“It’s alright. We’re almost there.”
Pain radiates through my middle again, and I start crying. “Make it stop!” I wail.
“Paige, we need you to tell us what drugs you’ve been using.”
“I don’t… I don’t… argh!” I yell again. “What’s happening to me?!”
“You seem to be in premature labour.”
I let out a howling cry as my abdomen screams again.
“It’s alright Paige. We’re almost there.”
***
When we arrive at the hospital, I’m wheeled straight through, as the EMT’s tell the doctors and nurses everything they know about me. I get asked again what drugs I’ve been taking, and I’m really not sure. But I don’t think I’ve had any for a day or two. Not since I found Maxine.
As we burst through a set of doors, my pains are getting closer together, and my back feels like it’s locked into one big painful knot. These feelings can’t be normal. I feel like I’m dying.
Through my painful moans, I’m poked and prodded. Checked and questioned. Although, I don’t have any answers. I’ve been living in a drugged out state for so long now. I don’t know anything…
A doctor comes to stand beside me. “Paige, it seems as though something is wrong with your baby. It’s coming far too early. Is there someone we can call who can come and be with you? The father? A friend or family member perhaps?”
“I don’t…no. I have no one.” I think back, trying to recall who the father might be. Numerous grunting male faces flash through my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut tight. Blocking them out. I feel sick.
“Ok,” is all she says in response.
Another pain rips through me, and I clutch at the cool metal edging on the bed as I scream out. The sound more akin to the soundtrack of a horror movie.
“It’s coming,” another woman says as she looks between my legs.
“No!” I grunt through the pain. “No. Please. No.”
“I’m sorry. We can’t stop it.”
I drop my head back, and grit my teeth, unable to stop the primal moans and grunts from escaping my throat. But my eyes are closed as I wish for this all to stop. It’s too much.
I have no idea what day it is. I have no idea what month it is. For the first time since I was taken to Reggie’s I’m completely lucid, and I’ve awoken to a nightmare.
The reality of what’s happening hits me like a ton of stone that lands firmly on my chest. How could I not know I was pregnant? I’m ashamed. Ashamed that I was so busy getting high, that I didn’t even notice my body changing.
“Argh!” I growl through my clenched jaw, as my body forces me to bear down. Tears burn a hot trail of despair as they stream out of my eyes. I feel it, I feel everything.
“No!” I scream as I feel an exiting from my body. “No!”
When it’s over, there’s nothing.
No crying, no gurgling, nothing.
“Show me,” I whisper.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse whispers, as she hands me my child, wrapped up in a blanket that dwarves its body. “She didn’t make it.”
“Oh,” I breathe as I look over my daughter’s tiny blue face and raise a shaking hand to gently stroke her nose, so perfectly formed.
I carefully unwrap her and touch every part of her body. Her fingers, her toes. Everything is perfect, and small, and… still.
“What have I done?!” I gasp, my vision blurs as torrents of tears flow from my eyes. I hold my little girl to me, and I howl. The noises coming from me are the primordial wallows of a woman who just lost the final piece of her soul.
No one in the room says a thing as they move about, quietly doing their jobs. The nurse beside me wipes at her eyes as she pushes back my hair, stroking me like a mother would her child.
It makes me ache even more.
Chapter Thirty-Three
While I sleep it’s easy to forget where I am and everything that has happened, but the moment I wake and hear the constant noise of the hospital ward, I remember.
I’m a murderer.