Melt My Heart

by Anna Cove

  Maybe she could find something here. Some idea. Some thread that would help her weave a story.

  She stared at the biography section.

  Come on, brain. Come on. Think. I need an idea. An idea. I wonder if those swaddles arrived at my post office box. Maybe I should check before I head back up the mountain. Damn it. LAURA! STAY ON TASK. Ideas. What do we have here? Laura ran her fingers over the spines. Steve Jobs. Michelle Obama. Alexander Hamilton. They are all fascinating but...

  A band of pain wrapped around her waist, starting from two points in her lower back that had been stabbing her at The Snuggery and tightening around her stomach.

  She froze, waiting for something to happen, but the only thing that happened was that her heart continued to beat, her breathing remained calm, and the pain melted away like it had never existed in the first place.

  She returned to scanning the bookshelf.

  The problem was that any of these biographies could provide the tiny detail that she could use to blow open an idea. Maybe Michelle Obama, who sat on the edge of politics, would have the most interesting insights. She was beloved by many, after all. Laura hadn't had time to read her biography at its release as she had been filming The Beautiful Ones and a romcom and then afterward, she'd been in the middle of the shitstorm that had been her life for the past few months. Maybe it was time to delve into it.

  She tipped the book from the shelf and walked over to a free armchair. A man wearing a plaid hunting cap and thick glasses looked up, then down at her belly, then back up at her face and smiled. She smiled tightly, hoping it was bland enough to keep him silent. Hoping he didn't know her. She eased herself into the chair, stifling a groan, and opened Becoming. Another band of pain tightened around her waist. She placed her hand over the baby.

  Quiet, little one, Mama needs to think.

  The pain drifted away, as if the baby could read her mind.

  Laura started the book from the beginning. "I spent much of my childhood—"

  "When are you due?"

  Laura decided to ignore the question and kept reading silently to herself, hoping the man would get the hint that she didn't want to talk.

  He cleared his throat. When she didn't look up, he leaned over and tapped her on the knee. Laura gritted her molars, her eyes shooting up to meet the intruder's. "Don't touch me."

  He put his hands up. "God. I was only asking."

  "I would appreciate if you left me alone. Please."

  "You don't have to get all uppity."

  "I'm not getting uppity."

  "You are. All I did was ask your due date. What did I do?"

  Laura pushed down the welling anger. It was no use blowing her cover by reacting to this guy. He didn't actually seem to know who she was. He was just being his normal creep-o self. The best thing for Laura to do would be to brush him off. "Nothing."

  "Tell me. Come on. You can't just ignore me like that." He moved to the chair across from her and leaned forward again to touch her.

  "Let me give you a piece of advice." Though it took all her restraint, Laura stood and set the book on the chair behind her. "Don't touch anyone you don't know without permission."

  "What are you, a feminist or something?" he sneered, with an extra emphasis on the word feminist.

  Damn it. Laura turned away and forced herself to take a breath. She couldn't let her anger get the best of her. It wasn't good for her health or the baby. It wasn't good for her career. If someone recognized her and started recording, another episode of explosive anger would forever brand her as difficult. The death knell for a woman in the film industry. A paparazzo was one thing, but a random citizen? And two instances less than three months apart? She would never recover. Once she ascertained that her legs were steady. She stood and took a step toward the door.

  "I know who you are," the man called after her. "You're that cheating..."

  The words faded as she closed the door, but their power still hit her like rocks. She took a breath of the earthy spring air. Her back pinged once more, this time with a slightly stronger pain that lasted a few seconds longer, but again it went away.

  "What a bastard," she muttered to herself. "I should go back in there and give him a piece of my mind."

  She paced right outside the door, itching to turn around. But it wasn't only about her safety now. She had come to the Catskills because living in New York City, right in the middle of all the action, had put her baby in danger. It was supposed to be safer here, with fewer people. Why was she so affected by this man? He was nothing. He was scum.

  She got in her car and drove to the post office. The swaddles had indeed arrived, so she picked them up at the office window, cutting off every attempt the perfectly nice man behind the counter made at conversation. Then she went to the hardware store and picked up the last things she needed for her home birth. A plastic drop cloth, masking tape, a fish net, a gallon of bleach.

  At least if anyone bothers me now, I have supplies for hiding a body.

  By the time she got back in her car, she admitted to herself something she'd known for the past hour or more—she was in labor.

  She breathed through a contraction, trying to stay calm and figure out what to do next.

  First, she pulled out her phone and dialed the midwife she'd been seeing weekly since she'd arrived in Love Falls. They had a quick conversation about her symptoms—contractions six minutes apart, lasting thirty seconds to a minute, not awful, could talk through them. The midwife asked her if she had a ride home or if she wanted a cab. Laura said she would figure it out, told her to meet her at the cabin, and hung up.

  She gripped the steering wheel as she went through another contraction. Then she scanned her body.

