But I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. What we felt was need for compassion. We looked for support and companionship, and refusing to see what our connection actually was would be lethal.
I pulled away but held his hand tightly in mine as I swiped at my tears with my other hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be silly.” He sighed and regarded me. “I need to say this Kloe, or I’ll regret it.”
I nodded, bracing myself for what was coming.
“Whatever has happened between you and the father, it doesn’t mean you can’t do this on your own. Well, I’ll be there every step of the way. You will make the most fantastic mother. And whatever happened in your past, it won’t inflict the love you will have for your own child.”
“I know that, Ben. This isn’t because of my past, or that I don’t think I’ll cope on my own. There’s so much that you don’t know, so much even I don’t know. I can’t make sense of anything. It’s all so damn hard. But this also isn’t my baby’s fault. So much has happened and I know that bringing a child into the middle of this is so very wrong.”
“You’re right, it isn’t the child’s fault. But you’re making it his fault. You’re blaming it for whatever is going on. It’s innocent in all this, Klo.”
“And that’s why I have to do this. Innocence is so fragile, so breakable. And I’d rather die than break something so precious.”
“But having a termination isn’t ‘breaking it’?”
It was all such a mess. And although Ben was being harsh with me, I knew he was only trying to make it all better. But no one could ever make this better. It was all so fucked up that I wasn’t sure I’d come out of it in one piece, and that was what scared me. It terrified me. If I broke, or Anderson kept his promise of using me for his revenge, then who would my child have? How would it survive? I had no one and Anderson was too broken himself to care for a child. Yet something in the back of my mind told me he would care for it, he would love it. Just as much as I would.
A child was our redemption. A chance for us to begin what others had ended for us. A purpose for all this love we had inside us.
Knowing he was getting nowhere, Ben shook his head. “End of subject.” Jumping up and making me start, he grabbed my hand. “We need a dance. It’s been years.”
And so that was what we did. We forgot everything. We forgot how shit life was.
And we danced.
Going back to work was like I’d never been away. The Three Ferns, the convalescence home I had worked in for the last four years was my diversion. The patients were some of the hardest I had ever worked with – other than Anderson.
Most ranged from severe depression after having an accident, to self-harmers that couldn’t find any other way to deaden the pain that lived inside them. For obvious reasons I connected with these cases more than others. Because I understood what a simple slice of the skin could do for the soul.
There’d been a time when I had mutilated myself, self -hatred conquering me until I could release some of that pent up revulsion that forever lived inside me.
When Robbie and Anderson had cut me during sex, I had been surprised by the differing feelings that had engulfed me. One simple slice hadn’t released the tension; it had built it. A single stroke of the blade across my skin had consumed me in sensations that made my mind shiver in ecstasy. Pain + arousal = fucking bliss!
Self-harming was a completely different distribution of pain. I was one of the lucky ones, if one could say lucky. I hadn’t cut for a long time. Now I only used food to comfort the nightmares that plagued me. I’d cared for many ‘emotional eaters’ - as the health authority like us to refer to binge eaters, anorexics, and bulimics – but I had never come across a case similar to mine. Well, not yet, anyway.
“Kloe?” Leroy, one of my oldest recurring self-harmers looked at me with a furrowed brow. “I must say, it’s nice to have you back, but I still miss that smile of yours.”
I gave him a smile, shaking my head to distribute my thoughts. “Sorry, Leroy. I’m tired today.”
“Tired?” He laughed. “After the long holiday you had?”
I wanted to scoff. “Because of the long holiday I had.” I winked.
Leroy was lead guitarist in a world renowned rock group. He found the stress of being in the limelight suffocating, and his only release was to cut and get high. There were other factors to his SH (Self-harming), I knew there was, but he had buried them so tightly inside that even after eight months of him in and out of Three Ferns, I was still trying to uncover them.
“You fancy a walk?”
“Sure.” I smiled, thankful for his need for some fresh air.
He smiled, nodding as he pushed himself out of the huge, soft chair he had in his room. He called it his ‘writing chair’. It was specific to his request, but Genesis Convalescence prided themselves in catering to each individual client’s wishes.
The stiches on his arm pulled and he winced.