Pain

Disclaimer: this is the worst-written thing that's ever come from my brain. I know that. But the pace of National Novel Writing Month is too intense to go back and fix it now. Roll with it. Get the general idea and move on. Hopefully the next chapter will read better.

I may have lived an unconventional childhood, but I still had dreams. I thought that I would grow up and marry my high school sweetheart, have a happy little house in suburbia where I would be a member of the PTA and hold bake sales for the kids’ school. It would be everything that I never had, and I would do it brilliantly. But I never had a high school sweetheart. I never really had a boyfriend, nothing more than a string of one night stands and wishes for more. I didn’t outgrow it. I grew older, graduated from high school, but never evolved into the adult that I wanted to be.

I watched my sister cleaning my apartment, like the good wife I thought I could be. She had everything I wanted, even though I would never admit as much to her. What we know in our hearts and what we speak to others can be two very different things.

I wanted to help her clean, but she wouldn’t permit it. My back had been bothering me all day, and it felt a little better when I sat down. It also seemed to be therapeutic for her to create some order out of chaos in my little world.

“Don’t you have any real food?” she asked, looking at my nearly empty closets with nothing but cat food and ramen noodle packets.

“Define ‘real food,’” I said.

She looked completely exasperated. “Fruits. Vegetables. Even canned veggies would be better than the crap you have in here.”

She was removing all of the food and dishes from the cabinet to clean the shelves. “You do realize that the cat eats better than you do.”

I nodded. “I would never let an animal suffer.”

“Angela! Listen to yourself! You’re more interested in caring for an animal than yourself?”

“Of course.” It seemed logical to me. “You knew that I took in every animal in the neighborhood when I was a kid.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I didn’t know that you would care for the animals over your own health and wellbeing.”

She continued to scrub and clean. The entire apartment – all 350 square feet of it – smelled of artificial pine cleaning products. It was unpleasant, but better than the smell of ammonia. Ammonia always made me ill, and I refused to let it be used in my presence.

I stood and grabbed window cleaner, using my one good arm to clean my single window to a streak-free shine. I quickly realized that I preferred it with the grimy film to hide the dark view of the solid brick wall across the alley. The alley was completely devoid of direct light except for approximately forty-five minutes around high noon.

I don’t think my sister could understand how I lived in someplace so small and dismal, but on a barely-more-than minimum-wage salary, and with an array of prescription medications to purchase every month, there wasn’t enough money to afford anything more than a dumpy studio apartment and college-student food.

“Can I help you out financially? Mail you a check each month?” She was sincere. After years of silence, she really did want to help. I was flattered.

“In general? No. I’ll figure out how to make it on my own. But I do need money… you know. Now.”

She took a deep breath. “You know how hard this is for me.”

“Yes.”

She sat down at the tiny table, rag in one hand and cleaner in the other. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “I don’t believe in it.”

“I know.” I felt it deep in my heart. “I don’t, either.” I sat at the table next to her, rubbing my achy lower back. I must have slept in some sort of twisted position the night before.

“Then why this? Why not adoption?”

“I can’t, Suzan. I just can’t. Do you know how many chemicals I have coursing through my body on any given day? Those alone would be enough to cause permanent harm. Add to that the fact that I don’t eat right and can’t afford proper prenatal care….”

“But we can arrange for proper care.”

“The drugs?”

She thought for a moment. “Are you sure they’re that damaging?”

“I’m on a test medication that can cause irreparable harm, and two on the commercial market that can do some really bad things to neurological development.”

She swallowed hard. I could tell that it was difficult for her to accept. Somehow it was easier for me, because I dealt well with facts. Seeing facts in black and white in a book made it all clear for me. I knew that the damage had been done from the first cells, and even if I could go cold turkey on the meds there wasn’t any way to protect the baby at this point.

“Do you need me to go with you?”

I was caught off guard by the question. I never considered that I would have anyone there with me. “Yes,” I whispered.

She took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “Well then, if you know that this is the right decision for you, then we have to do it.”

She grabbed the yellow pages and dialed the phone for me as I made the appointment for the next afternoon. I could feel my heart pounding as I spoke to the woman in scheduling. My throat tightened and my palms began to sweat. I knew this was the right choice to make, but it didn’t make it any easier. It still wouldn’t be what I wanted. I hung up the phone and fought back tears.

Susan went to the stove to heat some water for tea. I went to the bed with the cat, which seemed unusually friendly. She wandered in circles around me, rubbing against me at all angles. This wasn’t her usual behavior. She must have sensed my tension. I grabbed the remote and turned on the small TV to watch the latest decorating show. Susan continued to clean while the kettle heated up and I dozed off sometime between the designers’ presentations of their grand plans and the second commercial.

Susan woke me a few minutes later when she brought my tea. I sat up on the bed, and knew instantly that something just wasn’t right.

“What?” she asked. “You’re making a weird face.”

“Nothing,” I said without much conviction. “It’s just… nothing.”

“Nothing?”

I shifted my weight on the bed, but that didn’t help. It wasn’t just my back that was hurting now. I had the worst stomach cramps that I could ever remember. “I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me.”

“Drink the tea,” she suggested. “The warmth might make you feel better.”

I took a sip, but quickly put the cup down and staggered for the bathroom. Susan’s voice followed me.

“Ange? Jesus, Ange, what is it?”

I didn’t know. Suddenly, the cramps were horrific. I struggled to pull down my pants with my one good hand, not a task that was designed for speed. What I saw shocked me. “Oh my god!” I shouted. “Oh my god!”

“What? Ange! Talk to me!”

I couldn’t focus. I sat down hard on the seat, losing my balance halfway down. I tried to breathe normally, but the pain and shock were too much. I heard myself gasping.

When Susan finally decided to barge into the bathroom, she was unprepared for what she saw. My pants were covered in blood, and my face was white as a ghost as I sat motionless on the toilet with my head in my hands, my elbows on my knees for support.

“Oh my god, Ange. I need to call a doctor.”

She ran out of the room. I couldn’t manage the energy to stop her. I felt lightheaded. I tried to sit up straight so I could reach the sink for some water, but the world went black. I don’t remember hitting the floor.

I awoke to find Susan standing over me, while the butch-looking EMT from a few days earlier was feeling for a pulse. I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Shh!” The butch lady was surprisingly gentle. She asked my sister to try to find me some clean underwear, a new pair of pants and a maxi pad for the ride to the hospital. Suzan did as she was told and changed my clothes like I was a child. Once again, I found myself on a gurney. I heard very little of what was going on, but I did hear one word that caught my attention: miscarriage. I lost the baby? I was shocked. Did my body know that there would be something wrong with it? Did it know better than I did? And then I did something that surprised me: I said a prayer for the baby, and apologized to it for being such a poor and unprepared mother. I promised I would do better next time. I lost consciousness again.