Ghosts by Daylight by Janine di Giovanni

now working. But the three of us could not fit in the tiny space – I was that large – so the Antillean man came with me, clearly terrified, and the other one took the stairs with Bruno.
    ‘ Ça va, Madame, ça va ,’ he said, trying to comfort me. ‘ Respirez! soufflez! ’ But breathing hurt too much.
    They strapped me in the ambulance bed, and Bruno shouted that he would take his moto.
    ‘Don’t leave me,’ I said, and he touched my face.
    ‘Five minutes and you are at the hospital.’
    On my back, I watched the lights of Paris above me as we drove down past Pyramides, then on to rue de Rivoli, past the Louvre, across the bridge, and on to one of the islands in the Seine.
    Inside Hotel Dieu were drunks, shouting crazies, a man holding an arm with a deep gash, dripping blood. They all stared at me, this distorted figure twisted in half, like one of Victor Hugo’s characters. For once, I was happy to be in France, happy that the doctors were so good, that the nurses here who X-rayed me tried to soothe me, and told me they knew how much it hurt.
    My doctor told me that I had torn a muscle that connected the ribs, and one of the ribs was out of place, dislocated, floating around somewhere in my body. She apologized: even if I were not pregnant, there was little they could do about broken ribs, but as I was pregnant, all she could do was wrap me to try to stabilize the bone.
    Tiny and birdlike, she worked quickly, binding my upper body in elastic bandage, wrapping me round and round like a mummy, and telling Bruno to buy a warming pad from the pharmacy. But she could not give me any painkillers because of the blood clotting and because she said they would go into my bloodstream and affect the baby.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and genuinely seemed to mean it. She pressed her hand against mine. It was tiny, like a doll’s hand. ‘ Courage . Your baby is coming soon.’
    The SAMU had left, so we got a taxi home. It was nearly dawn. Since the time I had held my toothbrush while preparing to get into bed, an entire night had passed.
    The faint colour was coming back to Paris’ streets, even on this cold winter morning, and there were people moving quietly, going to work, the early shift. There was something oddly comforting about that, life going on. I kept my hand on the place where my rib should have been, and watched as we passed the Ile Saint-Louis, Châtelet, down rue de Rivoli and past the Café Welcome with its orange-and-red walls, and back to our apartment. I went to bed and stayed there.
    A week passed, and the coughing did not stop. I could not sleep and grew heavier and less agile. I had one pair of boots I could slip on and off, but that was about it. When I coughed, the rib shifted – I could feel it moving under my tight skin – and I would breathe sharply, the pain worse than anything I had ever felt.
    One day, it was so uncomfortable that I sat willing the baby to come out, so that my body would return to normal, wishing that I could take a painkiller or a sleeping pill, and fall into darkness, obscurity, where there was no pain, only sleep.
    ‘I know you want him to come,’ Bruno said, ‘but he’s not ready yet.’ He tried to lift my spirits with lemon tarts and lemon tea, the only thing I could stomach. He took me for walks around the Place du Marché Saint-Honoré and let me lean on his shoulder. He guided me by the elbow and remained constantly optimistic. The more difficult I became, the more patient he seemed to be. I was aware of how badly I was behaving, like a spoilt and miserable teenager. But it was the first time since I was a child that I depended on someone else, that I was out of control. I did not like it.
    One day, Bruno arrived home with news: I had to meet the sage-femme – the midwife – who would assist the birth. She was supposed to be magical, recommended by the Zen doctor, and she saw women at a famous hotel in Versailles where she guided them in the water, like