CHAPTER 4 — The Birth
Then I wake up in a bed.
The room is empty.
Everyone’s gone.
I feel nothing.
Nothing from the neck down.
I’m laid there, laid out on this bed.
I try to move,
but my body feels like putty.
The weight like trunks.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t even lift myself off the bed.
My legs were giant oaks.
My arms, rock.
I could breathe.
I stopped screaming.
No — wait.
They told me it was busy.
They told me I’d be fine.
They told me it’s okay.
They sent them home to get some rest.
They left me there
in my paralysed state.
The pain came back.
Not in a tiny amount —
a full-on flood.
Like I’d been stabbed.
I shouted.
“Be quiet, little girl.
It’s okay.
You have ten more minutes.”
Timed.
Timed it was.
I just remember them giving me a time.
I yelled,
“Get someone!
It hurts!”
Was it a crash team?
Who knows.
White walls.
Red blood.
The scissors.
They cut me.
The forceps.
They squeezed.
They pushed.
They pulled.
My leg from one side to the neck.
The stirrups.
Were they not people all around me?
A tiny little lady held my hand, tight.
She could barely speak English.
Her eyes tried to fix on mine.
She tried to reassure me.
She tried to connect with me.
But all around me,
it felt like a scene
from a serial killer’s basement.
I was exhausted.
I held my breath.
I felt as if I’d expelled a giant calf.
It slithered out.
My skin was torn.
I heard it — pain.
I heard the snap.
Wet poured out
like a washing machine
emptying a load too big for the door.
Then I saw him.
His face was covered in bruises.
I didn’t care.
He was silent.
Exhausted.
What a way to start life.
I’d perfectly prepared him.
Baked him in my oven.
Only my oven door didn’t open properly,
and the recipe went all wrong.
The shaking.
We cried.
I slumped in the bed.
Let me die now.
I felt like jelly in the bed.
A wobble.
A wall.
Jelly in a bed.
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