It began with the crushing.
Not a squeeze, not a pulse—but a relentless, rhythmic force that seemed to grind bone against bone, even though I knew I barely had bones to begin with.
The force wasn't external—it was everything. The walls around me clenched like hands. Once dense and muffled, my world became frantic, urgent, and alive. No more gentle sway, no hums or heartbeat lullabies. Only contractions now, violent, measured, and indifferent.
She was in pain.
I couldn't see her, but I felt her—gasping, struggling, her body straining. The warmth of the womb turned chaotic: fluid sloshed, muscles convulsed, and her heart pounded fast and irregularly like it had lost its rhythm and was clawing for it back.
I was moving.
Being pushed, inch by inch, through a passage that felt impossibly narrow. The pressure around my skull was unbearable, my soft body folding in on itself to fit through a door never meant for conscious beings.
Somewhere beyond the meat, blood, and silence, I heard voices.
Clipped, British, mostly women. Calm but efficient—tones meant for crisis, not comfort. One voice cut above the rest—older, commanding. Presumably a midwife.
"She's crowning."
Another groan. Hers. Raw, tired, and cracking with effort.
There was no pain for me but a rising panic, a heat in my spine, a choking sense of being evacuated. The quiet I had lived in was gone, replaced by chaos filtered through liquid and skin.
I felt hands not on me but on her. Rough fabric, a towel dipped in water. I felt her being moved—hands gripping her thighs, rolling her, not me. But we were tangled in each other's agony. The shift of weight as she was turned, maybe on a narrow iron-framed bed.
The world narrowed. There was light now—not warmth—light. It was harsh. It cracked against my sealed eyes. Cold air rushed against my scalp, and the wetness that had held me all this time began to drain, leaving me bare, slick, and helpless.
I was almost out. With another push, the pressure simultaneously built and dispersed from my body.
Sound. Real sound. Screaming—not mine—hers. Then someone shouted. A slap of something wet against metal. Another push—and then I was free.
Not free like a bird. Free like a fish yanked from water.
Air hit my skin like frostbite. My chest convulsed. I made a noise—a wet, shrieking, alive sound. My throat projected my screams across the room.
I was born.
Stripped of the dense, warm liquid I'd known all my time spent in the womb.
My first breath wasn't noble or beautiful. It was a desperate theft—a gulp snatched from a world that hadn't invited me yet. My lungs burned like someone had lit a fire inside them. I wasn't meant to feel this. I wasn't meant to know air like this.
I cried, though I didn't mean to. It felt more like my body had taken over, like some natural instinct had taken over me, and I knew I had to wail.
And as I cried, the world unfolded.
The sound came first—too much of it, all at once. Harsh, echoing through a stone-floored chamber. A woman sobbing softly—not my mother, another—muffled behind a curtain. The shuffle of leather-soled shoes. A baby somewhere else already wailing. Midwives calling to one another in clipped tones:
"Fetch the clamps—quickly now—keep her breathing."
A nurse passed by in heavy leather-soled shoes that struck tile like rifle taps. There were no rubber soles or beeping monitors, just breath, blood, and barked orders.
Then came the smell. Bleach, iron, and sweat. The unmistakable tang of blood.
It coated the air thickly and stuck to the back of my tongue. Everything tasted of copper and linen, with an undercurrent of boiled milk and coal smoke drifting in from somewhere distant—maybe a hallway, perhaps the city beyond.
After that were shapes. My eyes flickered open at what little I saw, and I could make out where she and I were.
She was lying in what seemed like an old-fashioned hospital; I think a women's ward built more for containment than comfort. No epidural. No machines. Just boiled sheets, chloroform in the air, and stern women who'd done this a hundred times before. The linens beneath her were damp with sweat and blood.
The hands that held me weren't cruel but weren't tender either—efficient, worn, and calloused. The midwife's apron was damp where my skin touched it. Her fingers prodded my limbs and counted digits. She gave my foot a quick slap to check my reflexes.
I was passed, swaddled tightly, a little too tightly, in a rough, probably reused wool blanket. No softness, no scent of home. Just starch and soap and the faint residue of other births.
