact.

My skin prickled. I thought of Cal shaking my hand at the door, of the deviled egg Ada had stopped me from eating.

“I didn’t eat anything,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to,” Rose said gently.

“I forgot to hand you your name tag earlier,” Melina piped up.

I felt a tickle beneath the collar of my shirt.

I slapped at my neck. Something tiny and hard struck the floorboards. A beetle, pale pink and nearly translucent, righted itself and disappeared beneath the sofa.

She peeled back the sticker and handed it to me.

URSA — OCTOBER 10

For a second nobody moved.

Then Ada screamed, “Run.”

She grabbed the cake stand and hurled it into the window. Glass burst across the porch. I ran toward it, one hand over my face. Someone caught my coat; I tore free of it and climbed through the broken frame.

I landed badly on the porch, pain flashing through my ankle. Behind me, voices rose. Ada was shouting. I got up and kept running.

At the car, I dug my keys out of my jeans. My fingers shook so hard I dropped them twice.

Of fucking course I did.

I got in, locked the doors, and started the engine.

The front door opened. Ada stumbled onto the porch, Cal close behind her. She looked straight at me and made a pushing motion with both hands.

Go.

I backed down the lane fast enough to hit the mailbox. The WELCOME, HOSTS! sign folded under my bumper. I kept driving.

Service returned twenty minutes later. I pulled into a gas station and called the police.

I told the dispatcher about Ada. About the bracelet. About the thing that had fallen out of my shirt. I said the word parasite and heard how it sounded.

Two officers met me at the station. One took my statement while the other photographed the red mark on my neck. He said it looked like an insect bite.
They moved with the conviction of a sloth, completely disregarding the urgency of a pregnant woman being in danger. I had to fight everything within me to not catch a charge convincing them to move faster.

Finally, by evening, they had gone to the house.

It was empty.

The furniture was there. So were the gifts, the broken window, and most of the cake. No cars. No Ada.

One officer suggested she and Cal might have left after our argument. He didn’t call it an argument when I corrected him, but he wrote something down.
Again, zero urgency over the fact that my best friend had been spirited away by a cult.

I had tried calling her over and over. Straight to voicemail every time.

“Hi, you’ve reached Ada. If you’re calling, I’m busy! I’ll call you back whenever.”

Part Two

I got a motel room because I couldn’t bear to drive three more hours in the dark. In the shower, I washed my hair twice. I checked every inch of my skin. There was nothing on me except the bite. I didn’t know whether to pick at it or slather it in ointment.

At 11:14, Ada called.

I nearly dropped the phone answering.

“Where are you?”

For a moment, all I heard was her breathing.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to be sorry. Tell me where you are.”

“I thought if you saw it, you’d believe me.”

“I do believe you.”

A faint sound came through the phone. Metal scraping against metal.

“I thought you could help me get out,” Ada said.

“I still can.”

“They didn’t take me anywhere,” she whispered. “I’m still at the house.”

“The police went there.”

“They stayed upstairs.”

Something scraped across the phone again. Ada muffled it with her hand. When she spoke next, her voice was so close to the microphone that I could hear her lips sticking together.

“There’s a cellar door outside, behind the kitchen. Under the hydrangeas. It used to be a coal chute.”

“Can you get to it?”

“No. But it opens into the old part. They don’t use that entrance.”

I was already pulling on my jeans.

“Tell me exactly where you are.”

“Follow the pipes. You’ll see where they painted everything white. I’m at the end.”

“Ada, stay on the phone.”

“I have to put it back.”

“Whose phone is this?”

“His mother’s. She left it on the trolley.”

A door opened on her end. The call disconnected.

I called the station from the parking lot. The man who answered said he would relay the new information to the officers. He asked whether I had actually seen anyone restraining Ada. I told him about the metal prongs in the bracelet for the third time. He asked whether I knew her address.

By then, I had the car running.

