Seven Pounds
It hurts.
She is sure that somehow, something is trying to escape her body (pain, grief, sorrow, failure) and snagged in her chest, caught under her heart where it is stuck, and now every breath she takes she can feel it there, all sharp edges and odd angles tearing into heart and lung and bone.
It hurts.
She wants it to stop, but she can’t seem to think of any way to accomplish that goal, so she sits on the bare floor and waits. She breathes in shallow little hitching breaths, barely supplying her brain with enough oxygen to remain conscious - and maybe that’s the solution. Pass out - she wouldn’t feel the pain then.
It hadn’t hurt, not at first. First, there had been disbelief. This wasn’t happening, not to her. Surely, she would change her mind and everything would be as it should be - Joy in a bright yellow room, staring at a mobile with small smiles and waving arms. When that didn’t happen, she felt loss, but it was a numb sort of loss, the kind where she could go and hold Joy’s hand and let the images of the life that was supposed to be hers blur by on fast forward through her mind. First steps, first words, tea parties and school pageants, long hair flying with yellow ribbons, sunny smiles and soft kisses.
Then the anger had set in - she had walked into the room, wincing at its brighter-than-sunshine walls, glaring at the soft animals scattered on the floor - tiny blankets tangled around the mobile she hadn’t had time to even hang yet. Sheets she hadn’t had time to snap into place, smooth across a mattress while she pictured seven pounds of pure joy sleeping peacefully against the dancing yellow bears. Her hands had shaken as she had torn open each and every box, picked up every item and shoved it into the solid wood crib until the floor was bare. It was able to hold a surprising amount - jumpers and onesies, blankets and diapers, bears and brushes. Four boxes worth of things were in that crib, but it would never hold the one thing she had most wanted to see in it.
She had cried all the while, she was sure. At least, she thought she was sure, because by the time the crib was full of her dreams and failures, grief and sorrow, her face had felt tight - hot and swollen as she turned the light off to make the yellow seem less cheerful and slid down the wall until she felt the cool wood of the floorboards centering her. She had cried. When it hadn’t hurt.
When she stopped crying, the pain really set in.
And now she stares, and breathes as little as possible, because breathing scrapes her lungs against those sharp angles and presses it forward until she’s sure her sternum will crack from pressure.
It hurts to think.
It hurts to feel.
She is living in the present tense, because she cannot exist anywhere else. The future (tea parties and yellow ribbons) hurts. The past (failure, grief, sorrow, pain) hurts. She isn’t crying anymore, sitting on the floor dully, devoid of everything but this pain that presses up and out and in and against her.
She loses track of time, she is sure. Minutes, hours have surely passed by, one agonizing second at a time, but she hopes that it’s actually more like days and weeks. She sits and doesn’t move, tries not to breathe for as long as she can. The cold from the floor creeps up through the thin cotton of her pants and settles into her bones, inching up her body. She hopes it hits her heart soon - anything would feel better than the vast gaping nothingness and the razor’s edge of pain, slicing away at her, inch by inch.
She hears the knocking, and at first she thinks it’s her heart, echoing. Or the items in the crib, settling. Perhaps it’s her mind - opportunity knocking and she can’t seem to find the will to get off the floor. But the sound comes again and she has to press her hands against the cold, cold floor and push herself up.
She doesn’t really want to answer it. There’s no one she wants to see right now, and she could care less if the hospital burns down right now, but it could be her and it could be a miracle and it could be... opportunity. So she rises along with her hopes and opens the door quietly, cautiously.
Her face is blank as she sees him there, quieter and stiller than she’s ever seen him before. She should have stayed on the floor. He’s speaking and she’s listening (half-listening) but his tone is so soft, and his presence is so quiet she can’t seem to reconcile the man before her with the House she knows. House is not quiet. He does not tread softly. He does not knock and wait to be let in. He is loud and obnoxious and impatient and -
She needs to lean against the wall - any kind of support is a need right now, and she is talking but unsure of the words she is wrapping her mouth around. She is agreeing, she knows that. She is telling him whatever he needs to hear so he can gloat and go, but he isn’t gloating and he isn’t going and she finds herself smiling slightly as he cracks a bad (but gentle) joke.
`You’d make a great mother.’
