Infatuated (Unedited)

Chapter 32

Pain. All I feel is immense pain surging through my stomach and chest. A figure or two seems to be moving around the room frantically, every now and then I hear a voice. My hand trails up to my stomach that is very rounded, tightening, and releasing with each contraction. It hurts. So badly it hurts that with each, my breath is knocked from me.

"Anna..." I cried, thrashing my head back and forth, "Nicolas...I need...Nicolas!" This feels wrong. Everything about this feels like it's going horribly wrong. The room is spinning around me, my head aches so much that it pains me just to open my eyes all the way and when I do, what I'm seeing is doubled. I can just barely feel my legs but feel every bit of my body's need to give birth. "Anna?" I cried out until the older woman that had become like a second mother to me appeared, placing a comforting hand on my belly.

My entire stay here, she has given me as much advice as her lack of English allowed and even bridged the gap between my husband and I. After his first attempt to bed me, he would only go as far as to peck my lips lightly. Several times I waited for him in our sleeping chamber ready to give myself to him but he would refuse.

"Thy gives thee thy love mi amor. Not pain."

He would say to me before dragging me up the bed where he would pull back the sheets and sleep with his arms around me. I was going to lose him. I deserved to lose him for not being the woman needed to please him. I was ready to give up when Anna came to my rescue. Like a mother preparing to give her child encouragement needed to take on the world, she held my hand with closed eyes, chanting words that I could not make out. When she was done she pushed me toward the door extending a finger across the field in which Nico had been building a bigger barn for his stallion and it's mate.

Reluctant but feeling a strange sense of ease, I went to him not knowing what to say when he stood from his workbench, shirtless with small beads of sweat coating his chest. I don't know what came over me but I flung myself at him as we were lovers that had been kept apart for too long, planting the sweetest kiss upon him. It was because of that woman and that kiss that I was able to experience the full extent of my husband's love and why the result of it is now ready to enter this world.

"El bebé...coming." Anna was looking over me with sorrow in her eyes while taking my hand with her free one. I noticed how she had done everything but answer my question about my husband so I could only assume that my feelings were true. He left me. Being sick for so long has finally become too much for him and he left. I had a feeling this day would come since the be paid for medicines that did nothing for me. I need him. I want him here with me but more than that I just want to give him the child he was so elated to discover he would be having.

My stomach tightened again but this time pressure moving through my lower body followed. Anna looked down at my belly as another one of those strange sensations began and I screamed from the pain.

"You push now." She release my hand taking her place at the bottom of the bed. I'm scared now. The scaredest I have ever been in my entire life but even so, the misery is greater. Not knowing what else to do, I followed my bodies instructions, bearing down each time my stomach spasmed.

Dropping back on the pillow after two very hard pushes I found myself crying even harder and now with labored breathing. "It hurts! Anna...Nicolas...help..."

"Again mi reina. Push!"

I tried. Gave it my absolute all to bring my baby into this world but it felt fruitless. My energy is fading and I feel as if I need to sleep. Still, I pushed for all of ten seconds, screaming at the top of my lungs when I finally stopped. I can't do this. My heart is beating slow and long. It feels as in any second it will give up; give into the sweet peace of painless sleep. My eyes were beginning to close, Anna's frantic voice slowly decreasing in volume.