I gave him the address again and told him about the cellar entrance. I texted the same information to my sister, along with a photo of the invitation. Then I drove back.

I knew what this looked like. I’d yelled at enough women in enough horror movies for doing exactly what I was doing. But Ada was underground, counting on a promise I’d spent fourteen years finding little reasons not to keep. I could sit in a motel and wait for someone to decide she mattered, or I could go to her.

At a red light, my mouth filled with saliva. I swallowed it and immediately had to swallow again. My stomach felt empty in a way that hurt. There was an open packet of crackers in the console, and I ate them so quickly the dry crumbs stuck to my tongue.

I blamed the nausea on fear. The heat crawling up my neck, too.

I parked on the road before the gravel lane and walked through the trees. My ankle had stiffened since the shower. Each step sent a small, vindictive pain up my leg.

The house was dark except for a yellow square of light in the kitchen window. No cars lined the drive anymore. Through the broken living room window, I could see the banner hanging crooked above the gifts.

The hydrangeas were dead for the season. Beneath them, a pair of sloping metal doors lay flush against the foundation. One handle had a chain looped through it, but the padlock hung open.

I stopped with my hand on it.

Maybe Ada had done that. Maybe this was how they carried supplies downstairs, and someone had forgotten to lock it afterward. I had no comforting explanation that lasted longer than a second.

I lifted the door.

Warm air breathed up the stairs, thick with bleach and the sweet, fatty smell I’d noticed when I arrived for the shower.

I turned on my flashlight and went down.

The cellar had a dirt floor and stone walls. A furnace rumbled somewhere beyond it. Copper pipes ran along the ceiling, disappearing through a doorway blocked by a sheet of plywood. A chair stood beside the doorway with a folded sweater on its seat.

I listened. Water moved through the pipes. Further away, a woman made a small, exhausted sound.

I squeezed around the plywood.

The floor changed to concrete. Someone had painted the walls white, even the places where roots pushed through the mortar. At the end of the corridor stood a set of swinging doors with round windows. One window was covered on the inside by a pink towel.

On the wall beside them hung a laminated sign.

MATERNAL CARE.

Beneath it was another, handwritten.

PLEASE KEEP YOUR VOICES DOWN. THEY ARE RESTING.

I pushed through.

The room beyond had once been large enough to hold a winter’s worth of coal. Now curtains divided it into narrow bays. Fluorescent tubes hummed overhead. There were hospital beds, plastic drawers, steel basins, and a trolley stacked with the same soft yellow blankets I’d brought as a gift.

My gift tag was still tied to the top set.

For you and your little one. Love, Moth.

A woman lay in the first bed completely still besides her breathing. Her abdomen rose above the sheet, enormous against her shrunken thighs. Clear fluid seeped through a dressing on one side. Something beneath the swollen skin dragged slowly upward, leaving a ridge that reached her ribs before sinking away.

She opened her eyes when I passed.

“Can you turn me?” she asked.

I froze.

“It’s been hours.” Her voice was dry and polite. “My back hurts.”

A strap crossed her hips. Another secured her ankles. The sheet around her feet had dried stiff and brown.

I reached for the buckle at her waist.

“Don’t,” she said suddenly.

The ridge in her abdomen stopped moving.

She watched it. I watched her watching it.

“Leave it,” she whispered. “Please.”

I backed away, shaking so hard my flashlight beam bounced across the curtains.

In the next bay, Janine sat upright with a plastic pump attached to her chest. Milk threaded through the tubing into a glass bottle, pink at first, then darker. Her breasts had split in shallow lines around the suction cups. The pump clicked, paused, and clicked again.

A framed ultrasound picture stood beside her bed. Someone had drawn a heart around a shape with too many joints.

Janine followed my gaze.

“They said I was too old,” she told me. Her lower lip trembled. “At the clinic. They said I should have tried sooner.”

The bottle filled. A thick white strand coiled inside it, moving against the flow.

I kept walking.

I hated myself for it, but kept walking.

