Conditions of love (Esmee)

Conditions of love

I felt so mental drained time I got back to my car I almost gave up on the idea of driving and hoped on the bus that waited patiently outside the Hospital with the promise of taking me near enough to my front door without me having to do anything as strenuous as having to turn a weal or revers out of small places However, I needed the car tomorrow and I would have to take it home at some point anyway it may as well have been then.  I just had to stop being a baby and get on with it.

I swore, the language getting too bad to repeat as I stalled the car twice trying to reverse out of the ridiculously tight space that I had somehow magically managed to squeeze into but had no hope in hell of getting out off.

“I just want to fucking well go home!” I yelled whacking the steering weal hard with my hands then swearing again because it hurt. It took five attempts but finally I made it out of the tight gap and made my way home arguing with any red light that dared to hold me up.

I didn’t actually know why I was desperate to be back home. The familiarity of the place would bring me some comfort but mostly maybe it was just a place I could cry without looking like a fool. Pregnancy along with other things had made me a little too fond of crying and in fact it had the nasty habit of turning me into a blubbering heap at the drop of a hat. There was only one barrier to my overactive tear ducts when I was at home and that was Emmet. He obviously made no fuss about my tears but any fool could see they hurt him more than they were hurting me. Something about my tears just didn’t sit right with him, for whatever reason they always caused him pain. So for his sake I would try to hide any crying that was to be done from his view no matter how much it felt like I may have chocked in the meantime.

It only took me about ten minutes to get home – probably less than that – but it felt like hours. Finally I made it through but just as I was about to pull down the Handel and let myself in, so I could sink into the sofa and cuddle the cushions until Emmet go the idea he would made a better replacement, the door flew open anyway.

“Where the hell were you?” Emmet bellowed at me from the top of his lungs making the bundle of blankets that he held in his right arm shriek and grow tiny little arms and legs the stretched out in ridged panic. “I mean what is the point of your owning a phone if you never answer it?” He shouted again as he jiggled the arms, legs and blankets from side to side which only made them cry more.

“You’re yelling at me and you have a new-born baby in your bloody arms! I think you may owe me an explanation first before you rant at me!” I shouted back angrily even though it wasn’t anger that I really felt. It was the lump in my throat that was bothering me the most. The tears that I now couldn’t really justify letting lose to the world but they had to come out some one way or another and Anger was close to sadness in the strangest of ways. Anger I could justify, any woman could justify anger when faced with their husband carrying a strange baby they didn’t know about, but it wasn’t really what I felt.

“I tried to call you Esmee! A disgruntled social worker by the name of Sarah literally turned up on the door step with her and begged me take her as an emergency for 48 hours. What the hell could I say?”

“The word no was invented for this exact situation dick head! Or how about come back once I have gotten hold of my pregnant wife who I just asked to have an abortion a few hours ago!” I shouted at Emmet even louder than he had at me. I felt bad for doing so though. I would have done the same thing without thinking. The thing is Emmet wasn’t really anger either. By the strain on his face and the effort he used to shout I could tell that he really felt terrible. All the shouting was just serving to make us feel worse. Someone had to step up before we hurt the people we were trying to protect.

“Why are we even yelling at each other Emmet?” I asked

“I don’t know.” Emmet shouted back before he lowered his voice so it was just eligible over the baby wales. “I’m sorry,” he added, “about everything, but she is just a little baby. I can’t say no to a week old baby who has no one. Not when those eyes looked at me, I could never say no to those eyes.”

“I was in the hospital. I couldn’t answer my phone. I’m sorry too,” I moaned before realising I had said prissily the wrong thing to calm the situation any further and would make me closer to crying all over him even though he had a baby that would give me a run for my money on the battle for his attention.

“The hospital!” Emmet shouted, almost dropping the baby that was beginning to calm down in the safety of his right arm before he rushed over to my side and started examining me with his eyes looking for injury or illness before eventually his eyes landed on my slightly swollen tummy and he went white.

“What happened Esmee? Are you OK? What did the doctors say? You should have called me I could have been with you. Why did they discharge you without calling me to get you? I am so sorry Esmee I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I can be such an idiot.”

The flood gates opened before I could stop them. It had been easier when he was being hostile with me to bay them back behind walls. If he was yelling at me I could yell back at him but now he was my Emmet and he was soft and gentle and as he squeezed my hand it felt like he had reached right in and squeezed at my heart.

I buried my face into his shoulder before he could see the tears but they were still impossible to miss as my whole upper body shook and I could feel the tears drying into the fabric of his t-shirt. As I expected they made me feel better almost instantly every pent up feeling washing out of me but it came at a coast. The tears that freed me burned Emmet.

“Esmee talk to me, what’s happened? What went on at the hospital? Are you sick? Are you hurt?” Emmet asked his voice desperate now as he tried to twist his torso so he could look at me properly “Is it our baby Esmee?”  

The words made me cry more and I gripped on to his free arm with all of my might. I wasn’t sure what I felt when he mentioned her now. I had always assumed that pure elation was the only thing he had ever even considered when he thought of our baby but even though he apologized and I had believed him and forgiven him I still could not understand how it could go from a tiny insignificant foetus in his eyes to “our baby” in the space of hours. I wanted to scream.

“Esmee…”

“Would you care?” I sobbed unable to work out weather I desperately wanted to be as close to him as possible or weather I desperately wanted to run away again. “If I said she was dead. That I had killed another one of our children? Would you cry or get upset or think you had dodged a bullet? I can’t decide anymore.”

The choice was made for me as Emmet pushed me away from him like I had sent an electric current through his system. We had already spent to long doing that today, each one of us getting hurt as our skin was ripped from each other’s so harshly. We didn’t belong apart we both felt strange without each other

“Of course I care. What the hell kind of a question is that? We are talking about my child hear.”

“I thought she was a foetus- To you any way. I thought you wanted her scraped out of me. She can’t be your baby one moment and the next minute she is something you just want to be rid of. So which is it?” I crocked my tears more controlled now though in a way twice as sad. It had been hormonal explosion that had made me sob like a baby at first but, now it was just a genuine sadness; controllable yet devastating.

“I said I was sorry Esmee.”

“Well that isn’t enough, maybe it is going to take some more explaining then a basic apology. I love you. I love you more than can be explained by words or pictures or even touch and feel. It’s eternal and it’s magic and that will never change but right now I don’t understand you and I can’t accept you. This is meant to be amazing! We are meant to be sharing this miracle together and instead it feels like I should be protecting her from you. I mean what is this, you don’t want our baby but you want someone else’s?” I asked gesturing to the baby that was not more contented it Emmet’s arms. “Or is it me? You were fine until you realized I had outgrown a size 12. Are you scared I am going to get too fat for you to love?