Eva's Sins.

LXVI

„Birth can be a blessing or a stuffy burden"

  Even if Eva had a skillful midwife next to her and a doctor who Stan brought from London, she could give birth only on the second morning, around 9 o'clock. But the difficult and long labor and the fact she was too skinny and too emotional, made her ask to be left alone right after the birth, and she even refused to see the child.

  „How could she refuse to see the child?" Brian wondered, preoccupied. „She just gave birth to this baby, she carried her in her womb for nine long months, she felt her moving under her heart, growing from a simple embryo to the beauty she's today, how can she just simply refuse to see the girl?" he kept murmuring, crazy, for Brian considered Eva's refuse as a madness, for she was a mother now and she had to see the girl.

  „There's something normal for some women," the doctor tried to calm him down. „Especially in her condition, for she's very young and powerless. Give her some space and she'll want to see the girl later. Meanwhile, find a nursemaid to take care of the baby and don't try to force the mother, for, in her condition, we don't know what she'll be able to do.

  And Brian listened to the doctor's advice, and, as soon as possible, he found a young mother with a small child in the village to take care of his baby too, for even if she had her baby, the nursemaid was more than able to take care of two babies. But what Brian couldn't do was to give a name to the girl, for he considered that Eva had to agree with that name, for being the girl's mother.

  But the hours passed, the days passed, but Eva didn't want to see either him or the girl. Only the midwife had access to her room, and this drove Brian completely crazy, for he knew that her denial of seeing them had to have a reason, a real one, and that reason had something to do with that mysterious visit to the village, the day before Eva gave birth. But who those people were or what could have they told Eva if she ran to the field despite that she felt the first contractions announcing her about approaching birth and that she had to stay in bed or look for someone's company, he couldn't find out, for each time he was trying to enter her room, Eva had a nervous breakdown and she was yelling at him to get lost from her eyes and to never dare to enter there again.

  And this hurt him so much. Especially, he felt bad that his child lived her first days on earth without her mother next to her, feeling that cruel burden of life in her innocent soul. But... he couldn't do anything to change that. He could only spend hours and hours next to his girl, watching her sleep and looking into her still pale eyes when she was awake.

  Eventually, Brian remembered about Mrs. Huntington and about Beth and sent Stan to ask them to come, having the hope in his soul that their presence will help Eva to shake out of her depression, for he could think only of this as an acceptable reason for a young mother to refuse to see her child.

  And Stan rushed to London to send Brian's word to Mrs. Huntington, leaving him alone with his sadness while holding his little girl into his arms, next to the window and watching in silence the carriage that was hurrying away of those places and, for the first time since they had started to live there, Brian felt that he wanted to leave that house and to go away.

  But hearing the baby's whimper, who suddenly started to move in his arms, Brian winced and looked at her. The girl, however, quickly calmed down and sweetly yawned, and this made Brian smile, too, that it has probably been his first smile in a long while.

  „As beautiful as your mother, Laura. So beautiful!" said Brian, even if he didn't decide how to name her, but he preferred to call her by his dead mother's name, for he didn't want to call her just the „baby" or the „girl." Then, he caressed her cheeks, and that sweet caress of the father, through which he sent all his love to her, made the little Laura move in her sleep and, very soon, she grabbed his finger, with her little hand, and this surprised him so much, for Brian hadn't expected that she'll understand him.