Pie In The Sky》SaTzu✔

chapter 11: gratuity

Chad doesn't respond when Tzuyu offers to let him cut the cord. He seems horrified by everything he just witnessed between Sana's legs. Tzuyu clamps the cord and offers the scissors to Sana.

But Sana is too transfixed by her little girl to hear anything Tzuyu or the nurses are saying. Everything around her is muted except for the wailing pink bundle in her arms.

Her daughter is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

Tzuyu cuts the cord and busies herself inspecting Sana for damage and preparing for the delivery of the afterbirth.

Sana feels Chad trying to get her attention but ignores him. She swats him away like a fly hovering over a pie.

"Hey now," Chad protests. "Remember what you promised."

Sana looks down at the baby and giggles. It sounds drugged and slow, but the only drug-like effect Sana feels is the awe she has for her daughter.

"Hi," she whispers to the baby.

The baby arches her back, twisting her too-small body, eyes still sealed under her swollen brow.

"Mrs. Minatozaki, would you like us to wash her off?" the nurse asks gently.

"In a minute," Sana says, beaming down at her little girl. "I want to get a good look at her first."

She opens the blanket and her eyes travel from the baby's face to her neck, her chest, her belly with the fresh-cut clamp of cord, her skinny frog legs and tiny feet. Sana counts her fingers and toes, remarking at each one.

She's the weirdest looking creature Sana's ever seen, and she's perfect.

Reluctantly, she hands the baby to the nurse, feeling a pang in her chest at the separation. She hopes it won't take too long to wash her.

"You remember?" Chad says, growing more agitated. "You promised not to love the baby more than me."

Whatever effects the drugs and the baby have on her, she snaps out of her haze for a blazing moment of clarity. She looks Chad hard in the eye and knows she's done with him. She's got a little girl to protect now.

"I don't love you Chad."

The room goes silent aside from the monitors beeping. Even the baby stops crying. The nurses and Tzuyu freeze where they're huddled over the sink.

Sana feels courage rise up from the same place where her daughter grew. "You're a terrible husband and I want a divorce."

A nurse drops a plastic tray and bends to pick it up.

Chad is frozen for a moment, then lets out a strained chuckle. He looks to the nurse, grinning as though they share a joke.

"Those must be some good drugs you gave her," he says, keeping up the charade. "She's talking nonsense."

"It's not nonsense," Sana says. Her voice is hard and determined like Tzuyu's was half an hour ago. In the safety of the hospital and Tzuyu's presence, she finally says what she's wanted to say for months. "You've hit me and called me names and controlled our money for years. You won't let me have a car or a phone or see my friends or go anywhere. I don't want my daughter growing up around that. I want a divorce."

"Now just a minute," Chad says, dropping all trappings of jest as he goes dark. "I never did any of those things."

"Yes you did," Sana says, raising her voice. "You would have hit me the other day if I hadn't told you it was barbaric to hit a pregnant woman."