The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

Each time her muscles slackened, she pulled her mind inward until everything but her womb disappeared. Hypersensitive, she waited to feel the slightest of movements.

Not once did she perceive life.

If the baby were stillborn, the true Ulrich would return.

Most likely, he would kill her on the operating table. That would be fine with her: without Peach, she would have no will to go on.

If instead he let her live, she didn’t know if she could withstand another series of that “procedure,” followed by pregnancy with a child that could never replace this one.

They reached the stairs. “We’ll take it slowly,” Ulrich said as they began the descent. A spasm hit, and he rubbed her back. Although she despised his touch, she didn’t shake him off. He alone, through God’s grace, could save her baby.

The contraction abated, and she lowered herself to the next step. “Please, Lord, let her live.”

He held her steady. “Please, God, please.”

Ten Minutes Later

he baby’s breach.” Ulrich withdrew his hand from inside her pelvis.

“What does that mean?” She pushed herself up on the pillows piled behind her and looked at him between her legs.

“He’s feet down. I’ll have to perform a C-section.” Ulrich ripped away her gown.

“Wait! I don’t—” The cramping intensified, and the yellow tiled wall blurred. The contractions were on top of each other now, the valleys barely more manageable than the peaks.

Ulrich came around the operating table. “It’ll save the baby and you. Trust me.”

She jolted at those last two, familiar words.

“I must act quickly.” His hand skimmed the instruments on his tray. “Where did I . . . No matter, I’ve got these.” He reached into his black kit and pulled out a case that Cora recognized.

“Those are mine!” she yelled.

He eyed her through his mask. “Nothing is yours.” He caught his breath, and his eyes softened. “Though if this baby lives, and you prove to be a nurturing mother, I will be generous.” He flipped back the folded cloth, and the three rows of her blades now gleamed. He must have sterilized and polished them.

A pain seized her, so sharp she had to shriek.

“We need to get this baby out.” He grabbed a scalpel.

Bracing for the incision, she wondered if she’d heard the “we” correctly. Angela must be more stubborn than Cora had surmised. She stared across the room at the bassinet, lined with the friendship quilt she and Mary had made four decades ago. She’d thought she’d lost it forever when Ulrich stole her cache from the supply closet. But after first detecting the fetal heartbeat, he’d returned it to her.

Rather than cutting right into her abdomen, he injected local anesthesia. “Tell me when it’s numb. We can only spare a few moments.”

“Do it now.”

Without hesitation, he carefully sliced through her skin and muscles, then pulled out the baby.

Straining to hear those first cries, Cora bit her hand to silence herself.

Even Ulrich, holding the newborn with his back to Cora, didn’t speak.

The room remained as quiet as a crypt.

Stillborn.

“No!” Cora screamed, trying to sit up, but the severed muscles couldn’t engage.

She toppled back onto the pillows, which felt torturously soft.

A dark, bottomless hole, that’s what she needed. The earth, it should break open beneath her. Then seal itself shut above her. No longer caring that Ulrich could hear her, she bawled with abandon.

A resounding wail joined Cora’s.

Afraid it might have been an echo, she choked down a sob.

The reedy cry continued.

“Let me see.”

“It’s a boy.” Ulrich twisted to show her their child, and the red of her babe’s face deepened with a howl that could only come from a healthy set of lungs.

The sweetest sound, she thought, sobbing anew.

“Weißt du,” Ulrich sang to the baby in a baritone deeper than Otto’s, “wieviel Sternlein stehen an dem blauen Himmelszelt?”

Cora blinked rapidly in disbelief. It was the first German she’d heard him speak since his return from the war. Despite all the years that had passed, she’d recognized the lullaby Rolene had sung to him. He must genuinely love this child.

He laid the infant beneath a warming light powered by Cora’s small generator. “Weißt du,” he crooned, his face close to the baby’s, “wieviel Wolken gehen weithin uber alle Welt?” Can you count the clouds, so lightly o’er the meadows floating by?

Tears slid down her temples. A heart-wrenching sadness—for Ulrich’s loss of his mother, and the resulting absence of warmth and love throughout his childhood. Often, Cora still thought back to that tragic day, and those moments when such a young, traumatized boy had shunned his father’s solace. There were so many ways that outcome, which had translated into so much pain for her, could have been avoided.

Despite all that Ulrich stood for and had done to Cora, she could hear in his tender tone now a promise to this child that his upbringing would be nothing like Ulrich’s own. From afar, she’d observed his devotion to his other two children, and she wept with gratitude at this early indication that he loved this baby too.

He cut the umbilical cord and cleared out the baby’s mouth and nose.

The newborn cried louder. Cora stretched toward him, and blood from her abdomen sloshed onto the floor. “Give him to me.”

“The crying’s good. It means he’s strong.” Ulrich swaddled him and placed a knit cap over his head.

“I love you, mein kleiner Mann,” he said in the same soothing voice she’d heard him use with Rollie and Greta when they were young.

Cora could only guess—and pray—that Ulrich was speaking German to their child because it would be safe to do so with him living here on the island.

“Say hello to your Mutti while I stitch her up.”

He placed the wailing newborn on Cora’s chest, and she gasped at the sensation of his cheek against her skin. He was so warm, and wet. Afraid he would slip away, like so many of her hopes, she awkwardly held him to her.

The baby squirmed, so she tightened her grip. I’m hurting him, she worried.

“How do I