The hardest thing

Kathy gripped Henry's hand. Hard.

"Keep pushing Kathy, you're doing great." June, the midwife, sounded business like and efficient. She didn't look up at Kathy.

Kathy grunted and groaned, grinding her teeth with the effort of pushing. Henry stood beside her, face stoic and jaws clenched. He had always been the strong and silent type. His hand hurt from the iron grip of his wife, but that was nothing to what she was going through. It didn't matter how he was feeling or what emotions were broiling under the surface. What mattered was being there for Kathy, supporting and loving her, seeing her through this. Getting her to the other side. He hoped he was ready for what was ahead.

"Okay, stop pushing, wait for the next contraction. Don't forgot your gas Kathy, keep breathing it in."

"Why am I doing this?" Kathy wailed, throwing her head back, tears streaming down her face, "I can't do this Henry, I can't."

Her sobbing moved even the statuesque Henry to tears.

"You can my love. You are the bravest soul I know. Keep going, I'm here"

Taking her sweaty brow in his hands he tenderly brushed his lips on her eyelids and swept the lank hair from her face.

Kathy began to say something, but hunched back over when another contraction hit, turning her words into moans of pain. She thrust the gas tube back into her mouth and sucked on the bitter air, her head spinning, her head shaking.

"Ok Kathy, you're doing great," June repeated, "I'm just going to give him a hand, he isn't coming out as fast as I'd like."

Kathy's sobs wracked her body even harder. Pain coursed through her just as surely as the blood in her veins. She felt the midwife's fingers inside her. They were gentle, but still painful.

Suddenly she felt a release of pressure. The baby slid from her body, guided by the sure hands of the midwife.

Kathy's body went limp, eyes searching for the deep brown pools of steadiness that belonged to her rock, her husband.

As they held each other in the white room lying on the white sheets, beneath the sterile fluorescent light, listening to the mournful beeps of the monitors, they wept. The bustle of the ward outside the door crept in, but they had no ears for it.

There was still pain for Kathy, but it had been pushed into greyness. Dulled into a thing without edges by something else, some new emotion she had been fighting.

Grief.

June wrapped the tiny body up in the first and last shroud it would ever wear.

Somewhere, from outside the room, a baby cried.