“This is my Angelo, Bettina,” Eva cried, laughing and weeping simultaneously, as she continued to touch his face in disbelief. “This is my Angelo.”
“Angelo? Le père du bébé?” Bettina gasped, and she immediately crossed herself again, his cleric’s collar obviously confusing her. Eva must not have shared everything. Then the woman’s shocked words penetrated Angelo’s euphoric disbelief.
“The child’s father?” he repeated, suddenly remembering why he’d been summoned in the first place. His hands fell to Eva’s swollen abdomen, and his eyes followed. Then he was looking at her again, at her beautiful, weary face and her tear-filled eyes.
“Yes. The child’s father,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his, and her breath caught and her hands clutched, and she was in his arms again as he held her through the pain of a labor he was wholly unprepared for.
“The contractions are deep and strong,” she panted. “I’ve been in labor since yesterday, and I don’t think it’s progressing like it should.”
“You need to get on your hands and knees,” he urged, walking back into the room she’d obviously vacated. A fire was roaring in the grate, and water and towels and a bed made up with clean sheets were at the ready. Clearly, Bettina had done all she knew to do. Angelo walked Eva to the bed and helped her ease into a crawling position on her hands and knees. Her arms and legs wobbled in fatigue. She seemed extremely weak, and he could see why Bettina had gone for help.
“I have to go get Mario. This may work, but you’re going to need a doctor,” he said urgently.
“Mario?” Her voice rose in amazement. “Mario is here too? How can this be? Where did you come from, Angelo? I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead.” The shock weakened her further, and her arms wobbled wildly.
“Shh. We have time for that. We have so much to talk about, but you need a doctor.”
“Don’t leave,” Eva entreated, her eyes pleading even as she attempted to reach out a hand and swayed dangerously. “Please, Angelo. Please stay with me.”
He felt it too, the foreboding sense that if they parted now, the fissure that had opened up and allowed them to step through time and distance and find one another, would close forever. He hesitated, knowing he needed Mario but unwilling to let Eva out of his sight.
“J’y retournerais,” Bettina volunteered from the doorway. The poor woman had just climbed to the top of the stairs. “I will go again.”
“Madame!” Angelo called after her. “Tell Dr. Sonnino I’ve found Eva. He will come.”
But Mario didn’t come. Bettina never returned either. Instead, the Luftwaffe parted the clearing December skies with screaming fire, and all at once the night was as bright as noon in July from the magnesium flares. Seconds later, a hellish shrieking pierced the air, and Angelo draped himself over Eva as the first bombs found their targets and the earth shook with their impact. The apartment trembled, but it hadn’t been hit. Angelo braced as the screaming, whirring, shrieking began again, signaling another bomb was hurtling toward them.
“I love you, Angelo,” Eva said in his ear, and he could only return the words, sheltering her the best he could as the world exploded around them. And still the building stood. Then the strafing began, a German bomber dropping low to pepper the area with machine-gun fire. The sound of shattering glass and strafing was punctuated by the screams and shouts of the survivors outside, and Eva and Angelo waited breathlessly, delivered from one trauma by the arrival of another.
“Angelo,” Eva panted. “It’s coming. The pain is different. There’s pressure now. The baby is coming.” He had braced Eva for as long as she could maintain the position on her hands and knees, and then eased her down to her side, letting her rest between rounds before agony twisted her up again.
She smiled as if he’d performed a miracle, and he closed his eyes in grateful relief before he helped her to sit, pulling her legs back into her chest. He didn’t know how he knew what to do, but somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he remembered a woman assisting his mother as she labored to bring his little sister into the world. His mother had won the battle but had lost her life. That would not happen now. He wouldn’t let it.
“Bettina?” Eva panted, interrupting his terrified train of thought. Her eyes were wide and worried. “Mario?” The fact that neither had returned was an alarming indication that the bombing had wreaked death and destruction in the streets, but Angelo had one goal, and he would worry about Mario when Eva was no longer in danger.
“I don’t know, Eva. But I’m here. Everything will be okay,” he soothed. The fear inside his belly was so great it had congealed into a massive rock, but he would be calm. He had found her, and she was having his child. He would be calm.
Eva smiled, just the smallest wisp of a smile, and she nodded, believing in him like she always had. Then her eyes filled with tears as the pain built again, making her chin sink to her chest and her back bow in protest.
“Tell me . . . ,” she panted. “Tell me how you found me.”
“I heard you were sent to Bergen-Belsen. After the Americans liberated Rome and then Paris, I went to France and began following the army up through the country, trying to find a way to get into Germany and up to you. I have been so frustrated. There were days I almost set out on my own, but Camillo always held me back.”
“My father? What do you mean?”
“Camillo went to Austria and never came home. I knew I would never see you again if I wasn’t prudent. Every time I wanted to rush in, it was like he stood at my shoulder, directing my paths.”
“He was with me too. If it hadn’t been for him, I would be in Bergen-Belsen now. I dreamed about him, and he told me you were with me. Inside me. I didn’t understand what that meant until I found out I was pregnant.”
“How did you end up here? In Belgium?” he asked, trying to distract her from the building agony. He sat at her back, letting her lean into his chest, turning her face into his neck as she tried to escape the waves of pressure.
“I jumped.” She groaned out the words, tucking her face into him as she began to shake. “I jumped, and then I walked.” She stopped talking then, speech too great a task, and he could only marvel at her words.
She jumped. And then she walked.
Her contractions seemed to grow until there was no relief, no brief moments to regroup and quietly rest, and Eva began bearing down helplessly, her body demanding that she push. It was an onslaught, a blitz, and one hour grew into another and then another as the world beyond the shattered windows continued to burn, and the woman he loved begged for deliverance. Angelo moved her bed beside the fire and nailed blankets over the windows to keep out the worst of the cold and to block the light in case the German bombers returned, but conditions were far from favorable. Bettina had brought in plenty of boiled water, and Angelo kept the area as clean as he could and Eva as comfortable as he was able, when finally, as midnight neared, she reached the end.
A surge of blood-tinged water soaked the sheet beneath her as she groaned in agonized protest. She bore down, pushing and crying with an endurance born of love and little else. Angelo, on his knees before her, begged the Madonna for intercession, and a little baby boy, conceived in love and tribulation, came into the world on Christmas Day. The baby’s cry broke the sacred stillness of the moment, his little arms and legs kicking in outrage as his father greeted him for the first time.