The tears that streak down Delilah’s face remind me of the first time I went to the hospital that carries so much weight on my conscience this morning.

It was that little girl, with the same tears, who changed my decision. She was there and I didn’t expect it. Had the events been different, and her father been the only one brought in with the unconscious woman losing her breath, I’d have told them all. I would have relied on what a former version of me was told to do, before this new one was conceived.

I could have spent hours mourning over every vision and letting it all spill out, but I kept it all in, swallowed it down and watched her being held in the arms of a monster. And she clung to him. Her head was tucked so carefully under his chin while the woman was whisked away on a gurney.

I remember standing there, thinking this very thought: this is where people are born. The stark white walls and the yells of nurses blurred with the wide eyes of a little girl who was scared. I wonder if she would remember. I doubt she does. I remember it all, though.

The thing about that unit is that most of the people I surrounded myself with were born there. I wasn’t. I was so far gone from my hometown because I ran north when I should have run south. I know that now, but back then I didn’t. I wasn’t born in my hometown either, though.

I was birthed in that barn.

With the stench of pigs, and old dirt that felt like clay. The child who ran away, somehow escaping certain death, thought that structure would be a place to heal. But that’s all he was, a child who should have died. A child who deserved to die for what he’d done.

So I let him. I let that boy suffer, I forced him to watch and accept what he allowed to happen. I didn’t tell anyone what had really occurred and I knew that woman would die.

But the monster was comforting his little girl. How I could I, of all people, take someone’s parent away?

The biggest difference between my birth and so many others, is that they came into this world innocent, being held dearly, if screaming wildly. Well … most of them. The lucky ones.

I became the person I am when I was seeking shelter in that barn from monsters and watching a man who I knew nothing about commit unspeakable acts of horror that haunted every night of that sanctuary.

I suppose it doesn’t matter where or how you’re born, though … much less so than where and how you die.

“I’m leaving, Cody.” Delilah’s voice is raised and it wavers at the end of her statement. The pain she’s feeling is etched into his name. Let her go. She doesn’t need a damn soul comforting her. Least of all his.