The lights are on, but nobody's home
She had never held her. Never touched the helpless sticky crimson bundle that was her child.
Despite the horror, excruciating pain and knowledge of her daughter's inevitable fate, Vivian had cried in relief as she'd heard her baby's shrill cry when she took her first breath. Impotently she had begged in desperation as blood stained incisors had viciously ripped through the cord and then Vivian's world had turned to black.
The haemorrhaging woman in the rubble should have been dead from the usually fatal bloodloss, not merely catatonic. By some miracle, or twisted vindictive act of God, she was alive and breathing, protected by the steel girders and door of her cell that had fallen, cocooning her safely within. The ruptured placenta still inside her had been infected by an unknown virus and they were still drawing a blank as to the antibodies in her remaining blood cells that had miraculously kept her alive.
"I told you already," Vivian drowsily returned the doctor's questions flatly. Fleetingly she met his piercing gaze to drill home the point in a vein attempt to stop the endless daily barrage of questions.
"I don't remember."
It was a question she was tired of answering, along with all the fucking others that she really couldn't answer. What were they going to do if they knew? Bring her back? Her daughter was dead. As dead and broken as she was.
She was nothing more than a shell of the young woman she had once been, exhausted pained shadows for eyes would spend hours vacantly staring at the air before her, reliving over and over those tortuous tragic moments where her daughter had been taken from her. But she gave nothing, shared nothing of the trauma, emptiness and terror.
She obediently took the offered plastic cup of pills, and one by one Vivian grotesquely bared her tongue to prove she'd taken them. He'd leave in a moment, frustrated at the lack of response and satisfied with her medication intake, there was little more he could do. Then the nurse would come and fuck about with the saline drip and check her bloods. And all the while, the medical enigma that was the post traumatic shock patient in bed six who believed her only given name was Cinderella, would only ache for the daughter she had been denied, staring into the abyss vacuously.
Despite the horror, excruciating pain and knowledge of her daughter's inevitable fate, Vivian had cried in relief as she'd heard her baby's shrill cry when she took her first breath. Impotently she had begged in desperation as blood stained incisors had viciously ripped through the cord and then Vivian's world had turned to black.
The haemorrhaging woman in the rubble should have been dead from the usually fatal bloodloss, not merely catatonic. By some miracle, or twisted vindictive act of God, she was alive and breathing, protected by the steel girders and door of her cell that had fallen, cocooning her safely within. The ruptured placenta still inside her had been infected by an unknown virus and they were still drawing a blank as to the antibodies in her remaining blood cells that had miraculously kept her alive.
"I told you already," Vivian drowsily returned the doctor's questions flatly. Fleetingly she met his piercing gaze to drill home the point in a vein attempt to stop the endless daily barrage of questions.
"I don't remember."
It was a question she was tired of answering, along with all the fucking others that she really couldn't answer. What were they going to do if they knew? Bring her back? Her daughter was dead. As dead and broken as she was.
She was nothing more than a shell of the young woman she had once been, exhausted pained shadows for eyes would spend hours vacantly staring at the air before her, reliving over and over those tortuous tragic moments where her daughter had been taken from her. But she gave nothing, shared nothing of the trauma, emptiness and terror.
She obediently took the offered plastic cup of pills, and one by one Vivian grotesquely bared her tongue to prove she'd taken them. He'd leave in a moment, frustrated at the lack of response and satisfied with her medication intake, there was little more he could do. Then the nurse would come and fuck about with the saline drip and check her bloods. And all the while, the medical enigma that was the post traumatic shock patient in bed six who believed her only given name was Cinderella, would only ache for the daughter she had been denied, staring into the abyss vacuously.