First Breath

A Short Story by Elizabeth Scott Tervo

Some kind of machine was going tok-tok-tok-tok-tok and I could hear a lot of people moving around and talking at once. I cradled my duffel bag close and crowded into the dark closet with Adele and Baldy and the others. There was a rich meaty smell. On the other side of the door, a woman was giving birth while we silently concentrated on our secret hope. 

"I gotta push! I gotta push!"

"She says she has to push!"

"Remember, never take your eyes off a multipara."

"Go ahead honey! Push that baby out!"

"Mmmm! Huh!"

"Don't push in your face! Push down here!"

"Mmmmm! Wuh!"

"You can do it! Go! Go! Go!"

"One-two-three!”

"Stop, let her rest till the next one."

"Water! Give me water!... Here it comes again! Mmmmmmm!"

"That's it! That's it! Go! Go! Go! I can see the head!"

"Stop lying! Mmmmmmrrrrr!"

"Dad, are you ready to cut the cord?"

"What? Where is it?"

"Push! Push! You can do it!!"

"I can't! God!"

"You ARE doing it! It's coming!"

"After the baby comes, you can cut the umbilical cord. I'll hand you the scissors."

"Just don't let me hurt it."

"You'll be fine."

“MmmmmmMMMMMM!”

"What is that thing... that keeps coming out and sliding back?"

"That's the top of the baby's head."

"Whoa."

"It's sliding back? It's not coming out?! PULL IT OUT!!!"

"You can push it out yourself."

"I said stop lying!"

Inside the closet, I started to feel faint. The floor was heaving and a strange feeling came across my face. I think I was turning pale. I forgot about all this. I bowed my head over my bag and tried to remember why I was here. 

#

Earlier, George was watching me trying to eat something before I left. The fluorescent ceiling light glared down on us but the windows were still dark and the metal folding chairs were cold. He placed his hands flat on the speckled Formica table, hunched his shoulders, took a breath, opened his mouth... and then didn't say anything. 

My stomach knotted up. I really couldn't eat, but I knew I needed something, so I got down Katie's Cheerios and scooped out a handful. The yellow box gleamed in the harsh light, but the Cheerios crunched in my mouth with the reassuring taste of childhood, and I felt my nervousness change to excitement.

“You're coming back, right? What would I do with Katie all by myself?"

"We've been through all this. I can go on this mission now, because Katie is in school and doesn't need me all day. Once we get out to the ship we'll be out to the planet and start sharing the Gospel. And I'll only be gone two weeks."

The windows were open to catch the cooler nighttime air and faintly I could smell my neighbor's mock orange blooming in the dark like a secret bride.

“That's not what I meant—how is it really going to work?”

“They taught us in our orientation classes. When a newborn baby breathes in for the first time, it makes a little hole in space-time and if we can catch that circle as it spirals away, we can get to the ship and go.”

“Right... but again, why does it have to be you? You want to mother everyone, even some unknown aliens on a planet." 

“George, we have to save them! Governments on earth have licensed businesses to go there and start colonies and exploit the resources. Since they have gold instead of iron in their blood, they will kill them! And they are going to use Christianity to make them think laying down their lives for us is right! It was always like this: missions gets mixed with conquests and war and violence. We can’t let that happen again! We have to get out in front!”

"But why you?"

"Because I received the calling... and because I care. That's why."

"But why not just go down to the port and hire your own ship? We could raise the money for that."

"We have to go secretly. This is the way to get around going to the port officially."

“But what are these aliens?”

“I don’t know what they’re like. I just know they’re made in the image of God just like we are.”

“Well, if it’s God’s work..."

"It is."

"Then, May, it must be a holy deed... I think... but someday we'll go to Paris. For me that's far enough away."

"See, you don't care like I do. That's why it's me. But thanks. I'm okay with Paris someday."

I looked around at our meager furniture and tiny kitchen. Paris was a long way off, actually farther away, for me, than the planet. 

