Tangled Yarns: Monday's Child
Alecia glanced at her husband, her eyes thanking him for being there.
"I'm dying!" she gasped.
This was her first child, and her only child. She was not permitted to have more. It was against the rules. And she wanted this child, as much as any mother can want the blood and bone of her own body.
"Hurry!" said Terrag, There is not much time left!"
"I cannot hurry it!" said Alecia, "If only I could . . ." She braced herself again and groaned as her womb contracted.
The clock registered two minutes left till midnight. Sunday night and the morning was about to begin. Still the baby would not come.
"He is a stubborn boy!" said Terrag, trying to make humour, but there was desperation in his voice. Cold desperation. The clock was stealing his son from him, taking his only offspring away, second by second. In a few moments it would be Monday and his son would be taken away because his child was allotted to Sunday, not Monday.
"Try!" he cried, "Just the head is all we need. The top of his head!" But it was too late. At one minute past twelve, the first sight of the baby appeared and the race to save it was lost.
"Excuse me," said the nurse, gently pushing Terrag back. She knelt down and waited for the complete body of the baby to drop into her hands, then she clipped the umbilical cord and carried the newly born infant away to a table for washing.
"Can I just have one look at him?" sobbed Alecia, "Please? I only want to see him, before you ..."
The nurse indifferently held the baby close to Alecia's face and waited. The baby had its eyes shut. It was beginning to cry. It never saw its own mother.
When Chally was 12, he began to wonder who his real mother was. It was not against the law to wonder things like that, so he had wondered. He had been assigned living quarters in Monday City, and had come to love his foster mother, but it had always puzzled him, for as long as he could remember that his natural mother was somewhere else, in another city. What was his natural mother like? Did she still think about him? Did she still care that he was alive?
