I had nothing left. My body had given everything it had, and the rope still held. The contractions had slowed, and so had his movement. I could feel it, that terrible quieting, the way a storm goes still before it ends. He was running out of time, and I couldn't stop it.
No. Not like this. I hadn't even seen his face yet. I hadn't held him or shown him the sky or told him his name out loud. I couldn't lose him in a dark warehouse with no one watching. I couldn't.
The pain was everywhere now, chest and abdomen blurring into one long ache, and then something caught my eye across the floor. A glint in the dark. A mirror leaning against the far wall, half-hidden behind a shelf.
Something shifted inside me. Not hope exactly, but the instinct that lives underneath hope, the part that moves before you think.
