June 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 3

Giulia stored the placenta in a white freezer drawer next to frozen anchovies, the clinic misplaced her discharge papers and demanded proof the birth even took place. A printed tag clung to the tissue with soggy glue: baby female, 2.1 kilos, transfer pending. Near the sink, her son Luca scraped charred rice from a pan using an expired bank card.

The freezer motor clicked every seventeen minutes. Giulia timed insulin around it. She didn’t trust clocks anymore after the maternity wing changed feeding hours three times within one night, then billed her for missing instruction sessions she never attended. Her left hip dragged during cold weather after the extraction unit failed during labor.

Luca rinsed the card beneath tap water while grease floated across the sink drain. “That woman called again,” he said, shaking water from his wrist onto the stove door.

Giulia pressed two fingers against the freezer seal. “Which woman,” she asked while the motor kicked alive again under her hand.

“The municipal birth office,” Luca replied. He dropped the card beside the stove and scratched the shaved side of his scalp carefully near one ear. “She said your tissue sample qualified.”

“That office handles death permits now too,” Giulia said. “One desk for all of it.”

She opened the drawer again. Frost clung to the wrapped bundle. During transport from the clinic, a nurse with orange lipstick told her to store it below minus ten until appeal review while cracking sunflower seeds using back teeth. Giulia pushed the drawer shut harder than necessary.

“Qualified for what,” she asked while Luca turned the dead landline upside down.

“Didn’t say. She kept coughing near the receiver.”

A delivery van passed outside their building. Brakes screamed near the curb. Giulia reached toward the cane hanging from a chair, then changed direction and steadied herself against the kitchen counter while Luca watched without speaking.

Three trams later, Giulia entered the municipal intake center beside the river pumping station. Blue paint peeled from concrete pillars near the entrance. An old security worker scanned her wristband without lifting his head. His fingernails carried yellow nicotine stains shaped like small moons.

The waiting area carried twelve molded chairs bolted into the floor. A toddler with an oxygen tube stacked sugar packets into narrow towers near a radiator. Across from him, a woman in business attire filled a jar labeled PROPERTY OF STATE MATERNAL ARCHIVE with breast milk. Nobody reacted, not even Giulia, who kept her gaze on the rattling pipe just above the child’s worn shoe.

A clerk named Matteo called Giulia’s number. He wore suspenders even though one strap kept slipping off his shoulder.

“You submitted biological remnants linked to neonatal expiration,” he said. “Your material passed viability.”

Giulia lowered herself into the chair slowly. “I filed for compensation.”

“Yes,” Matteo replied while rotating a laminated sheet toward her. Bite marks split one corner of the plastic. “Compensation claims enter automatic viability screening now. Missing discharge papers transfer authority to municipal continuation intake.”

The paper listed transport schedules, nutritional obligations, liability waivers.

Giulia rubbed the scar near her abdomen through her sweater. 

“You grow another infant from dead tissue.”

“Legally speaking, continuation status avoids duplicate identity disputes.”

“You already named it.”

“We use prior registration during pilot phase.”

A cleaning worker passed behind him pushing a gray bucket with one broken wheel. Water dripped across the tile toward Giulia’s shoe.

“Who asked for this.”

“No application required after viability confirmation,” Matteo answered. “Funding arrived through emergency demographic repair.”

Giulia looked toward the toddler building sugar towers. One packet burst beneath his palm while his mother kept texting beside him.

“How much,” she asked while Matteo opened a drawer beneath the desk.

“Food support and transit credit during gestation. Limited housing priority after release.”

“Release.”

“Continuation units stay in public care twelve months minimum.”

Giulia stared at the bracelet he removed from sterile paper.

“My daughter died.”

“State records list interrupted transfer.”

The incubation facility sat beneath an abandoned sports arena near freight tracks. Warm air pushed through ceiling vents carrying bleach and boiled cabbage. Giulia signed three forms using a pharmacy pen attached to the desk with blue cord.

A nurse named Elena guided her through the lower level. Small scars crossed both knees under sheer stockings.

“We’ve got fourteen active units,” Elena said. “Two survived intestinal collapse last quarter.”

Giulia stopped beside a transparent chamber full of cloudy fluid.

Inside floated a tiny body attached to pale tubing. Hair drifted across its scalp in thin black lines. One foot jerked twice near the chamber wall.

“Elena checked a clipboard. “You qualified because extraction trauma preserved stem density.”

“My pelvis broke.”

“Public hospitals rushed vacuum delivery during those staffing cuts.”

She moved ahead again. Giulia followed slower, dragging her left foot.

At chamber seven, Elena lifted a data screen toward her. Baby female. Registered maternal origin: Giulia Ferraro. Continuation age: eleven weeks.

The fetus carried a curled hand near its face.

“Who visits these children,” Giulia asked.

“Mostly nobody,” Elena answered while checking another chart. “Families quit after media attention dropped.”

“You keep growing them anyway.”

“Funding depends on birth totals.”

An alarm rang somewhere deeper in the facility, and a worker passing with sealed meal trays kept walking without turning toward the sound.

Giulia leaned closer to the chamber. The fetus opened its mouth underwater.

“You said continuation.”

“Language department picked that term.”

Giulia touched the chamber surface. Her hand shook badly from low sugar.

The fetus raised one arm.

Giulia stepped backward so hard her bad hip folded under her. She hit the floor beside a drainage grate while Elena called orderly support from the wall panel.

Two attendants arrived pushing a transfer stretcher. One wore glitter beneath her eyelashes.

“I’m fine,” Giulia said while the attendant checked her pulse.

“You diabetics always say that.”

Luca heated canned beans over a portable burner because the gas line failed again. Grease dripped from the ceiling near the sink onto unopened clinic invoices.

Giulia sat beside the window with transport vouchers spread across her lap. One page carried a municipal delivery stamp beside the visitation assignment code.

“You went back there,” Luca said while stirring the beans.

“They assigned visitation.”

“You signing up?”

“They already signed me,” Giulia replied while folding the paper against her knee.

Outside, teens shot off fireworks from the parking lot. One rocket burst against the apartment wall below their window.

Luca carried two plates toward the table. “You don’t even talk about Sofia.”

Giulia picked at the paper bracelet hidden inside her coat pocket. “I carried her thirty-two weeks.”

“You buried an empty casket.”

“The clinic burned the body during contamination shutdown.”

Luca scraped burnt food from the pan edge using his fingernail. “Then why keep that freezer full.”

Giulia looked toward the kitchen where the freezer drawer stood slightly open beneath the dim appliance bulb, cold vapor spreading across the floor tiles.

She pushed herself upright using both hands against the chair arms. Her left leg buckled once. Luca moved toward her, then stopped when she raised one hand sharply.

Inside the drawer sat the wrapped placenta, untouched.

Beside it lay a second bundle, pink and wet beneath thin hospital mesh.

Tiny fingers opened and closed slowly within the freezer light.

Giulia grabbed the counter hard enough to tip a cup into the sink.

The infant turned its head toward the motor noise. A hospital tag circled one ankle. Transfer complete, the tag read. Municipal property until review.

Giulia stared at the printed words while freezer air rolled across her swollen feet. Down in the street, another ambulance stopped near the building entrance while two workers lifted a carrier from the back and argued over cigarette prices, and somebody farther away yelled that public maternity intake had reopened for overnight processing because the city needed numbers before budget inspection next month, with more units arriving before morning if transit stayed operational.