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Can't. Can't breathe. Can't think. Can't... feel. Can't watch one more tear slide down his cheek. Can't watch his Adam's apple slide up his throat in one more painful swallow. Can't feel his hands tremble when they touch me. Can't. Please, no more...
I stared at the white ceiling tiles over the hospital bed, square on square, tuning out the insistent voices telling me how to experience grief, giving me references, and the cards of therapists, and grief counselors. Nodding and agreeing to whatever they say. The only good thing is that they don't expect me to smile when I agree. Yes, I'll do this. Yes, I'll watch for that. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, if only they would shut up and let me be!
He helped me dress in my old maternity clothing, ugly jeans with the stretchy panel to go over my achingly empty, flabby belly. One of my old pre-pregnancy bras binding my breasts tight, so the milk will dry up, my breasts aching and leaking and so incredibly hard and tight. The lightest touch making me moan in pain and loss.
Tom picked up the baby bag that we'd brought with us to hospital with such high hopes and expectations. Nappies, and cunning little onesies, and the beautiful, soft, tiny jumper his mum had knit for her granddaughter.
Tom's four days scruff scratched against my cheek as he spoke lowly me, his voice catching and rough.
"I'll go bring the car around, love. See you in a tick." He pressed a tender kiss on my cheek. I nodded and watched him walk out the door into the bustling hospital corridor.
Now. Go now. Before anyone can stop me. I pushed myself off the side of the high bed and stood, wobbling for just a second, but the momentary weakness passed. I could actually feel everything inside, everything that was left, shift and settle heavily into the bottom of my belly. I ached between my legs, but that wouldn't last long. Nothing would last long...
I peeked out the doorway and waited a moment as a nurse escorted a young laboring woman in a shuffling perambulation, waiting for them to pass. Maybe her baby will live...
Now. I nipped out quietly, and moved purposefully down the hall to the stairwell, opting for the stairs rather than the lift. Not chancing running into To- , to anyone...during my escape. I went up rather than down, carefully clinging to the handrail, feeling the stretch and burn of abused muscles in my thighs and hips, torn, abraded flesh between my legs...
I briefly caught sight of my reflection in the glass window of a stairwell door two floors up. Tom had carefully brushed my hair and tied it in a simple tail in an attempt to make me presentable for going home. But no amount of fussing and smoothing would make the monster in the glass presentable.
I saw all the little blood vessels in my left eye had burst. Burst with my effort to push his child out of my body, burst while my body failed his child, killed her, strangled her before she ever took breath. A monster I look, and a monster I am.
I will soon forget, be unable to recall opening my eyes after the last devastating push to rid my body of my pain, and seeing the blue, dead thing between my legs as they cut her free and rescued her from her tether to her murderer.
In the end I was practically hauling myself hand over hand up the last few stairs to nearly fall through the door to the roof, to the sky. To freedom. I gasped the clear air into my lungs, my head spinning with fresh air, the first free breath I had in the last 52 hours and sixteen minutes. I fell onto my knees partly out of a desperate inability to walk one more step under this crushing burden, partly out of a need to feel the gravel rooftop cutting into my knees and the palms of my hands.
I failed, failed in the one task that I was made to do, and worse, beyond worse, I destroyed his longed for child in the process.
With all my remaining strength I dragged myself across the rooftop, the tiny pebbles cutting into my skin, driving tiny knives of deserved pain into me. Dragged myself to the waist high wall around the rooftop and pulled myself to stand.
I looked out over the bare city, clutching the top of the wall, the sun shining in a winter pale sky, trying to warm the skin of my face and the skin of my bare arms, but utterly counteracted by the icy wind cutting across me, chilling both my body and my soul.
High quiet clouds scudding across the pale blue. The same pale blue as his daughter's pale blue skin when they brought her to me, after failing to reverse the damage I had done to her.
I could not bring myself to take her in my arms when she was offered to me, cleaned and blanketed. I dared only the barest touch of a fingertip down her cool cheek and across her father's mouth.
When he saw that I was incapable of cradling the little mite, he took her into his arms for me. He held her so tenderly and securely to his chest, brushing his lips across her forehead and whispering into her skin, tears streaming down his cheeks.
I have never seen so much pain and sorrow in a person's face. Never imagined it was possible in his face. And yet, I was the one to put it there on my beloved's face. I have wounded his heart, torn him apart.
I looked down, down at the pavement so very far away, vaguely wondering how long it would hurt. I shook my head. It will stop hurting as soon as I am done, as soon as I take that last irrevocable step into freefall. I peered down at the pavement to mark my spot.
Watching the tiny, oblivious people scurrying on their way, dismay overcame me as I realized how many people were crossing the pavement below me. I can't... they are already victims of their own lives and sorrows. How, how can I subject them to my splattering, shattering body? I've already killed one innocent, I can't kill more innocents, can I? And Tom...
A particularly strong gust of wind caught me unawares in a full frontal blast, stopping my breath for a moment. I swayed on my feet, unable to find air and realized distantly that there was a peculiar ringing in my ears and my vision was narrowing to a tunnel.
With unrecognized strength I gripped the top of the wall and leaned into it, carefully and unavoidably sliding down the inside of the barrier to sprawl against it as everything turned black.
Gradually I became aware of the steady throb of a familiar heartbeat under my ear, familiar warm arms securely wrapped around me, a familiar warm gust of breath over my hair. Struggling to open my eyes, I was engulfed in an ocean blue gaze. He looked down at me with kind, tear stricken, sad eyes.
"You may not leave me, my love. Do you understand? Obey me in this." He grasped my chin and tilted my head to look demandingly, unforgivingly in my eyes. I stared back at him and saw all my own sorrows in his eyes, and my own shame too.
I could not leave him to fight these things alone. I nodded and he kissed my forehead, dragging in a ragged sob. No. I can't leave him.
He crouched over me, gathering me into his arms and heart, and stood, wordlessly carrying me forever from that place. Saying nothing at all, he saved me from myself and brought me to his loving future.