When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

a pixie cut ready to get her Oscar for gaining twenty pounds for the role. So brave.

I keep looking in the mirror. My knees are fat. Did you know you can gain weight in your knees? That shit’s just bone. It’s a bad day when you find out your knees are fat. My tits are terrifying, blue veins under transparent, taut, pale skin, veering off in opposite directions. East-Westers. That’s what Harry would call them. My thighs are giant, formless. Don’t even talk to me about my ass right now. I stopped at full frontal today so I don’t kill myself.

Ding. Danielle’s texting.

What’s your problem, you can’t answer the phone?

Me:

I’m fine. We’re OK

Danielle:

How’s the baby? Is the baby OK?

Me:

He’s fine, he’s good

Danielle:

OK then tell me if you like this dress

Look at this. She texted a picture of her in her wedding dress. She’s getting married at the end of the year. Soon she’s going to start sending ideas for bridesmaid dresses. God help me. The thought of stuffing all of this body into some floor-length satin number makes me cringe. The thought of getting on a plane to go there for her wedding; the thought of getting anywhere beyond the end of today—not for nothin’, Dan, but now is really not the time for this. Whatever, let’s see.

Me:

I love it, you look great

Danielle:

What about my chicken nuggets? Are they bad?

Me:

Your what?

Danielle:

You know, the skin by your armpit, you know when you wear strapless? I like how my cleavage looks but I’m worried about the nuggets in the photos

This girl’s brain’s a nugget.

Me:

If you got chicken nuggets, then I’m a whole f’ing bucket of KFC right now. OK? You look beautiful

Danielle:

LMFAO. K, I love you, talk to you soon. Send a picture already?

Me:

K, luv u

But there’s no pictures. Or maybe Harry took some, proud daddy, but I don’t have any. I can’t tell her what happened. I can’t tell her or Stacy or Sharon because they’ll just feel bad and talk about me and worry and call me every day and they’re too far away to do anything and I can’t right now. I can’t—don’t want to—talk about how it was or tell them now, how this feels, what it’s like. If I use my old voice, then no one has to know.

I go back to bed to sit down and there’s another gush of blood and water between my legs. In the hospital they act like this is no big deal, sitting in bed in a pool of my own blood and piss and pieces of uterus and fuck knows what else. The midwives just look at you like, It’s time to pull your socks up, dear, or one of those phrases they say here when the going gets tough. They work hard, I’m not saying they don’t work their asses off, I’m not saying they didn’t save my life, NHS-universal-health-for-all-isn’t-it-amazing-blah-blah-blah. What I’m saying is that I really need Oprah right now and all they got here is that short lady from the Weakest Link.

Goodbye.

The woman in the bed across from me, her baby was screaming too, but she just held it to her breast, whispered to it, smiled a tired smile. Fell asleep content, baby on her chest, tiny hand wrapped around her finger. The circle of life spinning round and fucking round. I couldn’t stand up to close my curtain and hers was open so I had to sit there and look at her with the love dripping off her like honey.

Seven women in the ward and five of them were at the pinnacle of womanhood and then there was me and the girl next to me. I never saw her face, curtain pulled between us, but I heard what was going on. The man threatening her in whispers; her sister asking if she was safe; her crying because he’d kicked her out of bed and made her sit in pain in a chair while he took a nap. I called the midwife over after a few hours and pointed silently to the curtain so she would intervene. They asked him to leave. When he was gone I heard the girl say, “Thank you,” through the curtain. But I think she was saying that to God. If I knew God like that I might have asked him for help too.

Harry had to leave because dads couldn’t stay at night on the ward. That was better for Johnny anyhow, to wake up and have Harry at home. But that meant it was just me and the baby. Harry left and I hadn’t held the baby yet. It was all him till then. No one noticed that I couldn’t touch my baby, that I couldn’t reach him to hold him if he cried.

And I didn’t want to.

My labor was three days long. I bounced on a ball, held on to a bar, sat in a bath, inhaled frankincense, whatever they wanted me to do, all of it over and over for days. Harry did everything he could, which was almost nothing. He’d stroke my hair, tell me that it would all be alright although I knew he didn’t know if that was true and I could feel the anxiety pulse through his hands. It was the first time he’d ever been powerless, vulnerable, physically afraid. The first time he’d felt what women feel all the time. There we were, scared, in the hands of strangers, and the baby wouldn’t come.

Finally, an epidural. The pain stopped. Just for a minute, though, just a minute of relief. Because then it traveled up my spine and collided with some of the other shit they gave me before and then I was fucked-up. Really fucked-up, outside-my-body fucked-up. Thinking I was dying but unable to say any last words, looking for Johnny, hoping that the last thing I told him was that I loved him.

Then the baby’s heart rate dropped. Then the blood. The terror in Harry’s face. Shaking hands, blurred vision, when the me-outside-myself