July 19, 2020 – An excerpt from Irina Papancheva’s novella ‘Welcome Nathan!’, translated from Bulgarian by Elitza Kotzeva, has been published in the literary magazine Apofenie.
‘Welcome Nathan!’ went out in November 2019. The author wrote it in memory of her stillborn baby-boy Nathan.
This is the beginning of the excerpt:
‘’The procedure for cleaning my cervix from the last traces of the placenta was scheduled for Thursday. Chris came with me. But when they took me to the waiting room and inserted the IV, I found myself alone. I broke down in tears. It was a lot to take—this very hospital, the terror of the needle inside my arm, all that I have gone through, the removal of the last traces.
“Do you have children?” asked the nurse trying to distract me while the other one was inserting the IV into my arm. The wrong question again.
Two days earlier, when they took blood before the surgery, the nurse—a kind woman at about sixty—had asked, “Is this your first child?”
“I lost my child,” I told her, “and yes, it was my first.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
Afterwards when I was already at home I felt peaceful. I laid down in the bedroom while the afternoon sun was resting at the end of the bed. It was that light which brings along a promise for peace.’’
The entire excerpt could be found here.