The black mass sizzled and consumed the breast, acid eating away flesh, seeping through the creaks of chests, entering alveoli, clogging air-
Quick breath against and a gurgle, as he grasped for Anna's dry lips, premature fingers, mobile body, Angel, lay against his mother’s chest. Purple and warm, green-eyes searched her closing lids.
Anna felt for his stretching arms and meeting the warmth, she patted his rosy flesh. She stroked along his arm across his touch-sensors. Baby Angel enfolded her bony finger with his hand.
“Blessed child,” Anna whispered and laid her head back.
The nurse stepped forward and beamed, reaching toward him. She circled her arms around his body and pulled him up. Baby Angel let out a sound and held onto Anna’s finger. She smiled as he released his grip. He squeezed his cheeks into a grin and giggled. Mother and son, so happy.
The nurse carried the child away. He buried his head into her. As she shut the door, she looked back. Anna’s eyes were closed.
The child’s birth was an answer to his mother’s endless prayers in the chapel, the malignant of the life saving process, the fresh lungs-in her arms.
“Anna, you must start chemo, or it will be too late.” The echo of those words sounded in the nurse’s ears.
“My baby?”
“You will have to lose it.”
“No, no, doctor I have lived my life.”
“You are only twenty four.”
The nurse gently squeezed baby Angel’s shoulders and pushed him closer to herself. A crystal tear rolled down her cheek. She laid him back in the incubator and kneeled to pray.