Flash Fiction: Mine

Prompt: Numbers

⁠Word Count: 100

Written for the Flash Fiction Contest hosted by @rhirhi_readsnwrites

The numbers zing around the room, bouncing off the whiter-than-white walls as if they're made of rubber. Heart rates and pulse counts. Dosages and dilation. Counting up, then counting down. It doesn't matter. The numbers are fuzzy in my ears.

Two more pushes, dear. Three. You've got this!

Turns out, numbers do lie. Well, people do.

Pain. A cry. Then he's here, fragile and frog-like, swaddled in the starched fabric with its faint pink and blue lines. Tiny bow-like mouth and crinkly eyes. His skin touches mine, papery and velvet-soft.

He's perfect.

He's ... mine?!

I don't hear the numbers anymore.

Alessandra Spaulding