“No thanks,” Jemma said.
She started screaming an hour before dawn, when the contractions were coming every two minutes, very regular in their frequency, and regularly getting worse. “You deserve worse,” Ishmael kept saying, and every so often she’d turn a scream into a protracted and extra loud “Fuck you!”
Up until then she had thought she was going to be able to take it, whether because of her gift or because the events of the past nine months had inured her to pain, or just because she was feeling too sad, too cruel, and too crazy to feel it. “I can do it,” she said confidently (“No you can’t,” said Ishmael), walking around her blanket, or to the edge of the roof and back again, breathing in a cheery locomotive cadence. The first really bad contraction had dropped her to her knees and made her grind her face in the dirt, where she felt the soft hands of the angel stroking at her cheeks and was powerless to get away. When it passed, she rolled over and vomited, right on her blanket.
Now she was screaming regularly, not shy about the cursing, especially with Ishmael creeping closer and closer. She had called the dawn a motherfucker, and shrieked like a harpy when the line of mountains suddenly clarified against the horizon, a thin black edge along the purple sky. She felt exalted and afraid when she saw it, and as the sun rose higher and light spilled down the front of them to pick out the colors, so different from what was in the water, forgotten greens and browns and purples. Soon the sun had climbed above them and was shining right in her face, making plain the blood on her blanket and the wet spots seeping up from the deeper layers. She screamed again, up and down the new coast. They were still miles off from it but she half expected a flight of birds to rise from the cliffs, startled by her cry.
They got into a sort of routine: she’d have a contraction; Ishmael would insult her; the angel would say something useless and sweet; she would lie a few moments on her back, watching the ever clarifying land, catching some new smell on the air; and then another contraction would come.
“I’m almost ready to tell you,” Ishmael said, striding in front of her with his hands behind his back, looking for all the world like he was out for an ordinary morning stroll.
“You’re blocking my view,” she said.
“I am so disgusted. Disgust is melting my bowels… Oh! I feel them turning to water, all my insides turning and turning in anger. You are so much… How could you ever stand to have lived? Listen, I almost know what to say. The baby is in the way of it — get it out! What’s wrong with you? So lazy, as usual…” Jemma shrieked, too early for the contraction, but it was enough to drown him out, and drive him a little farther away.
“Don’t listen to him,” said the angel. “What does he know? He’s never had a baby.”
“Have you?” Jemma asked.
“You are all my babies,” she said. “I have held all of you all these months, safe and happy and well.”
“You’re too fucking much,” Jemma said.
“I am the preserving angel,” she said simply.
“Can’t you finally be the shut-the-fuck-up angel?” Jemma asked, then gasped — it was starting to hurt even before it started to hurt, a prelude to the real pain. A needle rose up between her legs and glinted in the sun.
“You only have to say the word,” said the angel.
“Just stay away from me,” Jemma said, but still the ground seemed to push at her shoulders and massage her back. “Stop,” she said.
“I know you don’t mean it,” said the angel, and Jemma shrieked again, and the baby moved a little farther. At least they weren’t useless contractions — they were getting a lot of work out of her suffering. She still couldn’t see into the blank area where the baby lived, but she could see the edge of it, and she could still do things the old-fashioned way, with her arm stuck up her vagina. Scream by scream the baby was coming a little closer to the outside.
“Almost!” Ishmael said at the crowning. Jemma could hear the surf breaking on the shore in front of them — it had taken her many minutes to recognize the sound.
“I love you,” said the angel. “You are my sweet baby and I love you.”
“Fuck off!” Jemma said, indiscriminately now, over and over whether she was contracting or not.
“Push,” said Ishmael, from between her legs. “Push, you nasty fucking whore!” She pushed at him with her arms, sitting up and punching at him, till he fell back, and pushing from inside, too, and pushing with her mind. The head popped out, surrounded by a wave of blood and fluid. She was vomiting again as she saw the head rotate so she was suddenly face to face with her little baby. He was purple and gray and looked entirely dead. She coughed, and started to yell, but it turned into a whimper. She pushed again, pulling down on the head and praying for it not to pop off, to deliver the shoulder. It came out easily enough — no dystocia — but then she realized that she had forgotten to suction the mouth and nose. Now it was too late. The other shoulder delivered without her even pushing, and suddenly he was lying between her legs, gleaming in the sun and not moving a muscle.
She fumbled in the blanket warmer, then remembered her clamps. She shrieked again when she clamped and cut the cord — it wasn’t supposed to hurt but it felt like she’d cut off a finger. She was yelling at the thing as she rubbed it with the blankets, trying to pick him up but just rolling him in the grass, at first, so dirt and loose blades of grass stuck to the wet skin. He started to kick, and opened his mouth wide but didn’t make a noise until she leaned forward and put her mouth over his nose and lips to give him a breath.
The boy cried. Jemma gathered him up, still rubbing him, in the wet blanket and held him to her chest. She was just going to have a moment with her baby, here at the end of the end of the world. Ishmael leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You hate him. You have already ruined him,” he said. Jemma turned and slapped him in the face, a skillful move while holding the baby and still in horrible pain and bleeding more and more. She was afraid to look between her legs.
She meant it to be a very special slap. “Take off that human face,” she said, because with a twitch of her mind she loosened the fascia under the skin. It was supposed to fly off and lie on the ground like a used shammy. Nothing happened, though. She struck again: he should have swallowed his own tongue but he just stared at her, not screaming, not burning. There wasn’t a lick of fire anywhere on the roof.
“Now you are dead,” he said, and sat back, and laughed and laughed, a whole minute of Santa-sounds while Jemma cursed at him. He looked all around him when he settled. “What a beautiful day,” he said.
“You’re dead,” Jemma said, clutching her squalling baby. “You are!”
“I am not,” he said. “I am finally… myself. How strange, to be so angry. I remember it, but do not understand it. I do not remember why I was so upset. Do you remember, dead creature?”
“You were mad because…” She wanted to say something cruel, but she couldn’t think of anything. Her baby was crying. She gave him her breast and he quieted, turning his dark eyes on her face. He was as ugly and beautiful as an old man. “Because you’re fucking stupid,” Jemma said lamely.
“Sister!” Ishmael said. “Come out!”
“Presently,” said the angel, and the whole hospital shook so hard that Jemma almost dropped her baby. She looked around for an iceberg but only saw the land; they’d run aground.
“Brother and Brother! It is time!”
We are already here, I say, because we are standing at our corners, I in the South and my brother in the West. Jemma sees the air unfolding but doesn’t see us yet. Ishmael goes to stand in the East, his feet almost touching on the bits of earth that spilled onto the ledge when the hospital ran aground; the hospital is received into a curve in the land, and the green top of the cliff is just level with the roof.