Tears fall silently from my eyes, as I roll over onto my side and press my face into the pillow.
Why wasn’t I the one that died?
Why did it have to be an innocent child?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Over the coming days, I’m given a wealth of information about my own health, my baby’s, and why she didn’t survive.
Of course, it was the drugs. They tell me this, like it was actually possible it could have been something else.
A woman comes to visit me to talk about my ‘options’. She is trying to be reassuring, by telling me that I’ll still be able to have more children in time. But I don’t want to have children. I don’t deserve to have children.
I’m told that I’m lucky I didn’t catch any other sort of disease from my drug use and promiscuity. I wonder if that’s true. Is there anything about my situation that’s ‘lucky’?
I ask if I can have a hysterectomy, but I’m told I can’t make that decision until after I’m eighteen, and even then, they’re unlikely to do it.
It turns out that I spent over six months as one of Reggie’s girls. All that time and I have very little memory of it. When I think back, it’s just a lot of flashes involving faces and acts I’d prefer not to think about.
I’m being transferred to a rehab facility, so I can get the ‘help I need’. Really, I just want to lay down and die, but there’s something in this world that wants me to live – as long as I live miserably.
Finally, I am officially in the system and so is my baby. She was developed enough that I had to name her. I also have to bury her.
I’ve called her Phoenix, in the hopes that one day she will be born again to another mother, who is far more capable of nurturing her than I ever was or could be.
I need to have hope in that. Otherwise, what was the point in all this?
The clothes I came in wearing, never came back to me. I have a feeling that they were so disgusting they took them somewhere and burned them.
Standing in the small hospital bathroom, I dress in some clothes I’ve been given and ready myself to leave. The girl I see in the mirror, now holds very little resemblance to the girl I remember. This one is pale, with large sunken eyes and colourless lips. Her hair is long and matted, and her bones can be seen clearly through her skin. This isn’t me.
When I step out of the bathroom, there is a woman out there waiting for me. She carries a clipboard and a small travel bag and introduces herself as Justine.
“I’ll be taking you to your new home today,” she tells me, smiling broadly. I suspect she is trying to gain my trust, but I’m all out of that. I should have stopped trusting the moment my parents kicked me out of home. But I was stupid. I trusted, and I trusted like I actually believed I might belong somewhere. That someone might actually want me. But it was all a bunch of sordid lies. I was naive - now look where it’s got me.
I’m nothing. I’m no one.
I nod my head curtly, and follow along behind her as she leads the way out of the hospital. I notice a sad look some of the nurses give me as I leave the ward, they feel sorry for me. I really don’t think they should.
Justine tries to make conversation with me during the hour it takes us to drive to the facility. But I don’t give her much in response. I seem to be all out of words. There’s simply nothing more to say.
“We’re here,” she says, as we pull up in front of a large white brick building, surrounded by neatly kept gardens.
I get out of the car and look over what Justine called my new home. It isn’t much of a home at all - it just looks like another hospital. As we walk through the front doors, it’s more of the same. Everything is white and sterile, and it seems like misery radiates off the walls. I don’t want to be here.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“How do you feel after laying your child to rest?” my therapist asks me, the day after Phoenix’s funeral.