A Mother’s Love by Richard Farren Barber

The sound of crying rolled along the corridor as Rachel stood outside the door, her baby clutched to her breast. The child was still wet. Rachel’s legs felt like they might buckle beneath her and she wanted desperately to sit down. She hugged Bean closer to her.

The corridor was grey. Spots of deep red, that Rachel hoped were paint splatters, stained the yellow and brown lino. There were no windows and the only illumination came from a row of fluorescent tubes that ran above her head. Some of the tubes flickered and made a low buzzing sound that reminded her of the blue Insect-ocutors from takeaway restaurants. Thick utility pipes ran underneath the ceiling and Rachel assumed that she was somewhere underground, lost deep in the bowels of the hospital.

She wondered if Jim was still sat beside her empty bed, waiting for her to return. It was hard to know how Jim would react. He desperately wanted this baby, they both did, but over the past nine months she sensed a desperation in Jim that had never been there before. He didn’t just want this baby, he neededhim.

The crumpled face of the child looked up at her from inside the white towel.

“It’s okay, Bean.”

She thought the child responded to her voice, although she knew it was just her imagination.

Down the corridor a woman screamed. It was a long wail of perfect anguish that seemed to thread through the air. There was a crash, loud enough to make Rachel jump, as if something had battered against a door. Rachel glanced down the hall and then looked quickly away. The screaming stopped or was muted. Rachel couldn’t decide which was worse.

A figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the corridor of a woman holding a baby in her arms. For an instant Rachel felt that she was looking in a mirror. The woman looked nothing like her – dirty blonde hair that spilled over her shoulders and onto the white paper gown – and yet Rachel knew that, if she looked down at her own paper gown and the baby she held, she had everything in common with the other woman. Hair could be dyed.

A nurse held the woman’s arm and steered her by her elbow until she was positioned outside one of the other closed doors.

The woman stabbed a look at Rachel. It was impossible to know what the brief glance meant, or if it meant anything at all. Rachel looked away, feeling guilty for no reason that she could understand. She wanted to point out that they were both in the same situation. It wasn’t Rachel’s fault she was down there. But when she opened her mouth, she discovered she was too frightened to speak.

The door in front of Rachel opened.

She clutched Bean tighter to her chest, as if she was afraid that the woman inside the room would reach out and rip the child straight off her breast.

“You must be Rachel?”

Over her shoulder the room looked like an ordinary doctor’s office. There was a desk and a chair. The walls were painted a pleasant pale blue, as if designed to be relaxing for new mothers.

Rachel returned her attention to the woman in the doorway. She looked… normal. She wasn’t even wearing a white lab coat. Instead, she had a long blue dress with small purple flowers printed on the material.

A small, golden crucifix rested at the base of her throat.

Rachel could imagine her standing outside the school gates with all the other mothers, waiting for her child to rush into her arms. None of the other mothers would look at her and know that she was different.

Her eyes gave her away. Rachel looked at them and immediately turned her attention elsewhere, because her eyes did not match the slight smile of her lips. There was no love in those eyes. They were black and cold and dead.

You can’t have him, Rachel thought. Her heart beat faster against the body of her son. He’s mine, and then she corrected herself, He’s Jim’s.

She licked her lips to try and find some moisture in her mouth, but when she spoke her voice was still cracked and dry. “Yes, I’m Rachel. And this is Bean.”

“Maybe,” the woman said.

Rachel wanted to ask her what she meant. They had called him Bean from the day she had learned she was pregnant. It was Jim’s idea, though he had been superstitious. He didn’t want them to name the child inside her and yet it didn’t feel right constantly referring to the growing bump as It.

“Come in.” It was an instruction rather than an invitation. The woman stepped back from the door to give Rachel room to enter. She pointed to a crib. “You can put it in there.”

“No,” Rachel said.

“Put it in there.”

The woman started to close the door, and Rachel was filled with the desperate urge to push her way past the woman. Maybe she could find her way back to the ward. Maybe she could find Jim, still sitting beside her bed, and they would run out of the hospital together. It could work. It could.

The door slammed closed behind her. The woman stood between Rachel and the door, and despite the pastel shade walls and the soft lights the room took on the tone of a prison cell.

There was a red stain on the woman’s dress. Just a small red circle about the size of a coin.

She reached out her hands towards Bean. Rachel twisted her body away from her, protecting her newborn child. It was instinct, a maternal urge buried so deep within her that until it surfaced, she didn’t even know it was there.

“Ms Thomas, you’re only making this harder for yourself. Put it in the crib and sit down on the chair now.”

Rachel shuffled over the floor to the crib and looked inside. It was a small Moses basket, a straw weave on the outside and layers of white cloth inside. It was probably very similar to the basket Jim had bought and which, at that moment, sat at home in the corner of the bedroom waiting for the arrival of its occupant.