  The pain wasn't too bad. In between contractions she felt normal, if not a little better than normal. She was clearheaded and still possessed her strength. The contractions built little by little, so she could sense them coming. She did some quick math. It was a twenty-minute ride back up to her cabin on Big Badger Mountain, which meant about three contractions. If she started now, she could make it.

  And she really didn't want to deal with anyone speaking to her at the moment. Not after the man in the library.

  She started up the engine and rolled through town.

  Another contraction began right after she passed over the bridge to the country road that would lead up the mountain. She pulled over and waited it out. One contraction down. A third of the way there.

  She started out again. The houses became sparser, the trees denser. The road pitched up, winding like a coiled rattlesnake. The sun was setting, an orange globe diffused by the trees. And Laura had a thought.

  This is the last time I'll see the sun set without a baby. Every sunset from here on out I'll be a mother.

  So much stress and hardship had led her to this point, but now that it was here, Laura felt a preternatural calm come over her. Her senses were heightened. She opened her window and could almost feel the air becoming thinner and clearer. Her car sped along the road as she took the turns as fast as she dared. She went so long without a contraction that she thought she'd arrive at her cabin and have to send her midwife home.

  False alarm?

  Then Laura felt a different sensation, something wet between her legs, but she couldn't see what was there. She moved a hand to feel it out and indeed, she was wet. She definitely hadn't peed. She didn't think. She hoped. And it wasn't blood. Which meant...

  A tsunami of pain took over her senses. She had no control over her body, no sense of what was happening in the world around her. She braced against the pain, tensing, then remembered her Lamaze class and forced herself to breathe, to relax the muscles of her face, to let the waves flow over her instead of carry her. She regained control of herself, opened her eyes. She blinked.

  She had instinctively pressed on the brake during the contraction and stopped on the side of the road. She didn't want to think about what would have happened if she hadn't done that. But s
he had, and everything was okay.

  Thank God.

  As the pain eased, she pressed the gas and started on her journey again. She was about halfway home, only ten minutes longer to drive.

  "You can do this. You can do this." Laura's hands tightened on the wheel as she muttered the mantra and started rolling forward.

  The last contraction had hit her fast and without warning, which meant that if the next one came like that, she would have to be careful with how she was driving. Her mind worked quickly through the options. She could pull over and call someone, but that would only take more time, and she was starting to think she didn't have much of that left. Laura wasn't afraid of much but having a baby on the side of a mountain road was not on her bucket list. Her nice warm house and the midwife was less than ten minutes away now. She could do it.

  She could do it.

  As she drove, approaching the speed limit once again, she searched her body for signs of another contraction. The underarms of her shirt were drenched with sweat, and her breathing was ragged. She had to get this under control.

  The next contraction hit her as hard as the one before, but she managed the pull over and get to safety before she gave in to it.

  But after the wave loosened its grip, her hands were shaking. Her body didn't return to normal this time. It hurt, badly, and now that she thought about it, she hadn't felt the baby move in a while. Was that normal? Was something wrong?

  For the first time during the drive, something other than determination surfaced. Her hands shook and her back ached and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and curl up in a ball until this was all over. But she was on a road with no shoulder and no houses.

  What made you think this was a good idea, Munro?

  Why couldn't she make any good decisions lately?

  The next wave hit her before she could decide to go again. She couldn't sit anymore. The pain was unbearable in that position. Her body moved as if it had a mind of its own. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned around, hugging the headrest of her seat. Her mind was starting to cave to the instinct of her body. It was as if she was possessed by her animal self. All she wanted to do was find a private place where she could do this.

  But she fought against her mind.

  She couldn't be stupid. She had to make a good decision here. For the sake of the baby.

  After her next rending contraction, she reached for her phone in the cup holder. Sweat pasted hair to her forehead and across her eyes. She swept it all away before she could really see the screen.

  She found her last call and dialed the midwife. The phone did nothing. She pulled it away. It was still trying to connect the call.

  "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit," she mumbled into the dead air of the car.

  Not one vehicle had passed while she had been pulled over. She couldn't remember the last house she'd seen. The woods were dense here, so dense she could imagine there was no cell service for miles.

  In the most desperate of times, humans always seem to have at least one thing they hold on to, no matter their predicament: hope. Logically, Laura knew she wasn't likely to get reception on this stretch of the road. But still, she stepped out of her car, holding her phone up into the air and frantically searching for bars. Hoping.

  Her hope became reality in the form of a car coming around the corner. Her heart lifted. She waved her hand, a smile, even, coming across her face. She was saved. This person would drive her to the cabin, at least. As long as she could tell him or her where to go, it would work out. It was unlikely this person was some pervert out on the road, she told herself. Unlikely that they would hurt her or the baby. Unlikely they would recognize her like this, makeup-less and drenched in sweat.

  She dropped down into a squat on the ground. It was all she could do to remain upright as she moaned and swayed, her fingers trailing the broken gravel of the winter-beaten and crumbling road.

  When she came back to the world, the car was gone.

  As if it had vanished into thin air.