His words are soft, and she is sure - sure - he means them to be a comfort. But white noise is filling her head and she can see flashes of him standing over her while she clutched a sick girl at the bottom of a shower - it’s a good thing you didn’t become a mother because you suck at it! A second has passed, maybe two before she sucks in a breath and moves forward in a blur of harsh words and predatory steps.
He doesn’t back away, which is unusual. He doesn’t deflect, or avoid her pain - raw emotion bleeding out before him; he just stares down at her with a mixture of wonder and fear. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to fix her any more than she knows how to fix him - and she stares up at him, wondering. If maybe they’re both so broken they fit. His jagged edges clicking into place with her fractured holes.
Then his head is lowering and she knows she should run. Run, run, run - her heart is pounding and her hands are reaching for him, because she needs something to hold on to. It’s not Joy - there will be no joy, but there is him. And somehow, she thinks dimly, barely aware of the thought, somehow that matters.
His hands are tight on her back and she can feel the wood of his cane pressed there as his mouth moves over hers. It isn’t perfect - they aren’t perfect, so it matches - it’s all lips and tongues and teeth. A battle and a surrender - but she doesn’t care because for right now, she is feeling something, something other than the pain and the failure and the goddamned misery, and she wraps her hands around it (him) and holds on until she can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but him. His jacket is cold, and his mouth is warm. He tastes like beer and salt. His whiskers are rough and soft against her skin, abrasive and soothing.
When she finally breathes again, sinking back down to the floor and wondering when the hell she had risen up to meet him in the first place, there is a moment where she thinks about kissing him again and again and again until he won’t leave. She could, she knows, keep him there with her as a buffer between her and the pain -
She hasn’t even really decided when he steps back and is gone in a rush of air, his goodnight still wrapping around her even as the door opens and clicks shut again. She stares blankly for a moment, wondering if she imagined him there at all, her own whispered goodnight heard only by her and her empty house.
It’s only a second later that the pain reasserts itself, pushing back into her chest, scraping along her too hollow insides. But she licks her lips, and she can still feel a slight tingle - physical proof that she wasn’t hallucinating, and a feeling she can grasp other than the pain.
It hurts.
But it hurts a little less.
She is sure that somehow, something is trying to escape her body (pain, grief, sorrow, failure) and snagged in her chest, caught under her heart where it is stuck, and now every breath she takes she can feel it there, all sharp edges and odd angles tearing into heart and lung and bone.
It hurts.
She wants it to stop, but she can’t seem to think of any way to accomplish that goal, so she sits on the bare floor and waits. She breathes in shallow little hitching breaths, barely supplying her brain with enough oxygen to remain conscious - and maybe that’s the solution. Pass out - she wouldn’t feel the pain then.
It hadn’t hurt, not at first. First, there had been disbelief. This wasn’t happening, not to her. Surely, she would change her mind and everything would be as it should be - Joy in a bright yellow room, staring at a mobile with small smiles and waving arms. When that didn’t happen, she felt loss, but it was a numb sort of loss, the kind where she could go and hold Joy’s hand and let the images of the life that was supposed to be hers blur by on fast forward through her mind. First steps, first words, tea parties and school pageants, long hair flying with yellow ribbons, sunny smiles and soft kisses.
Then the anger had set in - she had walked into the room, wincing at its brighter-than-sunshine walls, glaring at the soft animals scattered on the floor - tiny blankets tangled around the mobile she hadn’t had time to even hang yet. Sheets she hadn’t had time to snap into place, smooth across a mattress while she pictured seven pounds of pure joy sleeping peacefully against the dancing yellow bears. Her hands had shaken as she had torn open each and every box, picked up every item and shoved it into the solid wood crib until the floor was bare. It was able to hold a surprising amount - jumpers and onesies, blankets and diapers, bears and brushes. Four boxes worth of things were in that crib, but it would never hold the one thing she had most wanted to see in it.
She had cried all the while, she was sure. At least, she thought she was sure, because by the time the crib was full of her dreams and failures, grief and sorrow, her face had felt tight - hot and swollen as she turned the light off to make the yellow seem less cheerful and slid down the wall until she felt the cool wood of the floorboards centering her. She had cried. When it hadn’t hurt.
When she stopped crying, the pain really set in.
