When your legs part so easily, taking responsibility seems impossiblebetter to abandon the child.
Lydia and her husband had longed for their first baby. For nine months, he guarded her, walking her to and from university, especially forbidding her to step outside during icy winters. But just before the birth, he was sent away on business. He could have refusedhe planned to quit anyway once the child arrived. What kind of life was it, always away on shifts, leaving Lydia alone with a newborn?
Her contractions began the moment Eugene had gone. The pain was unbearable, and worse, he wasnt there. This wasnt how shed imagined welcoming their firstborn.
The baby was healthy, but Lydia couldnt bring herself to tell him. Let him hear it from strangers.
She glanced around the ward. Across from her lay a woman in her forties. Nearby, a young girl chattered on the phone. By the door, another woman wept silently, face turned to the wall.
Exhausted from the ordeal of labour, Lydia sank into the stiff blue hospital pillow and fell into a deep, dreamless sleepas if the world had dissolved around her.
“Will you be feeding the baby?” a voice cut through her haze. Lydia turned, hopeful.
The nurse stood over the weeping woman by the door. “Why wont you answer? Just hold her. Look how beautiful she is.” The woman stayed frozen, refusing to turn.
“You know how to open your legs, but not how to take responsibility? Maybe you shouldve given her up,” the nurse muttered before striding out.
The forty-year-old woman, Natalie, was the first to speak, her voice thick with emotion. “You think I wanted this? Im forty-three! My sons marriedIll be a grandmother soon, and now this? What am I supposed to do? The childs innocent. If you didnt want her, you shouldve acted sooner. Now shell rot in care homes. Have you thought of her? What kind of life will she have, betrayed the moment shes born?”
Anya sobbed harder, her tears spilling freely now, as if a dam had broken.
“What good will crying do?” Natalie pressed. “Take your baby. Feed her. Dont be a fool.”
“Maybe she was assaulted,” Albina suggested, finally setting her phone down. “Or the fathers someone closea stepfather, maybe?”
Lydia listened, guilt gnawing at her. Here she was, loved, protectedher husband holding her hand, her parents dotingyet still finding reasons to sulk. And there was Anya, unwanted, and her child, innocent yet already discarded.
That girl would grow up bitter. Maybe her mother drank. Maybe the man whod promised to marry her vanished the moment he learned of the baby.
No balloons to celebrate the birth. No flowers for the mother. Nowhere to go, especially with a child in tow.
Shame and pity twisted in Lydias chest. “If you had somewhere to go would you take her?”
Anya stared at her as if she were mad. “Of course. But thatll never happen.” She took it as mockery, turned back to the wall, and spoke no more.
Hours later, Lydia declared, “Youll stay in the dormitory. My mothers the warden. Youll clean floors, and theyll give you a room.”
“Oh!” Albina perked up. “Ive got a new discharge blanket. Ill call my husbandweve got two, why keep both?”
“Ill bring clothes,” Natalie offered. “My daughter outgrew them. Washed and ironed. No use to usmy sons grown. Grandkids get everything new.”
By the next day, women from other wards drifted in with donationsa pram, a crib, a quilt.
“Ive got nothing to give,” said a young mother sheepishly. “But Ill buy formula. Just in case.”
Anya wept openly nownot from despair, but from the sudden weight of kindness. “Ill pay it back,” she mumbled. The mothers patted her shoulder. “Pass it on when someone else needs it.”
That night, drifting off, Lydia smiled. Anya would be alright. Shed find a good man someday. Her daughter would grow up loved. What more could anyone want?
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