Stay on land, walk home.

At once Danny realized that there was no way she would be able to row across the lake in her current condition, and the gentle grass and scrub brush covered side of the embankment might have been a shear vertical cliff face for all the climbing she was capable of. Finally she managed to convince herself to just keep doing what she was doing and walk home on land. Groaning with the next contraction, she almost fell over but managed to keep herself upright by grabbing onto a sapling. The large trench she found herself in was a storm run, a large depression that managed to collect water from the flat high spots of the school and move it to the larger lake. It was deeper here but if she followed it around, it would come out as a small culvert down by one of the several narrow section of the lake. More importantly, it was a very shallow section that could be walked across.

Slowly the contraction ebbed and she was able to keep moving. “Five minutes” she grunted to herself checking her watch and noting the time between contractions. Continuing to **** her way forward, she managed to make it to within earshot of the softly lapping water of the lake by the start of the next contraction. Quickly her belly tightened and a mass of pressure built between her legs forcing her to get down on her knees and wait it out. Slowly it passed and she continued on reaching the shore just as the next one took her breath away. It passed and without delay she **** herself into the water.

Crossing the shallows was odd, for the first few steps, the lake barely crested her ankle, but just as she took her third step onto what looked like a patch of black rock, she found herself falling to up to her chest in the cold water. Onward she moved finding that the gap didn’t get any deeper than her nipples which ached in the cooling touch of the water. Getting to the other side, she suddenly found a new problem. Try as she might, the other side was steeper than the first with the rock on the opposite side providing no way of getting herself up. With resolve she moved up the shoreline toward her house knowing at least there she would find the shallow cove behind her house and a way in. Moving was slow in the water and two contractions didn’t help matters. Macy was right though, the water helped ease the pain of the contractions that were hitting her almost every few minutes; but the pressure she now felt between her legs was near constant. Then with a particularly bad contraction, she felt it release and she knew she couldn’t get much further as the pressure was replaced with an overwhelming urge to push.

Desperately fighting the urge, she managed to half float, half drag herself onto a shallow rock seat and removed the cotton sweat shorts and the wispy fabric of her dress. Tossing them up on shore, she gave in with the next contraction and pushed, harder and harder with each round she felt the head slowly sliding out. Screaming with pain, effort and panic she suddenly felt the child slip free as a slight cloud of blood bloomed around her for a moment before being taken by the current. At once she didn’t think about anything, not the day, not the effort, pain or panic, not her nudity, not even if someone would have seen her at that moment. All she thought was of her child. Finally she removed her bra and held the newborn to her dripping nipple which she took greedily. This moment, the quiet, the stillness of just her and her daughter was all that mattered now.