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

heard what they were about to do to me. Papers shoved in my hands to sign. They wanted me to write my name on the paper and I couldn’t remember how. Harry’s hand on mine to quickly make the letters. My last moment and all I could think was that if the baby got out that would be good and maybe if there was just a little time then I could get to see his face. Just once.

Flat on my back, I was trying to tell the doctor, please, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, but I didn’t have the breath to say it. The half of me behind the blue curtain was being pulled and pushed around the table. Prodded like a tough piece of meat that wouldn’t yield to the knife.

Harry brought him over, and his face—his face, his happiness. Harry thought that now that it was over I must be OK. He said, “You did it!” But I was counting ceiling tiles to keep breathing. I had to keep count and I couldn’t speak because I had no voice. They cut it out when they cut out the baby. Harry kept trying to show him to me, near my head at my left shoulder. I turned to the right. So that I didn’t have to see all the blue. Blue scrubs, blue rubber gloves, blue walls, blue for a baby boy, wrapped in white? Was he? I don’t remember what he looked like. The ceiling tiles were all I could manage. 52.

Later we were in a room smashed into a corner. Harry wedged into a chair holding the baby. Midwives coming in and out, looking, checking, asking questions that only Harry answered. I heard myself talking sometimes, words coming from somewhere, echoes in the back of my throat. I’d stopped rocking by then but if I closed my eyes I still felt the motion. No one noticed; my body was emptied out now and the baby was more important.

Harry was gone before I could say, Don’t leave me. On the ward everyone was in love except for me and that poor girl behind the curtain next to me. Milk and swollen breasts and whispered phone calls to new grandparents—the sounds of happiness everywhere. But I was drowning. The waves had taken me under and no one had seen.

The baby didn’t know that I couldn’t reach him in the little cot by my bed because of the catheter digging in, my mountain stomach and paralyzed legs pinning me to the bed. My arms couldn’t reach to pick him up and then over the side of his cot. I had to try to shift myself closer to him, pushing up on my fists to move over, but there were too many tubes and wires, and the hole in my middle—all my strength had fallen through it. There was also the terror of what I would find under the long rectangular bandages. Some future agony waiting for me.

He had a wild monkey cry, not the sweet hiccup sound of newborn babies. His screeching wail, his angry animal call, conveyed his rage that he had ended up with such a useless mother. I gave him a pacifier to stop the screaming. A midwife scolded me: “That’ll interfere with the feeding, you should know that.” There are lots of things I should have known.

They made me express colostrum by hand. They watched me squeeze the gold out of my breasts into a syringe to feed it to him. Because I hadn’t done enough, hadn’t been through enough. Please, I’m soaking wet, please could I have a different gown? Please can you change the sheets? I can’t move with the catheter, please, please can you help me. In a minute, dear, fill the syringe, Baby needs it.

I tried to sleep but when I closed my eyes there was just the rocking and my own screams, the room swinging like a pendulum. Finally, when the sun came up the midwife put him in my arms. I thought, maybe, it’s a new day, I’ll love him now, I’ll hold him and I’ll love him and yesterday is over and now there is today. But—nothing. He could have been a loaf of bread.

The doorbell’s ringing. “Babe, the midwife’s here.” Harry’s calling from downstairs. He calls me Babe, always has, since New York. I thought it was cute back then with his accent and everything.

That was a long time ago.

“Babe?” I cover up as much as I can so Harry doesn’t see Jabba-belly in its full glory. “Are you alright, darling?” He’s standing in the doorway holding the baby, looking at me, worrying. He’s so good, this man, such a goddam good man. And when I see him being so good I just want to stab him in his worried face. “The midwife’s here, can I help you get dressed?” God, I wish I had a knife.

“No, I’m fine. Where’s Johnny?” I say, trying to roll onto my side.

“He’s with my mother, remember? Let me help you, the midwife’s waiting downstairs.” He puts the baby down in the mini crib next to the bed and reaches for the covers but I stop him.

“Nah, just give me that nightgown from last night.” He picks the nightgown up off the floor, and in the daylight I can see the huge pink stain.

“You can’t wear this, Babe.”

“I don’t give a shit, give it to me.”

“Well, I do. You can’t see the midwife like this, let me help you.”

“Don’t look at me. Just deal with the baby. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

“I want to look at you. Please…” He tries to hug me. I swear to God, if I had the strength, I would tear his balls off. “Get off me. Deal with the baby. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

Harry’s getting angry now in his subtle English way. I don’t think he knew that anger was an actual emotion until he lived in New York. It was one of