"So you are just going to go down to the hospital and ask to be there when a baby is born?”

“No, no, no. Nobody would let us do that. Adele arranged it. You remember her."

"The perfect mom?”

“Yeah. There’s a VIP birth suite at the hospital which has its own outside staircase, in case of an emergency or paparazzi or something. She kept the key after she had Dawson. We are going up those stairs into the closet of that suite. We’ll wait there for a baby to be born. We won't actually go in the room.  Nobody will know we are there. If we hope hard enough, the circle will come towards us.”

“All of you?”

“It's only me, Adele, Baldy, the Worrier, and Gabby. We’ll squish.”

“But May, are you sure this isn’t all a dream? Like when you used to think the kitchen floor was tilting down and you wouldn’t come in here because you were afraid you’d drop the baby off the balcony?”

“No, George... I was really mixed up then... but this is real.”

George hugged me hard as we said goodbye. Thank goodness Katie was asleep, so I didn't have to say goodbye to her. 

I went down the concrete steps and walked down to the hospital. It was strange to be out so early in the cool twilight while the town was still sleeping, on such a strange errand. Now my stomach was knotting up again even though the air was fresh and new.

I met the others outside the hospital behind a big rhododendron Adele had chosen. The white flowers were spent but the big green leaves provided cover for the five of us. Adele was there, checking us off on a clipboard, the Worrier and Gabby arrived together holding hands, and Baldy walked up last of all, staring at all the hospital building as if he'd never seen anything like it before and turning all the way around to watch a bird on a tree branch as he walked by. 

#

"The Professor's waiting for us in the ship!" said Adele. "Let's go!"

"Pull the thing out! Get those things! Mmmmwuf!"

"Forceps? That carries risks. We only do it if the benefits outweigh the risks. We don't need them for you. You can do it yourself."

"You PEOPLE! Mmmmm! MmmmRRRRRR! Mmmmm!"

“I see a little light meconium. Call down and let Peds know.”

"There it is! It's really coming now!"

"Mmmm! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm! Huh!"

"Waah, waah, waah!"

"Now put him down on her stomach. Don't put any tension on the cord."

"What is it?"

"It's a boy."

"It's a boy!"

"Why is he all wet?"

"That’s the amniotic fluid."

"Waah, waah!"

"Oh, baby! It's my baby! Look at him!"

"Welcome to the world, little one!"

"Sunrise! The best time to be born!"

"Now, Dad, here's the scissors."

"Oh... oh... okay..."

"Cut right there.”

“It’s really tough.”

“Look at my baby! I got him!”

More footsteps.

“Peds is here—now go and give them your report.”

“Now dry him off.”

"Call my mom, somebody! I did it! I did it! I got my baby!"

 

From inside the closet, I sensed a circular emptiness in the air, rotating as it came, closer and closer, slicing through the door, a darker darkness. 

I tried to think deeply and calmly, as we had been instructed, about our joint wish and desire to be on the ship heading out into space. I wanted to be there. But I felt trembly. 

The yelling, the baby crying, the smell... it was all too much. I grasped the solid heft of the duffel bag to me and felt its sturdy canvas. I want to go to the ship I said over and over to myself. I could hear the soft breathing of the others quickening, and I could tell that it was Baldy shuffling his feet a little.

 Suddenly I knew I had to get out of there. If I tried to explain I knew I would burst out crying, so I just made a break for it, but the others were in the darkness between me and the door to the stairway. I barged into someone's shoulder and someone else's elbow as I tried to force myself and the bag between them. A muffled "ow!" of surprise broke the silence as I made a final push and then found the door handle. My wedding ring clinked on it.

Baldy found my hand and gripped it and said in a low voice, "'Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world.'"

The almost intangible round emptiness spiraled into a smaller and smaller circle and floated past us and away through the  wall.

"What was that noise?"

I froze.

