Jack Ketchum - Right to Life

He snorted. “The baby won’t know.”

“What about us? What about our lives? What about our friends? The baby’s got to have friends and so do we.”

“The baby isn’t going to need any friends the first year or two. I want somebody younger this time, Kath. She’s too fucking old. She doesn’t do it for me. She’s fucking disgusting.”

He was serious for god’s sake. She thought back to Shawna, the first one. She’d been younger all right. Sixteen.

Buried in back a few feet away from McCann.

He’d been playing with electricity. They hadn’t known she had a bad heart.

How many?

“Stephen, I want my life back. I want to have Gail over. I want to go out to dinner and a movie sometimes. I mean, is that a lot to ask?”

“I’m talking about a year or two. Once the baby’s older I’ll… settle down.”

Sure. Sure you will.

“We’ll take it easy for a while. But right now, you know. I’ve got needs!”

Like his needs were the most ordinary, matter-of-fact thing in the world.

“Stephen…”

“Look. You want it to be you again? Is that what you want?”

She did not.

But she didn’t want this either.

“We’re going to get caught. You know that. We try again, we’re gonna get caught.”

“That’s paranoid. We just have to be careful, that’s all. Like always.”

She turned to him.

“Do you realize how close we came? With McCann? What if Elsie or somebody else had seen us and not just him? We’re lucky we didn’t get caught right there.”

“Unlucky, Kath. McCann was a one-in-a-million shot for chrissake. Besides, we won’t be taking her in front of some crowd at an abortion clinic. We’ll be taking her off the street. Any street. It’ll be completely anonymous. Just like Shawna was.”

She couldn’t believe he was saying this.

“Listen to yourself. Don’t you get it? You fucking killed Shawna!” He turned and got up on one elbow and pointed his finger at her inches from her face. Jabbing at her.

“Don’t talk to me like that, Kath. You hear me? Not ever.”

He stared at her a long moment and then rolled over again.

“I’m your husband. You married me better or worse. You’ll do as I say.”

He was sick of her. Sick of her whining and sick of her sloppy body and sloppy habits. He wondered what the hell kind of mother she was going to make. He thought that maybe he’d been wrong about this all along. Right from the start. That maybe a kid was going to be one great big pain in the ass, period.

He was even more sick of Sara Foster. Her body repulsed him. The swollen blue-veined breasts, the stretch marks, the varicose veins in the backs of her knees. Even her hair had lost its sheen. And the belly itself — the thing itself. She was living with a parasite inside her body for god’s sake. How could a woman do that? He wouldn’t tell Kath this but experience was the best teacher and he’d privately decided that the Movement was all wrong. It wasn’t a kid in there, not yet. Once it was born it would be, sure. But for now it was nothing more than a tiny parasite feeding off her and depending on her for everything from its oxygen and food to dumping its piss and shit.

The whole damn thing was gross.

He couldn’t kill her, hell, he couldn’t even play with her now the way he’d played with her before, it was ashes with her body being what it was and ashes in the face of what he really wanted to do because he couldn ’t wait to kill her. It was the only thing left he hadn’t done to the bitch when you came right down to it and he knew he’d come then which he hadn’t lately, hadn’t really come.

They’d cut and pull and tear it out of her and that’d be the end of the miserable fucking life of Sara Foster.

That in mind, he slept.

“Kath. Please. What is this?”

There in the attic.

A stainless steel cart on wheels. Sponges. Sterile pads, gauze pads. Scalpels and forceps. A box of disposable syringes. Packages of sterile drapes. An IV drip. The question was rhetorical. The need to ask it, frightening.

She knew damn well what it was.

This wasn’t her first delivery.

“You’re planning to do it here? In the house? You can’t be.”

“Of course we are.” She laughed. “What did you think, we’re bringing you to the hospital? You’d have the cops on us in seconds.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

Kath patted her shoulder. “Don’t shit a shitter, Sara. Now come on back downstairs. Don’t worry about that stuff.”

“I wouldn’t say anything. I swear!”

“Right. Come on or I’m telling Stephen.”

She was losing her mind. She had to be. This couldn’t be happening.

“Wait. All right. Wait. These things here. What are they?”

“Clamps.”

They were huge.

“And this?”

“A spreader.”

“My god. What for?”

She shrugged. “We might have to… you know, a cesarean section. You use them to hold back the organs… stomach, whatever. The spreader’s for the ribs.”

“Jesus christ, Kath!”

“You got to be prepared, right? You might have complications.”

“I’m not going to have any complications!”

Kath headed for the stairs. Sara reached out and grabbed her arm. Something she had never dared to do before. But she couldn’t let it go at this.

“Listen. Listen to me. Who told you to get all this? A doctor?”

“No doctor.”

“You’re not even going to get me a doctor? The Organization can’t spare a doctor!”

“We don’t need a doctor. I’m a nurse, remember? Look, we’ve got everything here. Anesthetics, whatever. Anything you’re going to need. Don’t get all upset about it for chrissake. Midwives deliver babies all the time.”

“Midwives don’t perform surgery, Kath!”

“Well, neither will we. Not unless we have to.”

She looked away, up to the high naked wooden beams of the ceiling.

And in that moment Sara simply didn’t believe her.

She felt herself flush and the contents of her stomach rise.

My god, she thought. I’ve been such a fool. Such a terrible fool. I never saw it.

I never saw it coming.

There weren’t even any stirrups. They’d never even considered normal delivery.

This was what they were planning — had been all along. She was their little experiment. The baby would be the fruit of that experiment.

But Sara was as expendable as one of these throw-away syringes here. In fact she had to be expendable. They couldn’t keep her captive here forever for god’s sake, not even the Organization could isolate her that much. Sooner or later somebody would come around to visit. Sooner or later somebody from the outside was going to know.

Certainty washed over her. Washed her clean.

They were going to kill her.

The birthing was how.

The Organization be damned. It was time to see what she could do about that.

She was well into her seventh month.

It was time to see right now.

Should have locked the damn door, she thought. Fucking stupid not to. It was sloppy.

Stephen would be pissed. But it was Stephen’s fault too.

There was nothing to do but try to repair the damages.

They sat at the dining room table over some hot herbal tea. Grandma’s Tummy Mint. Celestial Seasonings. She supposed it was meant to be nice and reassuring. It wasn’t. Outside the window the day was gray and still and dark. In a couple of weeks kids would be out trick-or-treating. She wondered if any of them would bother to come out this way.

It was Saturday. Around four. Stephen was still working in the garage. She could hear the whine of his circular saw.