importance

Importance

The room span back into focus and then out again before I could find any solid ground. I was torn between the reality and the current news of the situation I was in and the painful past. Esmee’s bump was not Oscar. It was a new baby in there. It was twelve weeks into its creation and it was beautiful and that is what I knew I should have felt. I should have been happy about this. I should have congratulated her and smoothed the bump under the fabric of her top  but I couldn’t manage the words or the actions. Oscar had been thrown away with the clinical waste and that was more important that a new life… maybe.

“Try and focus on my voice Mi. I know it is difficult when you head is trying to pull you away but you have had the flashback, you have let it happen and now it is just torching you.” I could feel Esmee shift her grip on my hand and briefly I could snap away from any thoughts of the solid mass amongst the blood or how his body twitched and contorted … I felt the breath squeeze out of my lungs with a yelp allowing the nausea to take its place in the pit of my stomach.

“Push against it, control it, It happened and it was terrible but it’s exactly that a memory. It is not important right now.”

“Well at least this way you won’t have to worry about a baby,” A nameless nurse said gently to me after she caught me sobbing in the hospital bed over the empty shell of my bump. He hadn’t moved in three days from within me. Nothing had been using my bladder as a trampoline and I missed it. I missed all of the little things.

“You are just a baby yourself. This is a blessing in disguise. You may think you wanted it. You may even think that you loved it but in a few months you won’t remember that you even had this inconvenience. It’s not important…”

“HE WAS IMPORTANT!” I Shrieked at Esmee suddenly the whole of me back in the room with her. She was now the focused point for all of my emotions. I loved her and I hated her. I wanted her to leave but wanted her to stay with me forever at exactly the same time. I wanted to scream at her and wanted to hug her. Every emotion short circuited against its exact opposite and they fort with each other. I was so angry. I had always hated anger like I felt it then. I wanted to lash out, like my hands and feet needed to punch and kick and I had to physically hold them back no matter the pain it caused me. Emotion told me to rip Esmee apart, to hurt her. Logic and love knew that she as actually an object of my affections;  she was never someone to hurt.

“I don’t care how fucking old I was! He was my son!” I screamed and stamped my feet to try and release some of the energy in my limbs, to try and gain some control over my rampaging body. It felt like something in me was physically pushing my limbs out towards the walls. I wanted to open my skin just to be distracted.

“It wasn’t his fault that he was born too little and too tiny! He was scared and he was cold and I couldn’t even cuddle him or sing him to sleep! They put him in the trash because they said he wasn’t important but he was! He was just a little baby!”

Esmee got to her feet from my bed and moved awkwardly towards me. Her face was in an expression I hadn’t seen before like she couldn’t quite to decide what feeling she should have been feeling or how she wanted to deal with it. I knew that she was very aware of my current mental state; I could see her eyes judging what I could harm myself with. She wondered whether she could reach me before I ploughed into a wall but she also fought with it, like somehow she wondered whether stopping me would have really been in my best interest, or if the rolls where reversed she would have been able to survive if someone stopped her.

“He was important, it’s important. I used the wrong words because I make mistakes. I really am sorry. I wish I could have a better word or said nothing at all, but I can’t. I fucked up, a lot.” The words sounded strange as Esmee spoke them like she had to monitor them and even then she had grimaced after she used them. They still didn’t sound right inside of her head and that was for one simple reason - what words could have sounded right? How could you really ever console a mother that had watched her child die?

I grunted without words and turned away from her as I started to pace across the floor of my room at the same time as one of my hands pulled at my hair and the other tried to get my clipped nails to do some damage to the skin on my arms.

“Come walk with me,” Esmee prompted as I passed up and down the room harder while whimpering. I shook my head pushing my nails into the scare on my face until I could actually start to feel wetness gathering underneath them. Walking wasn’t helping, it wasn’t going to help it didn’t hurt or distract me. It was painful enough. I could still feel him.

“The come and run with me instead.”