My mother gasped nearby, her breath ragged. They were still working—trying to help her body finish what it started. I didn't hear all the words, but I felt their tension. She was still in danger.
"Placenta's not passing."
A hiss. A muttered prayer. Instruments clinking on a metal tray. I lay on a narrow scale, briefly, before being tucked into a wire crib beside her bed. Still cold. Still wet inside. I blinked against the dim, flickering gaslight overhead—not bright, but too sharp after the perpetual dusk of the womb.
The ceiling above was yellowed from years of steam and coal smoke; its plaster cracked like a drying riverbed. Dust swirled in the light from a window set high in the wall, out of reach. There was just the stifled rhythm of labour and aftermath.
I was surrounded by life and birth and women stitched back together—without anaesthesia, without fanfare. Just grit and necessity.
The cot trembled when someone rushed by—another birth in progress, probably. The sound of water being poured. A bowl dropped. A sharp command barked at a nurse who wasn't quick enough.
I lay still, heart pounding in this tiny new chest. Too much had happened too fast, the unfamiliar environment adding to my growing anxiety.
And yet—There it was. Her hand. Heavy with exhaustion, damp with effort, trembling slightly—but reaching. She touched my cheek with her thumb. Just once, barely any pressure at all.
But everything in me stilled.
Not the rattling trolleys, the groaning of beds, or the quick steps of nurses—but me. My panic, my detachment, my swirling memories, and the fear of another life… all quieted.
Because I knew that touch.
It wasn't from a past life; it wasn't from a dream but from now. I didn't know her name. I didn't know if she'd survive the night. But at that moment, her touch told me something sacred.
I wasn't alone.
The night stretched on, though I had no concept of time—only its slow, aching weight. The world had changed so completely and suddenly that my mind could barely make sense of it all.
I had escaped one life but landed in another that was colder, louder, and full of clothes from an era long gone.
The ward was quiet only in the way a battlefield rests between skirmishes. Groans echoed from behind curtains, followed by muffled weeping or silence. Metal clanged occasionally—bowls, clamps, basins. Somewhere nearby, a baby whimpered, inconsolable. Somewhere else, a nurse murmured a prayer under her breath, weary and automatic.
I missed the quiet of before—the thick, humming dark where nothing was expected of me but to grow.
Now, the air felt filled with questions I couldn't yet understand.
Would she survive? Would I? Where am I?
At some point, I must have slept—fitfully, waking often to silence, noise, or the absence of noise, which somehow felt worse. There were no dreams, no warmth, just the trembling sense of confusion. I existed in the spaces between gasps, footsteps, and cries, not my own.
But then came morning.
It slipped into the ward gently, diffused through soot-streaked glass. It was not the violent light of birth but something softer, more forgiving. The gas lamps hissed out one by one. The air shifted slightly. There was less chloroform and more steam. Coal smoke mingled with the smell of weak tea.
Voices changed, too. Less clipped. Less frantic. Somewhere, a nurse chuckled quietly. A baby suckled in another cot. The groans had ceased. A curtain drew back.
I heard a bed creak, linen rustling, and the soft gasp of someone rousing from exhaustion rather than agony. Then: footsteps. Deliberate. Slower now.
I couldn't see her, but I felt her like roots feel water. She was close. Not a heartbeat above me this time, but beside me.
The wire cot shifted as hands reached in—warmer this time, hesitant and shaking. Then I was lifted, still swaddled, and drawn close to something familiar: sweat, milk, blood, and the faint earthy scent of a body.
She held me to her chest. I fit awkwardly against her ribs, but she curled around me like she'd been waiting her whole life for that moment. Her heart was still too fast, but nothing worrisome.
I didn't understand all the words she whispered; her voice was rough, low, and so close to my ear that it might've been my own thought. She said them softly, like they were a secret.
After everything, after all the pain and the panic, she gave me a name.
Not just sound. Not just a label.
A Name.
The world was still uncertain. The future is still vast and unknowable. But at that moment, her arms were around me, my name on her breath...
It wasn't just a name. It was an anchor.
I had somewhere to belong now.