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Show Motherlunge a novel 124 "That way, when it's over, you won't be the same." I hated her; I nodded. "But I want you to be the same." She reached for the giant cup of water on her bedstand and drank through the straw. She pulled her hair off her neck and reached to me; I pulled off one of the hairbands around my wrist and gave it to her. "And I have chapstick, too." I dug into my backpack and brandished a tube. "Great. Keep it up. Soon I'm going to be pretty useless, you know. And you're going to have to help me." "No. No, no, no. You can do it," I said as I watched her use the chapstick, my own lips stretched wide. She put the cap back on and handed back the tube. She looked at me, waiting for the next contraction. I saw my last best chance. "You could be the same after this, if you wanted to." I whined slightly, I'm afraid. My sister looked past me, up to the place where the beige curtain around the bed hung from little plastic beads to a track in the ceiling. She was listening, perhaps. "But you've already been changing, Pavia." " I know," Pavia whispered. She knew I wasn't talking about the changes to her body. She lifted her hips up off the mattress, slowly pulled the hospital gown down around her thighs. " I know. Before you came I wanted to shake things up. Now, I can't stop. You know? Like a beat?" She patted the sheets. Thump thump thump. "I wake up in the morning and I try to keep things straight, but I don't know what I'm going to think about anything. About Jack, or this baby or the other one...." Thump. Thump. Thump. And then the next wave came. |