warnings: traumatic childbirth, description of stillbirth and a stillborn baby, dissociation, a brief reference to self harm, and mentions of blood/general birth grossness.
Chapter 10: Riley & Luna
In which Riley gives birth
"You know when you have that baby I'm gonna kill it in its fucking sleep," Jacks tells her one night as he shoots up.
The next day Riley leaves him and never goes back.
o - o - o
She walks and walks, across the city, backpack on her back and guitar case thudding against her leg. She can feel people's eyes on her, on her greasy hair and her bandaged wrist and her pregnant belly gaping out from her shirt. But she keeps her head down and walks until nightfall. Then she curls up on a park bench, her guitar case serving as a pillow, and falls asleep. It's the first decent sleep she's had in months.
o - o - o
She plays her guitar on street corners like she used to, only now she keeps what she makes instead of giving it to Jacks, and it's a strange feeling, to have money in her pockets, to not be reliant on him for food and a few bucks here and there.
She saves up until she can buy prenatal vitamins and folic acid supplements and a maternity dress that will actually fit her growing stomach. She starts getting enough to eat, or at least enough to forget what it's like to be constantly hungry.
It's late April when she feels her baby move for the first time.
She's twenty-four weeks pregnant and the trees are in bloom and for once Riley lets herself believe that maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay.
o - o - o
But everything is not okay.
The contractions start on a rainy May morning.
Only it can't be contractions, she tells herself. She's twenty-six weeks pregnant. It must just be cramps— just some sort of cramps.
She heads to her usual corner and plays until she can't, until the rain and the cramps are both too strong and she's hunched over her guitar gripping her abdomen in agony, attracting disturbed looks from passers-by.
Then she grits her teeth and packs up her guitar and stumbles off in search of somewhere to lie down, somewhere out of the rain to sleep off the cramps.
She finds a public bathroom, where at least she knows she'll be dry, and staggers inside. It's one room, with a urinal and a toilet and a changing table.
She shuts the door, locks it, sinks to her knees. There's feces smeared on the walls and clogging the toilet, and the ground is wet with something that's hopefully water but probably piss.
Sobbing, Riley crawls to the corner, curls up on the cleanest bit of tile she can find, and waits.
o - o - o
It isn't long before her water breaks. It trickles out between her legs, onto her already rain-drenched dress.
No, she thinks. Please. It's too early. It's too early for the baby to come.
She stares at the wet tile floor and tries to get her breathing under control, unable to think of anything except the litany of pregnancy complications she's read about. Then the contractions get stronger, and she's unable to think of anything except the pain.
She screams and screams for her dad, for Jacks, for someone, anyone. She screams for hours. But she's locked in a bathroom, and no one can hear. And if they could hear— who would care?
o - o - o
Luna is tiny and perfect and utterly, deathly still.
Robotically, Riley takes out the knife she keeps in her sock and cuts through the umbilical cord with shaking hands. The ground and her clothes are a mess of blood and afterbirth but all she can see is her baby— her precious, beautiful baby.
Somewhere inside her, Riley knows that something is very wrong, that the baby is too small, too purple, too silent. "Luna, please," she whimpers. She wipes the little face clean with the hem of her sleeve. "Are you cold? Are— Here." She pulls off her jacket and wraps it around the tiny naked body. "Luna," she breathes, cradling the bundle. "Sweetheart, come on. C'mon, open your eyes." She kisses her daughter's soft wrinkled forehead, her tiny delicate ears, her slightly-parted lips. "C'mon Luna. Please breathe. Please wake up. Please."
But Luna doesn't wake up.
Riley presses her to her chest and sobs.
o - o - o
She stands up numbly after a long, long time, a lifetime maybe, and sets the baby down on the changing table, still swaddled in her jacket.
She throws away the placenta in the trashcan and cleans the blood from the ground as best as she can with paper towels. Then she vomits into the noxious toilet until all that comes out is bile.