Adele pushed me away and grasped the handle herself. She opened the door and pushed us all out onto the landing. She shut the door carefully behind us, and the click of the latch echoed up and down as we walked down the concrete stairs and out, under fluorescent lights. Baldy had a big smile on his face, but I must have been ghastly pale. The Worrier was pale too.

"Is it really like that..." he muttered. Gabby looked sideways at him: someday they might have a cute little baby of their own!

"Shhh!" said Adele angrily.

#

We emerged into the hospital yard. Adele shut the door and tried it again to make sure. She motioned us away from the building.

The sun was rising now and the world looked new. A life had come into the world... but we had to go back into an ordinary day. It hadn't worked. Everyone looked at me and Baldy. If only I hadn't freaked out and made him speak.

“May and Robert! Why did you have to do that?” 

I always call him Baldy to myself, but Robert is his real name. He smiled and just shook his head. Adele sighed. I felt too drained to try to explain. Adele is the perfect mom and always does the right thing and never makes mistakes. She wouldn't understand. I felt sleepy. We stood there while Adele decided what to do.

"I'll check with the Professor and see if there will be another chance tomorrow. Come on, I’ll give everyone a ride home.”

"Mamaaa!"

I burst in on George having breakfast with Katie, who flung her cereal on the floor and ran to hug my legs hard.

"You're back! What happened?"

I patted Katie on the head and picked her up.

"Who's Mama's good girl? George, it was real, all right! I saw the big dark circle.  It came right through the wall. But it didn't work. It was Baldy who spoiled it.” 

I had just enough energy left to tell George it was all real, but I didn't want to tell him that I was the one who got upset and tried to run. Birth was traumatic enough for George already without me reminding him.

“You mean Robert? Why do you call him Baldy? He’s not bald.”

“Remember, how I met him, at jury duty, when he refused to serve because the defendant was bald?”

“He is a strange person."

"Baldy is harmless. And sometimes... he kind of gets things in a way other people don't."

"But May, if the circle or hole was really real, how could anyone spoil it?”

“By speaking. We’re not supposed to speak, just hope."

I made breakfast, George left for work, and I walked Katie to preschool. Then I called Baby A’s office and asked for an emergency appointment.

 

Baby A was the therapist I used to see. (She is a human, not a robot.) I named her that because she was very small. I am not a large person, but she was tiny. She must have told me her name at the first session, but that was the time when I fell asleep on her sofa so I forgot. When I was with her I was mostly thinking about myself, so I never asked her name. 

I felt strange and selfish about this. I knew I ought to be trying to take care of her, and not just know her name, but talk with her normally and share with her about my faith, but I didn't know how to do that in this context of our therapy sessions and I felt that I must be a terrible Christian. 

I did not want to tell Baby A about the mission or the getting-to-the-spaceship plan. It did sound crazy, and I wanted to hold on to the idea that I was sane, in front of her. I thought she might be the kind of person who would think my faith was part of my mental health issues. Pathological.

I walked down the health center hall past all the other doors to Baby A's door, went in, and shut it behind me. I plumped down on the cream-colored sofa. Baby A was sitting on the opposite sofa where she always sat—I've never seen her anywhere else—looking at me through her blue-rimmed glasses and smiling. Her hair was sleek in its chin-length bob and her sweater and skirt were trim and matching.

I looked around, grabbed a square pink satin cushion, and clutched it in front of me. Usually I gazed at a weaving on the wall in the form of fishes, but for once I did not wait for her to ask me any questions.

"I was at a birth this morning."

"Oh, yes?"

Baby A would not ask for details. She would only talk about what I wanted to talk about. 

"It reminded me of Katie's birth, and I was upset. I couldn't stand it. I tried to run away."

"And why?"

"Sometimes it all comes back. Sometimes in the middle of the night I feel guilty because I did it all wrong."

"What happened when Katie was born?" 

"My waters broke... they tried to induce the labor, but it took days and days, and I got a fever. When it began to hurt a little, they gave me medicine to sleep but I woke up and the pain was so agonizing..." 

