Andrea stepped off the plane into a world that felt like it had been painted in softer colors—muted grays, coastal winds, a language she barely understood murmuring around her like a lullaby and a warning. She didn’t choose the destination for its beauty or comfort. She chose it because no one would find her there. Not Doc. Not Kay.
She’d left Anthony and Caterina sleeping in their beds with
their stuffed animals tucked in their arms, kissed their foreheads, and
whispered, “I’ll come back.” But she hadn’t said when.
The contractions started three days after she arrived.
At first, she convinced herself it was Braxton-Hicks, even
as her hands gripped the tiny kitchen counter of her rented room hard enough to
leave crescent moon dents in the cheap wood. But by midnight, she was crawling
into a cab, her breath hitching with every wave of pain.
She gave the driver the address scrawled on a napkin in
broken handwriting and tried to stay calm.
But she was alone.
In the delivery room, there were no familiar hands to hold,
no calming voice in her ear. The midwife was kind but brisk, and the doctor
barely looked her in the eye.
The labor dragged on for hours—then over a day. Her body
screamed with every push, every contraction a wave crashing through her without
mercy. There was a moment—around the thirty-sixth hour—where she thought she
might die. And part of her welcomed it. Maybe she deserved to disappear after
all the people she’d left behind.
But then there was a sound. A cry. Small, hoarse, urgent.
Her baby.
A daughter.
They laid her against Andrea’s chest, tiny and warm and
still slick from birth, and Andrea wept. Not the graceful, silent kind of
crying—but deep, body-wracking sobs that made the midwife reach out and gently
squeeze her shoulder.
She named the baby Luciana. Light. Hope. A name she
didn’t have to explain to anyone but herself.
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