Another fiction snippet. I’m thinking the blue-faced boy is the narrator here.

My brother’s real name is Jasvinder. He is likely the only milky-white 15-year-old in all of Canada named Jasvinder. Apparently, it’s his own fault.

“Back labor,” my mother says, her hand wrapping itself around her hip as though the pressure’s still there.

“Sixteen hours, and no progress,” she gasps.

You don’t want to hear the rest of her story. It’s downright disgusting in parts. Suffice to say, after 16 hours, an anesthesiologist arrived and injected Mom’s spine with narcotics, a process known to us scientific types as an epidural.

The anesthesiologist’s name was Jasvinder.