It was dusk; the evening star had come out. It was five hours after my first time labor room experience. Before, I had heard that childbirth is difficult, I don't know about the difficult part but anxiety did work at its best; for whole nine months I had carried this precious being inside me and when it was time for that angel to enter our world there were issues like, will it be normal? Will all its senses function properly? Will it look like the father or the mother (not that it makes any difference)? But when that loud wail filled the air it was a music no soul had ever thought of playing. Then, the whole night of tossing and turning, changing positions which hardly helps and the mighty push makes your eyelids drop down like it is made of lead. I had rested for five whole hours before my body started its normal function. I asked my husband to take me to the restroom of the hospital, which stank of God knows what. I remember my husband putting me on the wheelchair for I was too feeble to walk the distance to relieve myself. Then all of a sudden, I found myself all alone, walking in an unknown place. There was a small hill, it was filled with green grasses but there wasn't a single tree. I found myself walking with a swiftness I never knew I had in me. A stranger accosted me on the way. I never take note of people's appearance but this stranger had a look that was a personification of evil in its meanest form. I was scared but I didn't show it. He sneered at me," So, all set to go with me?" I didn't understand what this man was talking of but I dare not ask him this question. Where was I? Who was this man? Where was he leading me to? Why did I follow him? So many questions eroded my mind, had these questions been soil and rocks instead of thoughts, the landslide in my mind would be bigger than the landslide of Jumja in the Phuentsholing- Thimphu highway. I silently followed him like a tamed pet dog.

We traveled in silence till we crossed that small hill. "De…ma…." Both of us knew that somebody was calling out for me. He asked me," who was that?" "Huh?" I was too stunned by the query to answer promptly. He repeated his question with an angry glare. "My husband,'' I muttered baffled by the stupidity of the situation I was in. "Oh!" that was all he said. "You see, I just gave birth to a beautiful daughter………" I found myself saying. I wanted to shut my mouth with both my hands before I said anything more to anger him, he looked like one who got angry too easily. But I found myself telling him the entire feelings I felt since the day I learned that I had conceived my baby, the first time I felt my baby's tiny fluttering inside me, the onset of the big labor pain and the joy that filled my heart after a tedious eighteen hours of back breaking labor pain. When I finished narrating everything in detail, we heard my husband's voice calling out for me again. "You may go back to your daughter," he said and turned away from me but I saw the tears in his eyes as he left me all alone on that grassy area. So I turned my head towards the source of my husband's voice, I opened my eyes and saw myself in the hospital restroom, my husband slapping me and calling out my nam.