This had to be a bad dream. It HAD to be.

Behind the next curtain came the rustle of a sheet and a wet, rapid clicking. A woman was counting through clenched teeth. She made it to seven before her voice broke.

“Ada?” I whispered.

“Moth.”

She was in the last bay.

Her green dress had been cut up the middle and pushed beneath her shoulders. A hospital gown lay open over her abdomen. The bracelet was attached to a cable that ran to a machine by the bed. Her other wrist was tied to the rail with padded webbing.

I reached her and made the mistake of looking down.

Her stomach had swollen to nearly twice its size since the afternoon. The skin was shiny and stretched, threaded with bruises. Her navel had flattened. Four separate bulges pressed against her from within, shifting whenever she tried to move.

Near her hip, a small shape pushed outward until I could see its outline. I waited for it to become a foot. It divided at the end and opened against the inside of her skin.

Ada caught me staring.

“Don’t let them see you watching.”

I looked at her face instead. She had bitten through part of her lower lip.

“I’m getting you out.”

“The bracelet.”

I examined the clasp. A tiny recessed button released it. I pressed it, and the metal sprang open, lifting six little needles out of her wrist. Blood welled in a neat row.

The machine made a single, sharp sound.

Ada sucked in a breath. Her abdomen rippled from side to side.

“Was that holding them still?” I asked.

“Some of the time.”

I dropped the bracelet and worked at the strap on her other arm. She helped with trembling fingers. Once she was free, I slid an arm around her back.

She cried out when I lifted her.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Keep going.”

Her feet touched the floor. Her knees folded immediately, and I caught her against my chest. Beneath the gown, something hard pushed between us.

We stood there while she tried to straighten. Blood and clear fluid ran down one of her legs.

“They’re loosening everything,” she said. “My hips. I can feel the bones moving.”

“We’ll go slowly.”

There was a wheelchair by the trolley. I pulled it over and lowered her into it. She gripped my wrist until I thought she would break it.

As I bent to set her feet on the rests, a cramp caught me low in the abdomen.

I held my breath. It passed.

Ada looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“Your face.”

“I’m fine.”

She glanced at the bite on my neck. I tugged my collar over it and pushed the chair into the corridor.

We almost reached the swinging doors.

Then my bladder seemed to empty all at once.

I stopped. Warm liquid ran into my shoe.

For a second, I was only embarrassed. That stupid, human instinct survived long enough for me to think about how I’d have to clean the wheelchair tracks afterward.

I looked down.

Blood spread across the crotch of my jeans. A clear thread stretched from the wet fabric to the floor, thick enough to hold its shape.

Ada began crying.

“No,” I said. “No, I’m just—”

I couldn’t finish. Another cramp tightened through me. I bent over the wheelchair handles and felt something settle low inside my pelvis.

I had only been infected for hours. Hours. There hadn’t been time for any of this.

Ada reached backward for my hand.

“Did you eat?”

“Crackers.”

“How much?”

“The packet.”

She closed her eyes.

“They don’t grow a whole body first,” she said. “They borrow what they need.”

A seam in my jeans dug into my stomach. I looked down again and saw the fabric drawing tight. My belt buckle tilted outward.

I unfastened it. The relief lasted less than a second.

A small, firm movement passed beneath my hand.

I staggered away from the chair and pressed both palms to my belly, trying to stop it. Something slipped under my right hand, then rose under the left. My breasts ached. When I folded forward, warm drops struck the floor beneath my shirt.

Ada was trying to stand. Her feet skidded in the fluid.

“Sit down,” I said.

“I’m not leaving you.”

A latch clicked beyond the doors.

I looked up through the uncovered window. Cal stood on the other side. Beside him was a woman with silver hair pinned into a neat roll.

She carried a pair of gloves.

I rammed the wheelchair into the doors. They moved an inch before a bolt caught them. Cal stepped back, watching us through the glass.

“Open it,” I shouted.

