Excerpt from That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Breathe, breathe, that's it." Christopher sounded like he was urging the horse on whom he'd bet his paycheck to cross the finish line.

Rebecca felt like her spine was on fire, but why her spine? There were three or four or eight or eleven people in the room. The cotton gown did not cover her, an idea more than a garment. For some reason Rebecca was more conscious of the bareness of her breasts than the desire on the part of the assembled party to see her body fold out like an O'Keeffe. They attended to their business, its ceremony a mystery, like the College of Cardinals just before a new pope. What went on in there, anyway?

Her sister had warned her of fire, and Rebecca had planned for this by thinking of devout Buddhists protesting the war by placidly immolating. She didn't have what it took to scream. Bugs, mice, the things she didn't like; her response was always to shudder, think, Oh this, I don't like this, as though the mind could do anything about it.

She knew it was happening, the moment Judith called fire: the baby was passing over her bones, her pelvis just a speed bump before he made his exit. Rebecca had assumed hyperbole but fire was right. Everything seemed white, which was said to be the color of heat at its hottest. Rebecca knew that someday she'd be fine, be delivered of this pain, be mended like that Japanese porcelain with a gilded crack, more beautiful once broken. But still, pain like she would faint, or maybe like she would die? Good thing she was already in a hospital! The baby slipped through her and the fire dimmed, the white dissipated, and eventually she heard it cry; her baby cried. It didn't even sound that loud. No one was paying any attention to her.

Look at me, she wanted to say, but she couldn't say anything. She wasn't sure whom she meant, but anyway, no one looked. One of the nurses had Rebecca's hand in hers, and Rebecca pulled away. She wanted the attention of Christopher, the doctor, the men. The baby was placed on top of her, and it tickled, and he moved slightly, and the doctor was doing something, and Rebecca was looking down at the child. Then someone covered him with a cloth and pushed the baby up her body.

At this moment (life's first!) we all look red, wet, furious, like a small bird or rodent, a fearful and fragile thing. Longed for, long imagined, and now she couldn't see, not actually. It wasn't sight, it was some chemical reaction: a general sense of light and beauty, warmth and perfection. Her blood percussive in her ears, her eyes damp and unable to focus. Rebecca felt someone lift the baby off her. Dr. Brownmiller was saying something.

"I'm thirsty," Rebecca said.

Christopher shouted something at her. Her body was not finished with its work. Rebecca breathed—that's what he was saying, Christopher—breathe. Now it was almost impossible to remember how to do this thing her body had always done without her active involvement. The pain was different because she thought she'd been done with it. She'd seen the baby! Rebecca looked down at her chest, and there, at her feet, were the doctor and a hundred, a thousand, other people, staring up into her body. The tableau struck her as hilarious. She heard music. Where was the music coming from?

Christopher told her to breathe. She wanted to defend herself. I'm trying. It was lost in the music. Was it—Tchaikovsky? Was music what elevated a room into a birthing suite?

The stirrups against which her feet were braced seemed to be hands pulling her body apart like a Thanksgiving wishbone. Some unseen person was counting, and Rebecca wondered where the baby was. She opened her eyes, which she had not realized were closed. There was the plash of something wet against something dry. Her knees shook. Rebecca heard a piano, tentative, tinkling, climbing. She wanted to ask about the music but couldn't think whom to ask.

From That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam. Copyright 2018 Rumaan Alam. Excerpted with permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.