The sheets were a little grubby. She wondered how often they were changed. She wondered how many babies had been laid down in the crib today, this week, this month.

“No,” she said. Before the flinty-eyed woman could argue any further Rachel sat down on the chair. She was shaking, but she tried desperately not to show how frightened she was, so she stared at the wall behind the desk and concentrated on reading the notices pinned to the board back there. They mostly concerned washing hands properly to reduce the spread of infection. The hospital was obsessed with infection, but in this gloomy place, something told her that E. Coli or C Diff was the least of Bean’s problems.

The woman gave a sigh as she sat down and for a long time, she said nothing. The silence eroded Rachel’s sense of victory and the desire to apologise to the woman grew. But to apologise she would have to be sorry, and she wasn’t. And if she apologised that would mean she was wrong and she would be made to put Bean down in that cradle and there was no way she was letting go of her son in this room. No way at all.

“Rachel Thomas,” the woman said.

“Yes.”

“No children.”

Rachel looked down at the baby resting in her arms. “One child.”

“No children,” the woman insisted. “No registered children.”

“One child.”

“You don’t have to fight me. I’m not the enemy,” the nurse said. Her voice was tired, and Rachel wondered how many new mothers the woman had seen today and what that did to a person’s soul. “I just need to help.”

“You’re not going to take my baby from me.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this. We can work together.”

She didn’t say no, Rachel thought. She pulled Bean closer to her. The baby wriggled in her arms and she immediately thought that she must have squeezed him too hard. She wanted to cry.

Rachel looked down at the baby. Looking at him, at the small thing that just a few hours earlier had still been inside her, she felt a new rush of emotions. Tears slipped down her cheek and she wiped them away. She didn’t care if the other woman saw she was upset.

“We can get through this together, Rachel.”

“You’re not going to kill my baby.”

The woman laughed. A hard, violent sound in the confines of the office that immediately set Rachel off balance.

Now it was the woman’s turn to wipe a tear away from her eyes, and Rachel wondered whether it was for show, that the woman could cry on demand. There was something fake in the sound.

“Of course we’re not going to kill it. Look at it. What a beautiful thing. God’s promise to us made real. How could we possibly harm the wee dote?”

The nurse wiped another tear from her eye, but this time Rachel saw that the back of the woman’s hand came away dry.

“Your baby is safe with us, Rachel. I assure you of that.” The woman drew her finger across her breast twice. “Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a finger in my eye.” There was no trace of humour on her face as she spoke the phrase. To her it was an oath as solemn as anything spoken before a judge or a priest.

Rachel tried to take the promise on face value, but it was impossible. Nothing about the environment allowed her to believe what the woman said. The other women on the maternity ward had already warned her about the interview. They had been right about the dark corridor and the crib and the way the woman would refer to the child as if it was a piece of meat rather than a person. Some of the women on the ward had been mothers before, so they knew what they were talking about. They had been right about everything so far, so Rachel had more confidence in them than she had in the woman’s false tears and thin smiles.

“It is a pretty thing, isn’t it?” the nurse said.

Rachel nodded. She felt the scream building within her. Nine months she had carried Bean. She remembered driving to work with a plastic bag on the passenger seat in case she had to be sick at the traffic lights. She remembered getting up in the middle of the night every twenty minutes because Bean was pressing against her bladder. She remembered needing to eat steak, not just wanting but needing, until Jim had to go out to the supermarket and buy a slab of meat even though they couldn’t afford to pay the telephone bill. She remembered every sacrifice she had made for Bean over the last nine months and if the woman thought that she could take him away now then she was about to find out how wrong she was.

The nurse smiled.

Rachel shuddered. She imagined she saw the woman’s teeth filed to sharp points like the mouth of a shark.

“It’s just a few simple tests. Nothing to worry about. We just need to be sure it isn’t… infected.”

Rachel felt the air freeze inside her lungs. For a moment it was impossible to breathe. She tried to speak but all that came out of her mouth was a quiet hiss of air.

Rachel shook her head, and the nurse only smiled, as if this was what every new mother did when the possibility was presented to her.

“Hand it to me.”

“No.”

“You can’t leave this room until I have inspected the baby. Surely you understand that? We can’t allow even one infected baby to leave this hospital.”

“How… How can you do this? How do you live with yourself?” But Rachel felt her arms extend as she handed Bean over. She watched herself as if from a distance. She saw the small child squirm in her arms, and she felt a stab of horror at the betrayal. You’re supposed to protect him!

What if he was infected? She pushed the idea away. Of course he wasn’t. She would know.

The woman took the baby into her hands. “Thank you. God loves you.”

Rachel bit her tongue on her response. She wanted to ask why God had damned her to this dungeon and why he had visited the plague upon them if he so loved them. But she kept her silence because that was the sort of talk that had seen Jennie McClatchey leave the maternity ward last year, thin and empty handed.

