“Dinnae push just yet,” the midwife said, keeping a trained eye fixed between Isla’s open thighs. “Just a wee moment longer and…” Isla sighed through her teeth, seizing fistfuls of the linen sheets and wringing them desperately. Her belly was as tight and hard as a rock, gripped by a contraction that made her want to scream at the top of her lungs. She had already, many times. Now she was dead tired, her throat raw and stinging. She wasn’t even sure if she still had a voice, but those sensations were nothing compared to the burn between her thighs. The child was on the verge of being born, and she’d laboured hard every moment of the way, thinking this moment would never come. Desperate for the ordeal to be over, she’d been pushing with all her might. Moments ago the midwife had urged her to pause in the name of stopping a tear. She did her best to resist the urge to push as the woman applied a warm towel to her strained flesh. It was perhaps the most difficult thing she’d ever done.
