Anyway

by KC Henderson

I couldn’t even see her. Well, not her face, anyway. Was she in pain? Of course she was. That part I could hear. A moan here. A groan there. A doctor’s bloody hand. I knew there might be trouble with the labor. The baby wasn’t ready — yet.

I looked down at my feet, covered in these weird baby blue paper things they’d forced on me.

She screamed. This time so loudly acid crawled up my throat.

No one was telling me anything. The only telling was from my partner’s screams.

Should we have gotten married?

Maybe not, not if the child wasn’t going to make it. Anyway.

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A former journalist, Kristen Henderson now writes flash fiction and memoir. Her recent work has appeared in the 101-Word Story Journal, Nymphs, BOMBFIRE, amongst others. She splits her time between her homes in Los Angeles and Lamy, NM, where the skies never end. She can be reached at akchenderson@gmail.com.