As the bombs kept falling and the ground trembled beneath her swollen feet, she held her growing belly with both hands, cradling it like it was the last fragile thing in a collapsing world. She pressed her palms to its center, as if trying to shield the unborn life within from the brutal truths outside.
She gathered every ounce of strength still pulsing through her pregnant body and whispered to herself:
“I am a nurse. I am a nurse. I trained for this.”
Her voice trembled. The world didn’t care. But maybe her child could still hear her.
“They need me,” she said, louder this time, hoping her own conviction might return through the echo.
“I need me.”
Her words poured out, more prayer than speech now. Sentences formed not to explain but to soothe, to console, to keep the anxiety at bay.
“Baby… I need you not to feel this. I need you to sleep through this chaos. Do not process any of this through me. I need you to stay untouched, untainted.”
She inhaled deeply, then again, slower this time, until her breath found its rhythm her normal rhythm.
Her old rhythm.
“The world isn’t always like this,” she continued, trying to believe herself. “People aren’t always this cruel. This is war. It is not the whole of life. It’s the exception. I promise you that.”
She closed her eyes, tried to summon a memory from a calmer time. A classroom. A lecture. A sentence from her history books.
“History tells us… we rebuild. Always. From ruins, we build peace again. We plant things. We sing again.”
Another bomb fell closer this time. Louder. The windows rattled. A siren screamed from a distance.
She held her belly tighter.
“I promise you, baby… we are capable of great things. I’ve seen them. I’ve felt them. We just forget when we’re stuck in survival mode.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it. Let the world see what it had done. Let the child know its mother still felt everything.
Because that’s what love does.
It feels, even when it’s breaking.
روعة