(Esmee) for the sake of a foetus

For the sake of a foetus

Esmee

 

The instinct was to lie or to run and hide like I was a little girl and I had just been caught playing with the china dolls in my mums cabinet. It was similar in some ways. Size six jeans was a forbidden place but there was just something so alluring about that particular size it seemed so right and it was the same with dolls. I always had plenty of my own toys to play with which included many dolls but there was something so alluring and irresistible about the way the china of their faces looked and how it felt under my fingertips I could not stop myself reaching out to touch them. The one thing that was different of course was the dolls were not going to kill me Size six would eventually destroy my soul even if it didn’t take my physically body with it.

“Good morning Emmet,” I smiled at him trying to stare down the tears that shone from his pain filled face. If I was happy enough I could change what he had heard. I could save him all the pain that would go with my losing the weight and it wasn’t as if I planned to become really sick again. I just wanted to be a little bit thinner, I would still eat. I would still watch my children grow up and I would dance at their weddings. So why couldn’t I stop the little voice that niggled in the back of my head that said “yeah maybe from heaven.”

Emmet stared though me, his eyes shooting at the lies that crawled up my throat to try and placate him, his jaw clenched shut and his teeth grinding together like he was trying to stare the monsters out of me and that was if they were anyway a size twelve was actually verging on big for my height I just wanted to be healthier, a little bit thinner, it wasn’t the end of the world.

“Well these don’t fit me anymore.” I commented trying to make my voice happy rather than panicked like I felt inside and for a second he smiled as he took the size 12 jeans into his hands and examined the waste and the pulled stitching that went around the button. I was his pregnant wife. I was carrying another member of the big family that he had always wanted and I had reached the mile stone every one waited for, 12 weeks of baby inside me, so much safer now to the dangers that I could have presented to her.

“She’s growing,” Emmet smiled swallowing the tears and reaching out so he could cup his hand over my stomach, “but you’re shrinking.” He sighed pulling his hand away like suddenly the tiny little baby that he loved so much suddenly hurt him more than he could bear. “She’s killing you isn’t she. She probably isn’t even two inches long yet and has only just become formed fully and she is killing you. I can see it inside you. I look at you every day and you become more and more distant and she becomes bigger and bigger and you stand back and become distant, hiding behind her bump and silently hoping she will just go away, and I have let it happen because I love her almost as much as I love you but if I have to choose, if I have to save one of you, it is you and it will always be you,”   he moaned reaching forward so he could run his fingers through my hair only leaving me enough time so I could take a step back and avoid it. My actions burnt him but his words had already scolded me. I knew what his next suggestion was going to be and suddenly my loving husband had become a predator to the precious bundle hidden inside my womb.

“What are you saying?” I asked my tears actually beating his as they rolled down over my cheeks.

“I’m saying I don’t to lose my wife for the sake of a tiny foetus and I won’t if there is something I can do to stop it. I think you should have an abortion Esmee. I just want you back.”