His mother looked at my jeans, then at my stomach.

“Early labor,” she said to him. “Get the second table ready.”

I turned the chair around. There had to be another way. A storeroom, another staircase, somewhere the pipes entered the building.

We got back as far as the unpainted cellar corridor before I heard footsteps ahead of us. Rose emerged around the plywood, carrying my car keys.

I checked my pocket. Empty. I must have dropped them when I crouched beside Ada’s bed.

Rose set them on the chair beneath the folded sweater.

“You’ll hurt yourself on those stairs,” she said, a thin smile stretching her lips.

I picked up a steel basin from a shelf and swung it at her. It hit her cheek with a sound I felt in my arm. She stumbled against the wall, and I pushed the wheelchair past her.

Ada made a terrible noise.

Her body arched in the chair. A bulge rose beneath her ribs and stayed there, holding her rigid. I could hear her trying to pull air around it.

I dropped to my knees in front of her.

“Breathe. Ada, please.”

She clawed at the neckline of the gown. Her eyes fixed on mine, wide and apologetic.

Behind me, someone took hold of my shoulders. I fought until my own abdomen tightened and my legs stopped supporting me. Hands lowered me to the floor. I tried to crawl toward Ada, but a strap closed around my wrist. As I felt the needles sink into my skin, I realized it was the same type of bracelet gifted to Ada just hours before.

Cal crouched beside her. He fitted the bracelet back on and pressed the button on the machine someone had wheeled into the corridor.

The swelling under her ribs slowly withdrew.

She took one long, ragged breath.

“There,” he said. “That’s better.”

I could have killed him for sounding relieved.

They lifted us onto separate trolleys and rolled us back into the chamber. I twisted against the straps, watching the strip of stone wall disappear behind the swinging doors. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked. I waited for shouting, for an officer calling Ada’s name.

Nothing followed it.

They placed us side by side beneath the fluorescent lights. Cal’s mother cut through my jeans with shears. I tried to close my legs. She fastened a strap above each knee.

On a screen beside me, the ultrasound image flickered into focus. A technician moved the probe over my belly. I saw a narrow spine bent around a dark sac. Beneath it, another shape opened and closed, opening farther each time.

The technician measured it.

Cal’s mother leaned closer.

“Two,” she said. “Good attachment.”

Ada turned her face toward me. Tears had collected in her hair.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”

“You thought I could help.”

She tried to speak, but another contraction took her. The blanket lifted in four places. Her hands clenched against the restraints.

I reached for her. Our beds were close enough that our fingertips touched, but neither of us could get a proper grip.

Cal’s mother checked the line entering Ada’s arm, then mine.

“Put them under,” she told the technician. “We can’t have them moving during delivery.”

An oxygen mask settled over Ada’s nose and mouth. She jerked her head away. Cal held it in place with one hand and stroked her hair with the other.

I strained against the straps until the skin at my wrists burned. Someone fitted a mask over my face too. The plastic smelled new.

It reminded me of when I was put under for my tonsillitis as a child. I had told the doctors that the air smelled like a pool noodle before drifting off.

“Please,” I said into it. “Please don’t let them come out.”

The technician pushed something into my IV.

Cold traveled up my arm. The lights blurred at their edges.

Ada was still trying to touch me. I caught the tip of her little finger and held it as tightly as I could.

“When we were younger,” I said, fighting the heaviness in my tongue, “you said we’d still visit.”

Her eyes moved toward mine.

“You promised.”

Behind the mask, Ada’s mouth trembled. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to apologize or laugh.

A curtain slid across the lower halves of our beds. Metal instruments touched a tray. Someone unfolded the yellow blankets.

Ada’s finger went slack in mine.

I tried to hold on, but my hand opened too. I could still feel the things inside me moving, slow and deliberate, as the rest of my body became too heavy to fight them.

Just before the room went dark, Cal’s mother leaned over the curtain.

“Save the hosts,” she said. “They can carry again.”