Damn. I tried not getting attached to this movie but resistance was futile; it had everything I was looking for in a good western so I can't complain! As such, my muse immediately jumped on this idea and, well, that's how this story came about. Hope you all enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I own nothing =/

Joshua Faraday is born at 6:17 on a muddy Wednesday evening. He's pronounced dead at 6:18.

His mother is breathless and weeping, damp hair clinging to her face as she waits desperately to hear him cry. A whimper, a whine, anything. The room remains silent and the baby doesn't cry.

She sobs in defeat and collapses on the bed. He's her fifth child and none of his brothers or sisters had survived past infancy. Two of the children died less than a month after they were born and the other two were stillborn. It looks like he's going to be the third.

The pregnancy had been trouble from the beginning, leaving her weak and bedridden with nausea and illness. It didn't help that she was pregnant in the middle of the summer in Nevada. The heat combined with carrying a child made her feel like she was running a low grade fever every second of the day and she was restless and irritable. The baby was also sitting higher than usual, tucked under her ribs and making her breathing shallow and a bit labored. All together, this pregnancy was just miserable.

She didn't care though, she loved and cared for the baby in her belly just like she had all the others. She knows it's a boy by the second month; she can just tell. She contemplates names and meanings and futures as he grows bigger day by day. She sings to him, talks to him, rocks slow and steady in the evening while rubbing her hand in slow circles across her swollen belly.

The dark, ugly thought creeps into her mind that this one won't make it either, that the baby will be doomed for a short, miserable life like all his siblings before. She knows that life is cruel and harsh; it's not uncommon for a woman to have several children but have none of them survive past childhood. She keeps hoping that maybe this one will be different.

She does everything she's supposed to to keep the baby healthy. She stays hydrated and consumes plenty of calcium and vitamins. She sleeps as peacefully as she can (which is difficult with a baby tucked under her ribs) and doesn't overexert herself. She does all of this with the hope that maybe, just maybe, he'll be strong enough to survive.

Her hopes are shattered the day before when she feels him stop kicking. She frowns and touches her stomach, running her hand across her belly and the baby tucked inside. She talks to him and moves around and tries to feel any kind of movement but instead she feels nothing.

She forces herself not to panic, going on about her chores and housework just as she had every day. She knows how inconsistent movement can be and tries to convince herself that nothing is wrong. Her second child, Michael, had hardly moved the entire time she was pregnant with him, kicking once or twice every couple days just to remind her he was there. Maybe this one is imitating the brother he never met and was content to give his mama a stress ulcer before he was ever born.

By that evening, though, the baby still hasn't moved and she's beginning to worry. She taps her fingers on her stomach lightly, hoping the stimulation will produce some kind of reaction. She tries speaking and singing again, reciting prayers and bible verses. She speaks louder, calls him by name, her voice breaking as she does. The baby still doesn't move and she cries herself to sleep that night.

She starts bleeding the next morning, bright red and heavy, and she runs to the neighbor's house in a panic. She can't make it into town on her own and she doesn't know where else to go. Her husband is gone, working up north in a mine that's a three day journey from their little town and he's not due to come back until the next month. She's alone and she's pregnant and bleeding and scared.

Her neighbor, a woman named Mary, catches her at the door and ushers her in the house, shooing her own children outside. The sky is dark grey and turbulent, the threat of rain imminent, but she urges her children to go play somewhere else for a few hours. This is an emergency, one that could end very badly, and they don't need to see this.

The labor is brutal and relentless, lasting for seven solid hours. With her husband's help, Mary clears off one of the children's beds and gently lowers her neighbor onto it, trying to make her as comfortable as she can. Mary holds her hand and dabs sweat of her face while she screams and cries and curses in ways her own mother would have disowned her for. The bleeding slows but the baby doesn't come and she cries harder.

At some point Mary's husband ducks out and fetches the town doctor, realizing the situation is too desperate for them to handle it on their own. It takes close to an hour for him to arrive but he can tell the moment he walks in that this is a dire situation. He rolls up his sleeves, mutters a prayer, and sets to work.

The sky has broken open outside, heavy bands of rain dousing the town and turning the streets into muddy trenches. The mother pushes and strains, cries and screams, but the baby is stubborn and refuses to budge.

The doctor urges her to push one more time and reaches forward, catching hold of something thin and pale. In that moment, between one crack of thunder and the next, the baby is born and the doctor sits back on the stool with him in his hands.

The child is blue and still, the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat like a noose. The doctor cuts it and pulls it away, flipping the limp infant over in his palm and striking his back firmly in an effort to get him to breathe. He flips him back over and sweeps blood and fluid out of his mouth, tapping his index finger against the center of the infant's chest in another vain attempt to encourage spontaneous respiration.

Nothing happens, no breathing, no crying. Nothing. The child is dead.

He shakes his head in defeat and sighs, wrapping the infant in a clean sheet and handing him to the mother so she can say her goodbyes. As devastating as it is, there's nothing else to be done. He'll inform the undertaker and the priest in the morning if the town hasn't washed away by them.

The mother takes the limp, quiet baby into her arms and sobs. It's a desperate, broken noise, more animal than human, and it tears through the room like a knife. She strokes the baby's cold, bluish skin, wiping blood away from his face with her fingers. He's so small, so fragile, and she's lost him like all the others.

"Joshua," she weeps, christening him with a good biblical name just like she had all her other children. The name means 'savior' or 'salvation'; it's bitterly ironic that he won't live up to it's connotation. She presses him to her chest, rocking back and forth slowly, and patting his back with one hand.

She's wrecked and broken, facing the loss of yet another child, and it tears at something deep within her. "You stay with me, you hear?" she mutters as she continues to cradle the limp infant in her arms. "You stay with your mama. You come back to me..."

Mary watches her sadly, looking to the doctor and her husband speaking quietly in the corner of the room. They both look drained and despondent, helpless to fix the situation at hand. Mary has lost a few of her own babies over the years and she knows all too well how overwhelming the devastation can be. The difference is that some of her children lived; she can't even imagine the pain of losing all of them...

There's a tiny sound just then, somewhere between a cough and gag, and Mary's head snaps up at the noise. The bundle of sheets squirms and shifts just a bit under the mother's hand, barely noticeable but there. She freezes too, her hand sprawled across his small, shuddering back.

"Come back to me, baby," she begs, patting his back gently and rocking him again. "Please…"

There's another watery cough, a shuddering intake of breath, and then the baby begins to scream.

His mother lets out a laughing sob and buries her face against the infant in her arms, rocking both of them on the bed. The wailing is loud and piercing but she's too relieved and overwhelmed to care.

"That's it, baby," she sobs, stroking her son's cheek with the tip of her finger. His skin is already gaining some color, the dull blueness fading to a dusky pink. "Cry, cry, cry…"

The doctor rushes back over and scoops the still screaming child (so much for unresponsive lungs) into his arms. He examines him carefully, eventually coming to the conclusion that he's perfectly healthy if a little hypothermic. He hands the child back to his mother who swaddles him up and presses him back to her chest.

The doctor watches them in stunned silence. He has no explanation for it, how a child who was dead at birth could suddenly be revived in his mother's arms, but he's a Godly man and he knows better than to question the Lord's ways. He settles with a miracle and takes note of the time again.

Joshua Faraday is pronounced dead at 6:18. He comes back to life at 6:20.

Thanks for reading guys! :D