Great Shift - Animated GIF - Someone Else's Child

 

Brenda lay on her back in the quiet of her apartment, cotton pajama pants tugged down, tank top tugged up so she could see and feel the curve that had begun to swell. Both hands rested on the rise of her belly, tentative at first, then firmer, as if she needed to prove to herself that this was real.

A month ago she had been Ben, a 30-year-old man with no plans beyond the next paycheck and the next night out. The Great Shift had torn that life away and left her in this body, and for weeks she had been trying to keep her head above water. She thought she was just adjusting to the usual things: smaller, weaker, tighter clothes, the strange weight of breasts...that ached in the morning. That one was unusual. Then the doctor revealed her situation: this body had already been pregnant when the Shift hit. Now Brenda was doing more than just learning to live in someone else's body...she was carrying someone else’s child.

She closed her eyes and felt the low stretch of her abdomen. The changes came in whispers. Tender breasts. Fatigue. A hunger that came at odd times of day. Needing pee urgently and often. She wondered who the mother had been, what her life had looked like before the world shuffled its pieces. No one had come forward. People said many pregnant women had shifted into their own unborn children. If that was true, maybe the soul of the woman was curled inside her now, waiting to be born.

Ben would have laughed at the idea of fatherhood. Brenda was not laughing. She could not bring herself to think about ending the pregnancy. If the woman or her family ever came searching, she wanted the baby alive, whole, cared for. And if no one came, then it would be hers. A child that never could have existed in her old life, a piece of creation she had never imagined herself part of.

Her hands stroked the curve of her belly. It frightened her, but it also felt sacred. For the first time since the Shift, Brenda whispered aloud into the stillness of the room, testing the words like a prayer: “We’re going to be all right.”