Chapter 69 CHAPTER 70

Chapter 69 CHAPTER 70

It began at two-thirty in the morning.
Julieta was asleep on the left side of the bed, her hand resting on Vladimir’s sheet the way she had slept for months, when a contraction hit her hard enough to fold her in half without warning. She endured it for one second. Two. When it passed, she stayed perfectly still, counting, waiting for the next one.
Seven minutes later, another came.
“Marta.”
She said it quietly, without shouting. Marta was asleep in the room next door and heard her anyway, because women like Marta slept with one ear open. She appeared in the doorway of the master bedroom, her robe wrapped tightly around her.
“Has it started?”
“It’s started. Call Ana. Call the doctor. And don’t wake Gabriela yet. Let her sleep as long as she can.”
“I’m going.”
Julieta sat on the edge of the bed. She placed both hands on her stomach. Breathed in. Four counts in. Seven counts held. Eight counts out. The usual rhythm. What the shelter psychologist had taught her years ago for something entirely different and which, without her ever intending it, would serve her now as she prepared to give birth.
She spoke to Vladimir.
“It’s started, Vladimir. Early. We still had three weeks left. But the doctor said he was ready. I know you hear me even if you don’t hear me. I’m staying right here beside you. I’m staying in this room with you. I’m not going to any clinic. Ana and I already talked about it. We’re doing this here. The three of us.”
Another contraction. She closed her eyes. Endured it.

The doctor arrived at four.
He was the family doctor, the same one who had treated the Rossis for years, an older bald man who arrived carrying a medical bag, a nurse, and the calm of someone who had done this countless times before. He had been informed two months earlier that the birth would happen at the mansion, not at the clinic. The delivery room had already been prepared in another room on the second floor—the large one they had set up specifically for this night.
But Julieta refused to move there.
“Doctor.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Here.”
“Ma’am, the room next door is better prepared. There’s more light, there’s—”
“Here, Doctor. Beside him. Don’t ask me for anything else.”
The doctor looked at Ana, who had arrived ten minutes earlier and was standing in the doorway. Ana shrugged. It’s her decision.
The doctor nodded.
This was a mansion, not an operating room. There was space. There was enough light. Lina was beside Vladimir managing the other side of things. The birth would happen wherever the lady wanted.
“Here, then. But you obey everything else.”
“Everything else.”
They moved what needed moving. They brought in a low delivery bed and placed it beside the king-sized bed, leaving only a narrow space between them. They set up lights. Fresh sheets.
Lina stayed on Vladimir’s side, monitoring his machines.
The doctor and his nurse worked on Julieta’s side.
Ana stood between the two beds, one hand on her sister’s shoulder, the other free.
Downstairs, Marta stayed with Gabriela, who had woken up anyway because children always wake when the atmosphere of a house changes.

It lasted six hours.
Julieta had learned during the previous months that labor hurt. She knew it from books, conversations, and from Ana herself. But knowing it and living through it were two different things.
Each contraction folded her over. It burrowed deep into her body and climbed into her throat.
She squeezed Ana’s hand.
She gripped Vladimir’s sheet with the other.
She released her breath at exactly the right moment.
Then started again.
At five, she told the doctor she was ready.
“Not yet, ma’am. Not yet.”
“Doctor, I’m telling you I am.”
“Ma’am, you still need two more centimeters. Hold on.”
“I’m holding on, but I’m telling you I am.”
At six-thirty, the doctor finally agreed.
“Push.”
Julieta pushed.
She pushed with her whole body, with all the months, with the entire coastal town, with every mile of the flight, with every hour spent in that uncomfortable chair beside the hospital bed, with every night in the room without a window, with everything from the basement years ago, with everything from the estate months ago, with everything accumulated inside a body that had spent seven years learning how not to give up.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.

Lucio was born at seven-oh-nine in the morning.
He arrived crying.
Loudly.
A sharp, full-throated cry from healthy lungs.
The doctor lifted him for a moment so Julieta could see him, still bluish, still wet, fists clenched, screaming at the world.
“It’s a boy.”
“It’s a boy,” Julieta repeated through tears.
They cut the cord.
Cleaned him.
Wrapped him.
Did all the quick, precise things a newborn body needs in its first minutes of life.
Ana was crying beside her without even trying to hide it, her hand still resting on her sister’s shoulder.
“Ana.”
“Yes?”
“He’s here, Ana.”
“He’s here, Juli.”
“That’s it. I did it.”
“You did.”

They placed Lucio on her chest.
Julieta received him with both hands, settled him against her sternum, and kissed the damp crown of his head.
She breathed in his scent—that smell newborns have during their first hour of life and never again.
She counted his fingers.
Five and five.
She studied his face.
His nose.
His fine eyebrows.
His closed eyes.
His lips.
He had his father’s face.
It wasn’t a subtle resemblance. It wasn’t one of those things only a mother notices.
It was the same face.
The same bone structure.
The same high cheekbones.
The same shape of jaw his father had beneath the beard on the bed beside them.
When the doctor saw him, he made a small sound in his throat, the sound doctors make when they see heredity written plainly before them.
“Ana.”
“Yes?”
“He looks exactly like Vladimir.”
“He looks exactly like Vladimir, Juli.”
“Ana. Give him to me. I want to put him on him.”
Ana understood.
Lina understood even faster. She was already adjusting the cables, pulling back part of the sheet, freeing Vladimir’s chest—the side with fewer lines attached. She lowered the hospital gown from one shoulder, exposing his chest.
Julieta took Lucio.
Lifted him carefully from her own chest.
Leaned across the gap between the beds with the baby cradled against her.
And gently laid him on his father’s bare chest.
Lucio, who had been in the world for all of ten minutes, settled there naturally.
He curled against Vladimir’s sternum.
Found the warmth.
Went still.
Stopped crying.
His tiny fists closed against his father’s skin.
And he remained there breathing softly against the body of the man who had not moved in months.
Julieta sat on the edge of the bed.
One hand rested on the baby to keep him secure.
The other settled over Vladimir’s hand.
“Vladimir.”
The machine beeped.
“Vladimir, it’s me. It’s Lucio. He’s on top of you. You’re holding him against your chest. If you can hear me, now you know. He’s your son. Look at his face when you wake up, because it’s your face. Your own face, Vladimir. Look what genetics had the nerve to do.”
Her voice cracked slightly at the end.
Ana, on the other side of the bed, cried silently.
Lina was crying a little too, just enough, without moving from her position.
The doctor, who had seen many things in his life, adjusted his glasses and simply watched.
Julieta waited.
She waited the way people wait when they have already spent a very long time waiting.
Watching Vladimir’s face.
Watching the machines.
Waiting for a blink.
A finger movement.
A change in his breathing.
Anything.
Anything at all that might say the man’s body had felt the weight of his son resting on his chest.
Nothing happened.
Vladimir remained still.
Lucio breathed softly against him, already asleep.
“Well,” Julieta said quietly. “We tried. We tried, you bastard. Another day.”
She kissed Vladimir’s hand.
She kissed the crown of Lucio’s head.
And she stayed there, sitting on the edge of the bed, with a sleeping man on one side and a newborn boy resting on his chest, holding the two bodies that mattered most in her life with both hands spread open.
Outside, the morning sun streamed through the large window.
Inside the room, for the first time in a very long while, there were three breaths instead of two.