  She stood, looking over the hood of her car and all around, like the car might be hiding. But it wasn't. Whoever it was had seen her and left her crouching on the side of the road in obvious distress. Laura felt her pockets for her phone. She needed to do something. Maybe call 9-1-1. They would take her to the hospital if she called, but maybe she could convince them to take her to the cabin instead. It was set up for the delivery and closer even than Love Falls Hospital. She could only hope—there it was again, that little seed—there was just one tower that would pick up her signal.

  But she couldn't find her phone. She scanned the ground around the car, and even bent and looked underneath, but saw nothing. It was getting dark, and soon it would be impossible to see. And without her phone...

  She shuddered involuntarily.

  Then her eyes caught sight of a glimmer in the grass just over the guardrail.

  "How did you get over the there?"

  She waited for the next contraction, crouching once again on the ground and gritting her teeth through it, then half-crawled, half-hunched, and hurried as fast as she could to the guardrail. She lifted her leg, but as she did, caught the toe of her flat on the rail. She started to fall forward, and that's when instinct took over. To protect her belly, she leaped and fell with her full weight onto her ankle. She went down the rest of the way, but slowly, like a falling tree, twisting as she fell.

  Cold mud seeped through the thin fabric of her skirt and smeared all up and down her left side. She looked around her at the empty forest, the naked skeletons of the trees still bare from winter's ravages. A chill gripped her as she blinked and placed her hand on her stomach. "Are you okay?"

  No answer.

  "Please, baby, talk to me."

  She waited, but still no answering kick came.

  A nagging pain hovered around her ankle, but it didn't matter. Using her hands and pushing through it, she scooted backward up the hill toward her phone and picked it up. Not bothering to wipe the mud away from her fingers, she managed to dial 9-1-1.

  She put the phone to her ear and heard it ring. Once. Twice. The connected call was the most beautiful sound she'd heard in a while. Until she heard a voice answer her call.

  "Nine-one-one. What's the location of your emergency?"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "ARE YOU sure you don't want some cake?"

  Dylan's coordinator, Marcia, stood over her, a little too close for Dylan's comfort. But since she was her boss, she couldn't do anything about it. She silently begged the phone to ring so Marcia would let her alone to do her job, but of course, for once, it didn't. Then she chided herself for wanting it to ring. Because that meant someone out there was probably having one of the worst days of their life and Dylan was just trying to get out of eating cake.

  "No, thank you," Dylan murmured.

  "It's the very least I can do, since you volunteered to stay here, answer the phones, and do the dispatching while we all party."

  Dylan shrugged. "No, thanks."

  "You can call us if you need help."

  "I'll be fine."

  She could feel Marcia's eyes boring into her, searching her for more, wanting to ask a question, perhaps, but Dylan remained stiff. Marcia wouldn't like what she saw there. She wouldn't understand—she didn't understand—how Dylan just wanted to do her job. All the office politics and celebrations were unnecessary drains on energy stores, energy she needed to pour into helping others. Maybe her coworkers needed cake to celebrate National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, but she didn't. She just needed to keep doing the work.

  Marcia finally left, taking her probing eyes along with her, and Dylan relaxed back in her chair.

  She didn't really like cake, anyway. It was too decadent. And not worth it since that and everything else tasted like dust since Katie had died. She'd expected that, along with the grief, to fade, but it never had. Dylan's days of finding joy in cooking and eating were long behind her, and she had made peace with that.


  Rain slammed on the pavement outside the narrow basement window of the communications center. Love Falls was building a new public safety office in town, but it was under construction, so for now the center remained in the cramped, neon-lit basement of the aging police station. Every time it rained, water seeped in around the windows and ceiling, to the point where one of the call-takers or dispatchers was placed on bucket duty.

  Looked like that was Dylan's job today, too. She rose from her chair and took the bucket from the corner, placing it directly under the drips. As she straightened, a loud chorus of laughter erupted from the conference room where her colleagues were gathered. A fluorescent light flickered overhead. The laughing seemed far away, like it was taking place in another world. She made her way back to her chair, her body feeling heavy and slow, and sat.

  A few moments later, the phone rang, but it was a non-emergency call—a husband looking for a cop who was on duty but wasn't answering her phone. Dylan patched the call upstairs. A moment later, another call came in. Dylan felt the familiar rush, her senses completely focused as she adjusted her headset and answered the call.

  "Nine-one-one, what's the location of your emergency?"

  "I'm at one-eleven Harvey Road," a woman said in a frantic voice.

  Dylan typed the woman's response. "And what's the nature of your emergency?"

  "My smoke detector is chirping and it's making me nutty."

  "Chirping as in ringing?" Dylan asked, but she couldn't hear it ringing in the background.

  "No, chirping every few minutes. Chirp. Chirp. Like that."

  Dylan sighed, letting her head fall against her hand. "Ma'am, are you hurt?"

  "No."

  "What's your name?"

  "My name is Mrs. Alva McGregor."

  "Mrs. McGregor, a chirping smoke detector is not an emergency."

  The woman drew in a stilted breath. "What if a fire starts, and my smoke detector isn't working?"