At last she rises and carefully picks up the bundle once more. "C'mon, Luna," she whispers, staring into the small empty face, running a thumb over the downy hair of her eyebrows. "Come on. Time to go, sweetheart."
She picks up her guitar, unlocks the bathroom door, and steps out onto the street.
o - o - o
It isn't raining anymore by the time she reaches the public library, and the sun is just starting to set. She nearly cries when she sees Lito leaning against the building.
"Lito," she calls, running toward him.
He grins at the sight. "Riley!" he says, pushing off from the wall, "It's been so long!"
Riley doesn't know what to say, so she just nods her head.
"How are you?" he asks, the beginnings of a frown on his face. "Are you alright? Are you crying?"
"I had the baby," Riley croaks.
"Oh!" Lito beams, and opens his mouth to say something more, but then Riley holds out Luna for him to see. He looks down at the purple face and something in his expression shifts.
"Riley," he says, glancing up at her with wide, frightened eyes. He touches her elbow. "Riley, come with me. I'm— I'm going to take you home."
o - o - o
They walk in silence, Lito carrying Riley's guitar case and Riley carrying Luna, until they reach an old church.
Lito pounds on the door. "Sun?" he calls. "Capheus?" There's a desperation in his voice that scares Riley.
"Lito—" she whispers, but he whirls around and places his hands on her shoulders.
"Don't worry," he says. "It's going to be okay."
Riley nods, and just then the door swings open to reveal a smiling boy. "What, you forgot how to pick the lock?" he teases. Then he seems to notice Riley. "Oh!" he says. "Hello, I'm Capheus," but Lito shakes his head and ushers Riley inside before she can respond.
"You stay there, Riley, alright?" he tells her. "Just stay there and I'll be back in a minute, I just need to…" He looks around helplessly. "It's going to be okay," he repeats at last, then he grabs Capheus by the arm and pulls him toward the far end of the church.
Riley sits down and waits, Luna clutched to her shoulder. She waits for a long time. She hears Lito's voice in the distance, but she can't make out any words.
When Lito and Capheus return to her there's a girl with them, an Asian girl in a red beanie who kneels down beside her.
"My name is Sun," she says.
"I'm Riley," says Riley, wiping her eyes. "And— and this is Luna."
"May I see her?"
Riley angles her bundle toward Sun, who carefully peels back part of Riley's jacket to reveal the baby's face.
"She's beautiful," Sun says quietly.
"Yes," Riley sniffs. "She is."
"But, Riley," Sun goes on, even more softly than before, "you know that she can't stay here, right?"
And that's when Riley leaves her body.
She watches as a girl in dirty, blood-stained clothes sobs over the dead baby in her arms. It looks like her, like Riley, but it isn't, because Riley doesn't have a dead baby, Riley is floating somewhere above, looking down into the church, watching from afar as Sun takes this other girl, this not-Riley girl, into her arms and hugs her until she stops sobbing, until she nods and says in a strangled voice, "I know, I know I need to— to bury her."
Then the boy who opened the door, Capheus, approaches tentatively, and tells not-Riley something about a shed, and a shovel, and a graveyard.
Riley continues to watch the scene play out, watches as Capheus digs a shallow hole in the grass behind the church. Not-Riley is beside him, shivering, and the other two stand behind her, somber-faced. Sun has a hand on her shoulder.
Riley watches Lito lay a blanket in the hole, watches not-Riley set the dead baby on top of the blanket. Not-Riley doesn't say a word, just buries her face in her hands and cries— cries and cries and cries, and—
And Riley is crying too, and Lito takes her by the hand and leads her into the church so she doesn't have to watch them put dirt on top of Luna, because Luna is not the dead baby, can't be the dead baby—
"Shhhh," he says soothingly, guiding her toward a pile of blankets. "Lay down. That's it. Shh."
Her thighs are sticky and her clothes are soaked in rain and everything hurts so, so much.
"You're safe now," says Lito, covering her with a blanket, stroking her hair as she cries.
She cries till she has no tears left.