What Child is This?

Doctor Russell arched his eyebrow at the paramedics coming into the ICU with a gurney occupied with a woman obviously in labor. Nurse Wendell ran up to the paramedics and curtly asked, “What do you have here?”
The paramedic wiped his head, flowing with sweat, and said, “Homeless woman. Mid to late 30s. Pregnant and about to give birth.”
Nurse Wendell nodded perfunctorily and turned to look at the woman on the gurney who was moaning incoherently. The paramedic stopped her.
“There’s something wrong. She’s abnormally heavy,” he whispered to Wendell.
“Don’t you think it could be the weight of the baby?” she snapped as if common sense had left the paramedic, who shook his head and replied, “a baby heavy enough to make the gurney legs bend?” Sure enough, the gurney did seem to be straining to support the weight. As Wendell peeked under the sheet, she saw what she had imagined: a gaunt, pale, splotchy skin with scabs, dry skin, and rampant body hair. The skin was indeed stretched tightly over the bump where the baby was, for now, resting. Then the homeless woman shuddered, screaming out in a voice deeper than Wendell had expected, “Contraction! Oh, God! Make it stop! It hurts!” Wendell saw the contraction shudder through the woman’s body. She started counting after it seemed to dissipate and saw out of the corner of her eye something that she refused to believe as real. It looked like a ripple across the surface of the skin where the distended uterus was pushing.
“Wendell? What’s going on? Are you going to stand there or are we delivering a baby?”
“Doctor Russell, I was doing a preliminary check…” she started as he peeked under the covers.
“I’m no OB-GYN, but I can see this woman is almost fully dilated. We need to get her inside and deliver this baby. Set up fluids for her, have someone call the on-call gynecologist or obstetrician to come here post haste, and get her prepped for delivery. You know the drill?” She nodded, her mouth slightly agape. “Then hop to it, please.” Another contraction ripped through the ambient sound as the expectant mother again screamed in chilling pain.
“It’s coming! It hurts! Hurts! Cold and hard like glass. Ow! Get this thing out of me,” cried the homeless woman, who grabbed on to Doctor Russell’s arm without much strength. She frowned, and Doctor Russell saw a toothless mouth.
“Call Social Services,” he whispered to the nurse, “she doesn’t look like mother of the year.”
With that, they ushered her inside. Doctor Russell looked briefly at the transient woman and stroked her hair gently.
“What’s your name, little lady?”” he asked with his best beatific smile.
“Linda. But my friends call me Charlie.”
“Charlie?” he chuckled at her softly as if they were in cahoots and privy to a private joke. “Why Charlie?”
“I’m a good time Charlie, doc. I like to fuck men. Now get this fuckin’ thing outta me so’s I can go back to doin’ it.”
Doctor Russell’s smile faltered a bit.
“AHHH! It’s comin’, doc!”
“Let’s get ready, people, the lady says it’s time,” he yelled as he peeked underneath to see how far she was dilated. It seemed far more than ten centimeters. Not good. Nurses grabbed Charlie’s hands, stroking her thin, curly hair, and told her to breathe and push. She frowned, wrinkled up her forehead and bore down on the mass in her abdomen, groaning at the effort.
Then they heard a pop, almost like the sound people made when they put their index finger’s tip in the well of their cheek and forced air out through taut lips. The sound was so clear and so atypical that the entire staff stopped, held their breath, and looked down to see what had caused it. Later on they would wonder if they had been holding their breaths in anticipation or from the sudden, tumultuous drop in temperature to one that was far from uncomfortable. They all reported a paralyzing stillness in the air and in their bodies; it was as though the world had slowed down for a moment, then time stopped entirely as an inky, opaque tentacle stretched itself out of Charlie’s vagina and unfurled itself to show the frozen onlookers a surface covered in groping tentacles, dark rivulets of matter that seemed to suck at the space around it, as though it were trying to pull the space around it inside of it, devouring it. Then it tittered, a high-pitched ululation that caused most of the people in the room to lose bowel control. Then a wave of nausea scorched their noses as the smell of the tentacle reached across the frigid air. Unable to move, they felt simultaneously the disorientation of falling backwards as if they had all trod across the same treacherous piece of ice while the need to vomit stayed lodged in the throats until the thing came out. With a sound resembling fingers rubbing against Saran Wrap, the tentacle burst forth from Charlie, who died immediately from the shock as her insides were pulled out from the force. It then propelled itself somehow upwards and vanished. As it disappeared, the temperature rose, the nurses released the vomit held in their throats through their mouths and noses, and even the doctor dropped to his knees in sickened horror, retching at the sound and smells around him.