The nurse unwrapped Bean from his clothes and turned him onto his front. He was crying, but all babies cried, especially when they were taken away from their mother. Rachel told herself that it was nothing to worry about.

His skin was tinged with pink blotches. He was laid face down over the nurse’s lap with his back exposed. His little arms wriggled like he was trying to swim. In other circumstances it would have been sweet.

The nurse brought the crucifix up from her side. It was a large steel cross. There was no grace in the item. It looked like two pieces of metal hastily welded together. There was none of the decoration which regaled the crosses erected on the streets or at the entrances to public buildings when the infections had first arisen. This cross was meant to be used.

This cross had been used.

Rachel drew her hands into tight fists to stop herself from reaching out and snatching her baby from the woman’s lap.

The nurse put the cross flat on the baby’s skin.

Bean howled. It was a sound she never knew a baby could make.

“No,” Rachel said. “No. The metal is cold. That’s all it is. Here, let me warm it for him first.”

The nurse removed the cross and the clear outline of the two bands could be clearly seen on his skin.

Rachel held out her hands. “Give him back to me.”

The nurse fumbled her attempt to turn over the baby and Rachel was sure she was going to drop Bean to the concrete floor. Somehow, she managed to complete the manoeuvre with Bean still laid across her lap and the crucifix held tight in her fist.

Bean reached up with his hands and attempted to push away the crucifix. His pudgy fists opened and closed like a silent scream.

It’s just an automatic response, Rachel told herself.

The nurse placed the steel crucifix across Bean’s stomach and the baby let out a wail that shredded the air. The small room filled with the stench of burning skin.

“Bean? Bean, no.”

Bean’s eyes opened. Black and soulless.

The nurse sweated as she pressed the crucifix into the child’s belly. Bean’s fingers scratched the back of the nurse’s hands. Even Rachel could not deny her child was infected, but it didn’t matter. Bean was still her son. She had carried him for nine months. She had felt him grow inside her and it didn’t matter if it was Azrael or Beelzebub or which of the circle of nine had infected her son, she still loved him.

The child started to speak. The words scratched the air like a penknife on wood. Rachel didn’t understand what Bean said but she heard the nurse respond with prayers. For a split second the nurse dared to look up from the baby to Rachel and when their eyes met there was no mistaking the fear behind them. Help me.

The woman struggled to keep the baby on her lap as she wrestled with the crucifix, and although Bean may have been one of the circle of nine he was still only a newborn with weak arms and legs. The nurse laid the crucifix across his chest and pressed the metal into his skin. She reached behind her.

It was a sacrificial blade. Rachel had seen them before. Back when the infections had started and cowled monks had prowled the streets in gangs five strong. They had worn the curved blades tucked into the waistband of their robes.

The nurse’s blade was dull from use. The steel was clean but the handle above the nurse’s fist was grimy with encrusted blood, and Rachel wondered how many times each day the nurse carried out the Ritual of Cleansing.

The woman held the blade above her head and started to speak fast. Too fast for Rachel to follow what was being said, but she picked out the names of three gods and at least five demons.

The nurse brought the blade down.

Rachel screamed and didn’t even know what she had done until she felt the blade cut into her own arms, metal scraping bone.

Blood welled up from the wound and fell onto Bean’s exposed belly. Thick crimson drops.

The nurse stared at her. An expression of terror crossed her face.

What have I done? Rachel thought. The answer came with a cool simplicity.

I’ve done what any mother would do, I have protected my child.

The slash across her arm didn’t hurt, not really. It was cold, like someone had placed a rod of ice against her skin.

Bean stopped crying. He lay on the nurse’s lap, looking up to his mother. His eyes were blue. Pure blue. Rachel pushed away the memory of that moment when he had opened his eyes and she had seen only pools of black. She had been mistaken.

Bean was… Bean was perfect.

The nurse raised the scythe to slash again and this time Rachel held out her hand and the blade cut into the flesh between her thumb and forefinger. She wanted to tell the nurse to give up now, that she could keep hacking and hacking, but she would never be allowed to harm Bean.

Specks of blood splattered the nurse’s cheeks. Her eyes were wide as the moon. She tried to attack Bean a third time, but Rachel took the knife from the nurse’s hand. The handle of the knife was hot. The wood was slick beneath her palm. Her first instinct was to throw it into the far corner of the room but then, with a coldness she never knew she possessed, she realised that the nurse would not allow her to walk out of this room. Not with Bean.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said as she drew the blade across the woman’s throat.

She dropped the knife then, even before the nurse’s eyes closed. With two bloody hands Rachel leaned forward and recovered her son from the lap of the dying woman.

Rachel held her son up to her chest. The mark of the crucifix was already fading on Bean’s skin. His skin felt cold against hers, but that would change, she was sure that would change.

“You’re safe now, Bean,” she whispered to the child. She stood up and walked from the room, out into the corridor where the sound of screaming babies filled the air.