Chapter One
The waves of pain surge through her, gripping deeper than she had imagined possible. Her muscles and ligaments entwine like fisherman’s knots, twisting, twisting. Pulling tight. A trough arrives, bringing a minute or two of rest. Lizzie walks with care, a novice skater on hard ice afraid of falling through. She pauses when her insides seize then continues through the building. She locks the door to the women’s room and spreads layer upon layer of hand towel on the floor then strips out of her clothes, stepping on the legs of her pants to pull them off when she cannot bend. Mentally reviewing the next steps, she opens a canvas bag and sets out the items she will need, trying to maintain her wits.
Girls do this everyday, she reminds herself. Give birth alone. Babies born in toilets, at schools, in alleyways, even in their own beds with parents sleeping in the next room. This soothes her until a contraction grabs her in its fist and squeezes. Reading about a thing and doing it are as closely related as are painting a portrait and digging a ditch. There is no escaping the pain now. There is just breathing to get past the next crest. If only she’d gotten farther away.
She closes her eyes and glimpses snippets from her life that flicker at random as though she is dying. The green tree line as seen from a spot on the cliff overlooking the river, the curl of Rue’s lip as he crooned into a microphone, the stain of wild blueberries on her fingertips. Life playing out in your mind is supposed to happen before death. Is that what birth is? she wonders. The death of something? Of what? Childhood? Being cared for? She snorts at this. Who has ever cared for her?
The next contraction erases the bitterness from her mind. A moan surges inside her and carries the enormity of her effort from her womb to the rough north country beyond the door. She isn’t Lizzie now – just an animal squatting on the ground, her feet in her own fluids. The smell of iron and sweat and something wild surrounds her. Saliva fills her mouth and she retches, vomiting into the toilet.
Sam(uel) Description:
Lizzie is seventeen, pregnant and on the run from a violent father, a defeated mother and an abusive boyfriend when she meets Sam, a trans-gendered sex-trade worker, who offers her refuge. Emotions collide as their feelings for each other grow and they struggle with their conceptions of their own sexuality including Sam’s long struggle to live as a straight female. When crisis strikes, Lizzie must find it within herself to save Sam before it’s too late.
