I never went into labor. Wheeled behind the curtain before I was ready. Pokes and prods as my limbs numbed out of existence. A lone teardrop crawled down my nose, impossible to wipe away with my arms tied down. I didn’t want to seem weak, but it was all too much. 

“Are you okay?” The anesthesiologist crooned, leaning over my face. Watching the droplet roll off my nose. I was sure he offered a smile under his face mask. 

I nodded. Unable to speak for fear I would cry. My stomach was pulled, shifted, tugged. I became a tube of toothpaste, squeezed from the bottom up. I might vomit. 

“Your breathing is erratic.” The anesthesiologist peered over me again. “Are you feeling anything?”

I nodded once more. 

“But it’s not painful?” He furrowed brows covered his examining eyes. 

“I don’t know.” 

Beeping rang through my ears, my heart rate accelerating too fast. 

“I’m just going to give you something to calm you down.” He stuck a needle in the catheter protruding from my wrist. 

It flowed like deep heavy lead through my veins while I sunk into a pool of warm water.

“Ope. Come back, Mama.” 

I had gone too deep, my eyes rolling back into my head, dropping my blood pressure. 

The pressure on my stomach increased, though no pain came from the area. 

“Doctor?” The nurse to my left squeaked the word with fear. “Sir, I. . .” her sentenced was cut off by a nurse to the right of me. 

“What in the. . .”

The surgeon stopped, raising his bloodied gloved hands into the air. “It has to come out.” 

“What’s wrong?” I mumbled, trying to see past the curtain placed just below my neck. 

“Don’t anyone speak.” The doctor ordered, then ducked below my line of sight. 

The pushing and pulling resumed, like a bus driving back and forth across my torso. 

A sound resounded. A cry. A shriek. From the nurse. 

“My baby,” I whispered, the walls breathing in time with me. “Please, my baby.” 

“You can’t,” the nurse answered, cross eyed in alarm. “You don’t want to.” 

Fury threatened to explode. I would tear the lines from my arms and rise from the table with my guts hanging out if need be. “Give me my baby!” I screamed, though my voice a rasping groan. 

The doctor nodded, bringing a bundle over top the curtain and placing it on my chest. 

My baby. An elongated shape to his nose, white soft hair wet against his skin. Hands and feet—soft dark hooves. His eyes, bright, illuminating, looking directly into mine. 

“Oh,” I murmured, taking in the small horn growing from the center of his forehead. 

Too soon he was removed, taken from my arms. “Knock her out,” the doctor ordered. As the drugs became concrete in my veins, my eyelids closed to the sight of my baby’s eyes, rainbows of pure magic, staring back into mine.