My story was spilling out—unlike Katie, who seemed to take years to come out.  

There were no words for this. Labor was a planet where there was no language. Except profanity. But I never swore, and I particularly did not want to swear in front of Baby A. I began to cry, and then words came. 

"I kept waking up and falling asleep over and over, and the pain got worse every time. I almost broke George’s hand, squeezing it. I screamed for the epidural, but they said it was too soon. I said, turn off the contractions! But they wouldn’t. George yelled at them to bring the epidural. Finally, the nurse agreed."

"Then what happened?"

"I got the epidural. I felt better and I went to sleep. But when I woke up I felt guilty. I wanted to have a natural childbirth. In the classes they told us that's best for the baby. But I couldn't. I was... a coward."

This chivalric word didn't quite fit but it was the closest thing I could find.

"It sounds very difficult."

"Then it felt like years I was pushing. I wanted them to give me a break, but they wouldn’t. I had to keep going. There was no way out.

"George was scared. He just kept praying the Jesus prayer. I asked him if I was going to die but he couldn't answer. He was trying to be brave. I wanted to be brave too but I had lost everything. The baby's heartbeat went faster and faster and they brought more doctors. They told us they were going to do a caesarean. I didn't care anymore. But then they didn't do it."

"What happened?"

"There was another woman, and she was more of an emergency. Meantime George looked under the blanket and saw the top of Katie's head coming out. He screamed and they all came running back in. One doctor yelled at all the other ones for leaving me alone. Then it was a long time again. I was yelling for God to help me, and I was yelling for George to kill me. I wish he did. 

"Finally it came out—the baby came out. I tried to hold her but she was slippery and hot and I just wanted to rest and she was crying and I could not understand why she was crying, I thought I was the one who should be crying. George was calling everyone but then I heard blood splattering on the floor and all the doctors rushed back in. I could see they were afraid. I felt sorry for them but I didn't really care anymore. Finally it all stopped and I went to sleep.

"They took the baby to the special unit. George went too. Everybody went away. I was left all alone.

"Later they helped me stand up but everything went dark and quiet, and my face in the mirror was yellow and my lips were blue. They caught me and put me back in bed and gave me medicine to bring me back.

"I tried to nurse the baby, I couldn't. There was no milk to come out. My body was just used up. Everyone told me it wasn’t good for the baby to have a bottle. People would come up to me and tell me that."

"There's so much to talk about here."

"Yes! So, this morning, at this birth, it was different! The mom had a hard time, but at the end, she was happy! She was glad with her baby. She talked to the baby. She said something like, 'Welcome, little one!’" 

I began to cry. 

"I was never that happy mother. I was so tired and I couldn't do it right and I was so lonely—and here I am, still, today so lonely and I can’t do anything right..." 

These were the words that came out... but as they came out, they didn't feel quite right anymore. I was getting better, and I had not wanted to kill myself for a long time. 

"What you say is a very common story after a birth. There's a baby and a tired mom. That's normal."

"It's normal?" 

"You needed people around you to help and there was nobody. But you got through up to now, didn't you?"

"Yes... I did... But you're supposed to be happy."

We sat there together. The idea of lost happiness floated in front of us, like the circle at the hospital, but light instead of dark. My mind raced ahead of the conversation through that light to all the things I wished I could say to Baby A, because in a way she was my baby too. 

I named you Baby A... Baby, because you are so little and I feel responsible for you... but also A, because we have this clinical relationship—you are replaceable by any other therapist, who might be Baby B, or C, or D... I want to do everything right, and take care of everyone: my kids, my husband, my town, our country, the aliens, and you... I want to give you new life, by telling you about my faith, not just as something about me, but as something for you to consider for your own self...

But here I was thrown back upon myself, because she was the one person I could not take care of. Baby A was not a baby that I needed to give birth to by convincing her about the Gospel. Baby A was her own person and she was not my job. We had no connection to each other except for these conversations. I was not here to preach, but to get well. I wished there was some way to show her. 

