I woke up in a cold sweat. I sat up in the bunk at the hospital. I was dreaming about it again the screaming the crying.  I sat rocking. I was tired of the bad dreams. It started when Dr. Perkins and his wife came into the hospital  Fearful and rightly so, she was pregnant. 18 weeks.  They stood in awe of the pictures of the little person inside of her. Thank God for the sputtering generator and the ultra sound.  Oh dear, oh my what I would not give for my liberty to be free of my guilt and recriminations.  Anyway, their joy turned to horror when I panicked during the ultrasound.  The sweetest joy was bitter for me, because there were twins. I wanted so badly to be happy for them but twins can mean complication.  You don’t want compilation these days.  Take the easiest route to survival, don’t detour into hope and happiness.  It is just a roadside stop with the potential for stalking death to catch up.  The hollow woman understood this. The young woman that darkened the door of the hospital.  I lead her down shadowy corridors.  Where she told me she wanted to kill her sorrows and shame and end her pregnancy. She could not possibly know what that meant to me. I stuttered and stammered like I always do. I did not mean to judge her. Here are the days of darkness, dark decisions and scrambling in blackness to find a way out.  No I will not judge her, but I could not do it. I would not.  Do no harm. I begged her to have the baby to just give it to me.  would take the baby. I would take it. I would;  I would.  She would not hear it.  See a doctor, I told her.  How could she know what had happened to me not so very long ago. How could she know what saving the baby would mean to me.  It happened during the third survival group I joined.  Nice people. too nice, too noisy.  I was afraid the whole time I traveled with them.  Why?  They were heroes.  Do you know what happens to heroes?  On day we were over whelmed in  small town by a huge hard that came when  car alarm went off.  We had fought our way almost out but then one member got blocked off, and they rallied to save him, back into the heard they went. I should have left then, run and run, but I followed them back.  The mass of dead tore the group to pieces.  One colossal F*** up.  Men were fighting women back to back.  It was not a matter of if you would die but how.  I climbed up a small u-haul trailer truck. One of the women had a baby  She was bit and perused right up to the truck, so many walkers. She lifted her screaming baby to me. She was surrounded and being torn at by the walkers. I leaned over the truck, but feared if I leaned over enough to grab the baby the walkers would grab me or I would slid off, and, and that baby screaming was like ringing a dinner bell.  I shook my head no and watched the woman an child dragged to their death.  I am no hero.  I lay up there for 5 days no food, or water, surrounded by walkers.  Finally a distant explosion drew the vast majority away and I escaped, so when I offered to take the woman’s unwanted child,  I was sincere.  I have realized in this new life, liberty are not as important as the pursuit of redemption