Quick writer challenge

Pandemic Stories - Fragile Mill

Allowed 45 minutes to write and 5 minutes to edit

Life Moments

The call came at midnight. Rebecca, Anne's daughter, had given birth to a baby girl, Ursula, named after Anne's Grandmother. The news caused an unbidden mix of excitement and fear. What a frightening world to be born into - please let them be safe, Anne thought.

The plan was that Rebecca and the baby would stay with Anne for a few weeks because Rebecca's husband is a policeman and out in the public all day. Anne had been isolating for months and so they felt the baby and Rebecca would be safer if they stayed at Anne's house.

Anne's eldest daughter Amy, thought it a bad idea. "Mum, what if they bring the virus home from the hospital and you catch it? What if you get sick? You could die."  This unnerved Anne because of course she did not want to die. Even so, her instinct was to help her daughter.

Anne waited outside the maternity unit for Rebecca and her Granddaughter. She was not afraid. Love squashes fear, she thought. Rebecca, cupping Ursula in her folded arm waved at Anne. "Here Mum, over here."

Anne put on her mask and disposable gloves and made her way over to her daughter. She peered into the baby filled blanket, but all she could see was the top of Ursula's tiny, vulnerable head. 

"Come on," Anne said, "Lets get home."

Anne and Rebecca removed their coats and hung them in the porch. Rebecca said she wanted to shower and then wash all her clothes, just in case. "And the baby," she said, "The baby's clothes. Let me get showered and we will change her blanket and her clothes and then bathe her." 

A cup of tea and a biscuit is one of the best antidote's for all worry. A cup of tea and a biscuit is practically the meaning of life, Anne pondered, washing her hands vigorously and using only paper towels to dry them. Her hands were sore from all the washing, but she had read somewhere that hand cream harbours germs so she'd stopped using it. 

Rebecca placed her clothes in the washing machine, adding some disinfectant. She picked up tiny Ursula and unwrapped the sleeping miracle from her blanket. She placed the blanket into a black bag, along with Ursula's clothes. 

Anne placed the tea and biscuits on the coffee table. She watched as Rebecca slowly peeled away the garments that swaddled Ursula, until all that was left were soft folds of skin and a tiny head moving to the sound of Rebecca's voice. Rebecca placed Ursula in the small baby bath; one that Anne had cleaned thoroughly, just to be sure.   

Anne helped wash little Ursula. The feel of the baby's skin made Anne want to cry. The soft innocence of it, amongst all the bedlam, here, now, was a new world. 

Rebecca dried Ursula and put her in fresh, new clothes and then fed her. It was time for Anne to hold this most precious gift. Anne's heart seemed to pump up like a balloon full of love in her chest.

For months Anne had lived in a world where death and illness hung in the air. Never before had she experienced such fear: People scared to be near each other, or touch other people; everyone a potential, lethal dose of killer virus.

Here, now, Ursula opened her big, unaware eyes, searching their environment through a misty lens. Anne looked into the dark pools of Ursula's eyes, and in doing so she felt she was looking into the cosmos. And this had her thinking about love and about existence, about life and death and in between. She felt this moment was all of life.  Whatever happens from here on, she thought, I will know only the moment matters. 

Rebecca leant over the back of the chair and kissed her mothers head. She came around to the front of the chair and kissed Ursula's head. Ursula's heavy eyes closed. Completely fear free, she slept.  

J Penrose © 2020