Dimly I began to sense that maybe the best testimony I could give her was facing my problems bravely... 

I could let her be free.

Freedom. This jingled in my mind with everything our group had learned in our missions classes about the good missionaries throughout the centuries who tried to protect the people from violence and slavery, so they could have the freedom to accept or reject Christianity on their own... because they were human beings just like Europeans... When we got to that other planet, we would give the gift of freedom to the alien inhabitants... we would offer them the Gospel and let them choose, protect them from the business men and body-miners who saw them as only a new source of wealth.

You can mother people, and try to protect them, but eventually they will grow up and you must let them go free to make their own choices... I will be a mother to the aliens, by protecting them and then also by letting them go free. 

 I could not be a mother to Baby A. And her job was to listen to me and talk with me, but then trust and respect me enough to let me make my own choices. She let me be free. Without thinking how this would sound, I finally spoke.

“Like a mother you were to me.”

She smiled.

“For a little while.”

This rang familiarly in my mind, and I went on.

“But I cannot be a mother to YOU.”

“No. I’m not important here.”

“I have to let you be free.”

When I said this, I felt my unsleeping vigilance and worry—about the entire universe and everyone in it—relax a little bit. 

"There was a person there...” I began, then I realized Baby A must know Baldy, since everybody in town knew him, “he's a little eccentric..."

"Yes?"

"He, that person, he knew I was upset and he took my hand and he just... spoke up! ... from Tolkien... you know, Lord of the Rings."

"What did he say?"

I could not help tearing up again as I repeated aloud the words that Elendil the Tall spoke as his ship landed on the shores of Middle-Earth.

She smiled.

"And how did that make you feel?"

"So many things."

"What were some of them?"

Baby A did not say, 'tell me those things you felt!' She let me choose what I wanted to reveal. She left me free. At the hospital, I had felt constrained, trapped, hemmed in. But not here. I thought and chose what I wanted to say, while she sat and kept me company.

"First, I was angry because he was interrupting an important moment. He should have kept quiet and I should have too. Second, I felt trapped because he was stopping me from leaving. But then, I saw... that to him, this event was heroic. Epic. Mythic, archetypal. Beyond space and time. Noble. This birth was noble. And he wanted to tell me that."

"Yes?"

"He was reminding me that a new soul came into the world... and how marvelous that is."

"Yes."

"That's the important thing... I think I was fed a fairy tale... about a beautiful natural birth, that it's not that painful, and complications are so rare that you don't have to think about them... and that you're going to be happy. Nobody tells you things can go wrong, you might be out of your mind with pain and exhaustion. Nobody ever said you might not be happy."

I thought about this. I didn't have the contentment with the birth experience like everyone told me I would have, if I tried hard enough. A new soul came into the world; Katie arriving into the world is a splendid thing, but that is a true thing. The happy birth experience is not true. Or it might be true sometimes, for some people, or even for most people, but it wasn't true for me.

"Sometimes women have certain expectations about birth, and then blame themselves and feel guilty. Exhaustion makes these thoughts get stuck in a loop."

"Yes, that's me."

"Now what you should know, is that once labor is induced with medication it is very rare for a woman to have an otherwise natural birth, and the downside of the epidural is much less today than it used to be."

"Nobody ever told me that."

"But regardless of that... what would you say, May, to someone else, another mother, who felt badly that she had had an epidural?"

"I would say, don't worry about it."

"Can you say that to yourself?"

I thought about that. 

“And could it possibly be, May, drawing from the birth you’ve described, you yourself may actually qualify for your friend’s myth? As noble and heroic, because you passed through those very terrible experiences?”

“Maybe?”

“What words would you like to have said when you passed through, let’s say, the sea-storms of childbirth and landed on the shores of Middle-Earth with your baby?”

“Wow! I don’t know... .”

