Page 1 of Always Alchemy

1

STICK IT IN ME, MISTER

MADDY

I’m going to fuckingkillBelle Charlton.

Just breathe, she said.Just breathe through it. It’s beautiful.

Breathe,my arse. She told me my body would, and I quote,open like a lotus flower, when in actual fact I’m only four centimetres dilated and feel like a fucking Venus flytrap clenched around this baby that my husband has put inside my body.

The husband whose skull, now I look at him, seems way too big for any baby version of him to pass successfully through a birth canal.

The husband who I’ll pretend I didn’t beg and beg and beg to put a baby inside me.

Back to my former best friend.

I should have known when she referenced a fucking lotus flower that she was spouting utter bullshit.

Three things are now clear to me:

One.Breathing is for getting through a slow flow, not childbirth.

Two. There is nothingbeautifulabout this.

Three. In a second, I’m going to cave and scream the place down and demand every single drug this fucking hospital has in its presumably impressive supply. This gas and air shit isn’t cutting it. On the contrary, it’s making me feel super thirsty and super sick. The only advantage, as far as I can see, is the ability to clamp down on the mouthpiece with every ounce of the violence I’d rather divert into biting down onto Zach’s hand.

‘I hate this,’ I pant out. (This is, in fact, a concession. What I really feel like saying isI hateyou).

‘I know, baby,’ Zach says, rubbing my back in a way that’s totally ineffectual. ‘You’re doing so well.’

‘No I’m not,’ I groan. ‘Four centimetres. I’ve got ages yet.’

‘Just breath through—’ he begins, before stopping. I assume my facial expression has adequately communicated to him exactly what I think of that idea. ‘I’ll get the midwife,’ he says instead.

‘Wait.’ I can barely get the word out as another massive contraction engulfs me. The way it rises inside my body, gathering mass and consuming me with pain, is the most ominous thing I’ve ever, ever experienced. It’s like watching a scary AF tornado coming towards you, but inside your body. The agony is like nothing I’ve ever, ever known, and it knocks me sideways.

It sounds stupid now, but my entire fear around the pain of labour revolved around the pushing-the-baby-out bit. How sore would my vagina be? What if I tore? What if the baby’s Zach-French-sized head ruined my pretty pussy forever?

I never, ever considered that the painful part comes first.It’s like my body is a giant washing machine, every internal muscle I have roiling as it prepares to eject this human cannonball. The contractions are like every food poisoning cramp and every period pain I’ve ever had, rolled into one and magnified by a million.

It is un-fucking-believable.

I collapse at the end of the contraction. I’m crying. I want off this bed and out of this roomnow.‘I want a C-section,’ I weep. ‘I can’t do another one.’

My husband looks grim. Like, worried grim, not angry grim. In this moment, he seems less like a blasé man who’s done this twice before and got the t-shirts and more like a guy who’s already buried one wife and won’t entertain the slightest risk to his other one.

He bangs the bell hard, twice, and then squeezes my hand before releasing it and striding to the door.

‘Hey,’ he shouts in his bestdon’t fuck with mevoice. ‘I want Mrs Readey in herenow, and call an anaesthetist, too.’

God, I love it when my husband swings that big dick of his.

I may even let him put it inside me again when all this is done. Even if it probably won’t touch the sides once this baby is done ruining my pelvic floor.

I’m probably being pathetic. Women do this every minute of the day in filthy slums and remote prairies. Here I am, in the private maternity wing of one the most established hospitals in London, and I can’t even suck up a little pain. The only good thing about not being as advanced as I like is that the contractions are still a few minutes apart. Fuck knows how I’ll handle it when they speed up.

My phone, which is lying on the bed, lights up. I’ve been texting the Alchemy girls between contractions, partly tovent at people who actually have vaginas and partly to distract myself.

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