Therese

            She could not stand the anger in her mother’s body and so she made her way out much, much sooner than they had expected. She couldn’t very well refuse the blood that was being pumped into her, a continuous stream of pure pain and anguish welling from her mother’s tight, cramped mind, could not do much with the movements she had been confined to making; her kicks were puny and her turns measly.

            So there she was as the doctor found her, her eyes shut at the bright, yellow lights, her tiny, wrinkly body just a little bigger than her mother’s hand, not a cry escaping her crimped mouth, so that she had to be coaxed into letting out a shout, a soft wail, really, if one thought about it, a wail that multiplied into four others. And with those, they were satisfied, and they put her near her mother’s cheek for a few, perfunctory bonding seconds, but her mother’s cheek wasn’t warm enough for such matters and so they whisked her away to be washed and was, promptly and as part of SOP, examined for further signs of life, and put inside an incubator, where she was to stay for the next two months of her life. And between these two months, a total number of three blood transfusions were done--in essence, none of the blood running through her was her own—the last donor was a friend of her uncle’s, who was now a lawyer.

            She remembered none of these, of course. 

            None of these.