"Think about that for next time, okay? May, if this grief and shame were off your shoulders it would be magical, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would be." 

 

That evening I got a call from Adele.

"We're on again for tomorrow morning."

  

It was another cool summer predawn. As I walked away from home again, I pictured each of our group making our way to the hospital, on an errand that was unknown and even incomprehensible to the sleeping town. 

We gathered at the rhododendron again, and it towered over us like the arms of a protective galaxy, having scattered its spent flowers under our feet like stars. We watched while the security guard finished a cigarette and moved on. 

I smiled silently at our group and felt extra fond of them today, but the odor of tobacco lingered like the essence of fear.

"Nobody, nobody speaks this time," said Adele. "Got it, May? Got it, Robert?"

"Got it."

Adele let us in and we ascended to the closet, where we stood crushed together again with our bags. I braced myself for another tumultuous scene. I tried to recall freedom and Elendil. I tried to recall the new soul that was even now coming into the world. I tried to let go of grief and shame. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to think only about our hope to get on the ship, to care for the aliens in the image of God who needed us. But what if I heard more screaming? What if on the other side of the door someone was wishing she was dead?

But it was quiet. Only one voice was speaking.

"Here, honey, here's some ice chips."

The sound of crunching and a second low voice.

"Shh! She doesn't like anybody to talk to her."

"Give me some more." 

More crunching.

"Here, let me readjust this..."

"Don't touch her, okay? She knows what to do."

I opened my eyes and my eyebrows rose. 

"Mmmm! Mmmm!" 

Footsteps approached and a low voice spoke, just outside the closet.

"Can you ask her to move over here? I'll tell you honestly I've never delivered a baby this way."

"All you have to do is put out your hands and catch it."

"But—"

"Plus, if you interfere with her, I'm telling you, she'll rip your head off."

Ripping heads off? I almost laughed out loud. That's what I should have done!

"Oh, well... Here it comes!"

"RrrrrrrrMmmmmmmmmm! Wuff! Nnnnnnnn!"

"Waaah! Waaah!"

"Whoof!"

The father spoke.

"It's a boy! I got a son! It's Jimmy! Baby Jimmy!"

"Let me see him, let me see him, let me see him! Oh, baby! Here you are! I'm your mommy! Oh, and his name is not Jimmy."

"It isn't?"

"No. It's Francis Xavier."

"It is?"

I smiled. I was glad for this mother and I did not need to feel bad about myself and my own rough seas of childbirth. We both won. 

I wanted to hear more about the baby's name, but it was time to join in all our longing to be on the ship, to be among the stars... and I saw the dark circle of emptiness slipping through the door again, spiraling bigger and bigger, about to engulf all of us...

In an instant we found ourselves flying at great speed through the air and for the first time I saw the ship, grey and spare and elegant, standing up by itself like a granite cathedral in the dark blue air. It looked so heavy. How was it able to hang there, mysteriously resting on itself?

Soon we were close enough to read the name "West of the Moon" painted on the side in many different Earth languages. Before I had time to wonder how we would get inside, or how we would breathe, or how we were already breathing, we passed through gauzy walls and found ourselves inside and standing on a solid metal floor.

The Professor, somewhat rumpled in his suit and bow tie, was manning a wide desk of controls. The large windows gave on a view of blackness and an unimaginable multitude of stars. I looked and found the Earth, already small as a marble but still distinguishable. 

I breathed a long breath.

"So we're here."

About the Author

Elizabeth Scott Tervo's work appears in Ruminate, An Unexpected Journal, and elsewhere, and won a prize at Inscape. She coordinated the Doxacon Seattle writers group for speculative literature & Christianity and her memoir The Sun Does Not Shine Without You was published in Georgian translation (Azri, 2021). Her poetry debut, Eve in the Time Machine, appeared in 2023 (Basilian). She is married to Father Michael Tervo of St. Sophia Orthodox Church in Washington state and enjoys planting trees.