And now she stares, and breathes as little as possible, because breathing scrapes her lungs against those sharp angles and presses it forward until she’s sure her sternum will crack from pressure.
It hurts to think.
It hurts to feel.
She is living in the present tense, because she cannot exist anywhere else. The future (tea parties and yellow ribbons) hurts. The past (failure, grief, sorrow, pain) hurts. She isn’t crying anymore, sitting on the floor dully, devoid of everything but this pain that presses up and out and in and against her.
She loses track of time, she is sure. Minutes, hours have surely passed by, one agonizing second at a time, but she hopes that it’s actually more like days and weeks. She sits and doesn’t move, tries not to breathe for as long as she can. The cold from the floor creeps up through the thin cotton of her pants and settles into her bones, inching up her body. She hopes it hits her heart soon - anything would feel better than the vast gaping nothingness and the razor’s edge of pain, slicing away at her, inch by inch.
She hears the knocking, and at first she thinks it’s her heart, echoing. Or the items in the crib, settling. Perhaps it’s her mind - opportunity knocking and she can’t seem to find the will to get off the floor. But the sound comes again and she has to press her hands against the cold, cold floor and push herself up.
She doesn’t really want to answer it. There’s no one she wants to see right now, and she could care less if the hospital burns down right now, but it could be her and it could be a miracle and it could be... opportunity. So she rises along with her hopes and opens the door quietly, cautiously.
Her face is blank as she sees him there, quieter and stiller than she’s ever seen him before. She should have stayed on the floor. He’s speaking and she’s listening (half-listening) but his tone is so soft, and his presence is so quiet she can’t seem to reconcile the man before her with the House she knows. House is not quiet. He does not tread softly. He does not knock and wait to be let in. He is loud and obnoxious and impatient and -
She needs to lean against the wall - any kind of support is a need right now, and she is talking but unsure of the words she is wrapping her mouth around. She is agreeing, she knows that. She is telling him whatever he needs to hear so he can gloat and go, but he isn’t gloating and he isn’t going and she finds herself smiling slightly as he cracks a bad (but gentle) joke.
`You’d make a great mother.’
His words are soft, and she is sure - sure - he means them to be a comfort. But white noise is filling her head and she can see flashes of him standing over her while she clutched a sick girl at the bottom of a shower - it’s a good thing you didn’t become a mother because you suck at it! A second has passed, maybe two before she sucks in a breath and moves forward in a blur of harsh words and predatory steps.
He doesn’t back away, which is unusual. He doesn’t deflect, or avoid her pain - raw emotion bleeding out before him; he just stares down at her with a mixture of wonder and fear. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to fix her any more than she knows how to fix him - and she stares up at him, wondering. If maybe they’re both so broken they fit. His jagged edges clicking into place with her fractured holes.
Then his head is lowering and she knows she should run. Run, run, run - her heart is pounding and her hands are reaching for him, because she needs something to hold on to. It’s not Joy - there will be no joy, but there is him. And somehow, she thinks dimly, barely aware of the thought, somehow that matters.
His hands are tight on her back and she can feel the wood of his cane pressed there as his mouth moves over hers. It isn’t perfect - they aren’t perfect, so it matches - it’s all lips and tongues and teeth. A battle and a surrender - but she doesn’t care because for right now, she is feeling something, something other than the pain and the failure and the goddamned misery, and she wraps her hands around it (him) and holds on until she can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but him. His jacket is cold, and his mouth is warm. He tastes like beer and salt. His whiskers are rough and soft against her skin, abrasive and soothing.
When she finally breathes again, sinking back down to the floor and wondering when the hell she had risen up to meet him in the first place, there is a moment where she thinks about kissing him again and again and again until he won’t leave. She could, she knows, keep him there with her as a buffer between her and the pain -
She hasn’t even really decided when he steps back and is gone in a rush of air, his goodnight still wrapping around her even as the door opens and clicks shut again. She stares blankly for a moment, wondering if she imagined him there at all, her own whispered goodnight heard only by her and her empty house.
It’s only a second later that the pain reasserts itself, pushing back into her chest, scraping along her too hollow insides. But she licks her lips, and she can still feel a slight tingle - physical proof that she wasn’t hallucinating, and a feeling she can grasp other than the pain.
It hurts.
But it hurts a little less.