“It’s done, Mom,” he said. “Will you guys help me?”
“Of course we’ll help,” Miles said. “You can stay in school. We’ll find a way.”
Scot cleared his throat, and the three of them looked at him. “Lexi thought Zach would feel this way … or maybe she hoped. Anyway, she has also had me draft custody papers. She’s prepared to give Zach full custody. She’s asked for only two things from you. She doesn’t want her child to know that she’s in prison. Ever. She actually suggested that you tell the baby she … died.” He paused, looked at Zach. “And she wants to hand you the baby herself, Zach. Only to you. So you’ll need to be at the hospital when she gives birth.”
Jude turned sharply on her heels and walked away. In her bedroom, she took three—no, four—sleeping pills and crawled into bed. As she lay there, trembling, praying for the pills to work, she tried to think about a baby, this baby, her grandchild; she tried to picture a tiny version of Mia, with hair like corn silk and eyes like green marbles.
How could she look at a baby like that and ever feel anything but her own loss?
*
Lexi was in the prison cafeteria when the first labor pain hit. She grabbed Tamica’s wrist, squeezing hard.
“Oh my God,” Lexi said when it was over. “Is that what it’s going to be like?”
“Worse.” Tamica led her across the crowded cafeteria to one of the guards positioned by the door. “The kid’s going into labor.”
The guard nodded, radioed the news to someone else, and then told them to go back to their cell. “Someone will come for you, Baill.”
Lexi let herself be led down to her cell. There, she curled up on Tamica’s lower bunk and made it through the rising pain. Tamica stroked her hair and told her silly stories about her life. Lexi tried to listen and be polite, but the pains were sharper and coming faster now.
“I … can’t … take … it. How do women take it?”
“Baill?”
She heard her name through this fog of pain; when the cramp ended, she looked up groggily.
Miriam Yungoh, the prison doctor, was there. “I hear there’s a baby who wants to come out and play.”
“Drugs,” Lexi said. “Give me drugs.”
Dr. Yungoh smiled. “How about if I examine you first?”
“Yeah,” Lexi said. “Whatever.”
Lexi hardly paid attention to all the things that happened next. It was probably just as well. There was the pelvic exam that any prisoner walking past the cell could see, the strip search in receiving （to make sure that she wasn’t trying to sneak something out of the prison in her vagina—ha!）， and the reshackling of her wrists and ankles.
She didn’t relax until she was lying in the gurney in the back of an ambulance, shackled to the bed’s metal rails. “Can Tamica come with me? Please? I want her at the hospital,” Lexi said between pains.
No one answered her, and when the next pain hit, she forgot everything else. By the time she got to the hospital, her pains were coming so fast it was like being in the ring with a prizefighter. She was in a private hospital room, with guards stationed both inside and outside the room. She wanted to roll over or walk or even just sit up, but she couldn’t do any of that. She was shackled to the guardrails of the bed on the left side. One ankle and one wrist. And they wouldn’t give her drugs because it was too late for that. Whatever the hell that meant.
Another pain hit. The worst one yet. She screamed out, her belly tightening so hard she thought she was going to die.
When the pain abated, she tried to sit up and then spoke to the guard. “Get a nurse or doctor in here, please. Something’s wrong. I can tell. It hurts too much. Please.” She was panting now, trying not to cry.
“My job isn’t—”
“Please,” Lexi begged. “Please.”
The guard looked at Lexi; her eyes narrowed. Lexi wondered what the woman saw: a murderer chained to a bed, or an eighteen-year-old girl, giving birth to a baby she’d probably never know.
“I’ll check,” the guard said and left the room.
Lexi fell back into the pillows. She tried to be strong, but she had never felt so alone. She needed Aunt Eva here, or Tamica, or Zach or Mia.
Another pain ripped through Lexi; she strained against the restraints, felt the cold metal bite into her wrist and ankle. Then it was over.
Sagging back into the pillows, she exhaled. Her whole body felt wrung out.