The chair

Mi

I wanted to scream out loud. Normally I tried to be quite even when I was in the most pain but I was failing and even that wasn’t enough. My lungs swelled against my rib cage with the agony it couldn’t contain and even though I sobbed loudly it wasn’t enough to show the agony I was really feeling. This pain made the agony of an Ibuprofen overdose seem like a holiday. Liz’s words where words were eroding me from the inside out and I wanted to scream in protest to the burning.

The bedroom door was knocked on twice before it was opened and Esmee and Emmet walked in one heading to the left and the other to the right so they could both have a go at containing me or murdering me, whatever was closer to their hearts right then. I wouldn’t have blamed them for the choice to kill. I had not seen the damage I could have been casing to the little ones until it was too late but by then the damage was done and I had infuriated the grandparents and worse, the mother and farther.

The instinct was to apologize act like the five letter word made it all go away and the situation would be changed but the word in reality made no difference, did not change the effect of the actions or excuse what had been done and I could not speak anyway as I knew any attempt to make myself vocal would just result in the screaming. 

“No one’s angry with you darling,” Esmee said first as she came at me from towards the right, “and there’s no need to be so upset, my mum spoke out of turn and we have told her of it. You didn’t hurt Mia, she’s completely fine and you were doing so well.”

 Emmet got to me on the left as I looked at Esmee and touched my shoulder gently. I moved away jerking backwards out of his grip and tripping over my own feet so I landed in pile of arms and legs on the ground, pain pulling up one of my wrists as the carpet burnt the flesh. That was all that was needed to make it too much to bear and even though it barely hurt at all compared to some tumbles I took the screaming chocked up from my locked lungs and got released into the world in a howl that I tried to muffle with one of my fists at the same time as frantic tears dampened my cheeks and made my eyes sting. My insides felt like they were going to explode my lungs burst open and my pulsing heart break in half, flooding me with my own blood and allowing me to drown.

Both Esmee and Emmet were beside me in seconds now Hands embracing me from all directions, two locked around the side of me head like a vice the others examining limbs. “Where are you hurt honey wears the pain?” Esmee asked tentatively bending my joints to try and provoke a reaction. They would never find the pain that way. They could look for days, even crawl under the skin and examine the organs and there would be no sign. Physically I was normal almost complete. When I hadn’t been eating there had been damage but even little bits of that were reversing now. There was no pain so why did I want to scream, why would the tears not go away.

“I’m not hurt, it didn’t hurt me,” I squeaked, trying to scramble away from the holds of hands. For a start they shouldn’t have been trying to help me it didn’t happen in the normal laws of the universe. Someone didn’t hurt two peoples young and get away with it, they most certainly were not kind and gentle towards them. They did not care if the attacker got hurt, so where was their violence?

“So there’s no back or neck pain? All limbs are intact and in fully working order and you didn’t hit your head?” Emmet tried to confirm “So why did you scream? It’s OK to be injured; it’s not OK to be injured and to hide it.”

“I’m not injured, I’m hurting!” I yelled struggling free of the hands that held my head still and rolling up into the smallest ball I could manage. It was bigger than it used to be. The extra weight that was now packed onto my bones stopped such convenient rolling up. I was more than conscious to the space I was taking up in the world, in the room, in this precious family’s life.

“That’s Ok we can deal with that too, you just tell us what to do. You obviously don’t want us to touch you right now.” That wasn’t true; being held in their arms had always made me feel better and worse all at the same time. It caused the most glorious pain to shoot around my body. Before them it felt like I had always been alone. Even When Arabella was alive I tried to hide my pain for her, the scars and the tears belonged to me alone and then they were here. Emmet sat gently on the edge of my bed six month before and almost instantly I mind opened to him. He had understood me and looked after me more in those few seconds then I had ever known before. He had held me up and supported me there even when I was on my knees screaming, even when I had slipped away,

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. What else was there to say? How I could I tell him that I needed him when there was nothing that I could ever do to deserve him. I couldn’t even choke down a bowl of soup for him or make what should have been one of the best days of my life, the first and day of something shiny and brilliant go well. All they wanted was my recovery. For me to walk in the world without all the shit that came with me and I couldn’t even start to give it to them.

“I try; I really try all of the time, to stand up to do the right thing, to be better. To be good for you, to be something that you can be proud of, to be something worth keeping and I always fail and I am so sorry. You must really hate me by now.”

“Well that’s not true, and we can’t always stand up all of the time,” Emmet confirmed getting to his knees, putting both his arms in under my ball and hosting me clean into the air before going over and sitting in the rocking chair. My legs draped over his and the side of my face buried into his chest just under his chin. Slowly he made the seat swing backwards and forwards and any thoughts I had of trying to scramble off of his lap went away. The smooth rocking and his arms around mine soothing me from the inside out. I could never deserve Emmet or Esmee but I was not perfect or strong enough to deny them when they tried to help me. My soul cried out for it.

“I’m sixteen not six you know. You haven’t got to do this,” I half moaned to Emmet even though I griped onto the fabric of his shirt so tightly he probably couldn’t have put me down if he wanted to. To let him go would have been the best thing. To be able with conviction to send them booth away so they could enjoy their life without me but even though it was the  kindest thing I could do, they weren’t going to leave without a fight, and I didn’t have the strength that was needed to destroy myself by watching them leave if they didn’t’ really want to. Somehow we had got hopelessly stuck.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, rocking is proven to help. It’s comforting and it calms you down.  Hence why you have a nursing chair in your room Mi. What did you thing we were expecting you to look after Mia?”

“I don’t think it’s the chair Emmet,” I whispered, my voice still thick from the tears that were left over in my throat. The stubborn one that were darker and never got out to see the world. “I think it’s who’s in the chair with me.”