Metà (COMPLETED)

30. Our Angel

There was a moment... right before I pushed him out... when I felt something was off.

I didn't know what it was, but it just didn't feel right. I blamed it on the stress of the crowded room full of nurses rushing to set up and one yelling on the phone for the Doctor who was unreasonably late.

And then I found out it wasn't that. It turns out the  feeling I'd gotten was that my baby was dying. And yet when that was confirmed, the feeling never left.

Probably because he hadn't left.

To have to convince yourself that it's okay to move on... that life and the loss of it happens, was hard. But I did it.

I completely shut it out of my life. I didn't cry anymore. I didn't think about it as often... only on occasion when I'd catch Sofi playing in the corner of my eye and my mind would wander to what it would be like to see them together.

I told myself to stop wondering about what could have been and focus on what was. And the fact was that he wasn't coming back.

Ever.

So when I find myself staring into the eyes of my dead son, I do what I assume anyone else would do...I leave.

Everyone's eyes watched me as I slowly got up and backed out of the room. Marco was saying something and so was my mother,  who stood to come towards me. I shook my head slowly... or maybe quickly. I couldn't tell. I turned around once I'd reached the stairs, and walked to my room.

I held onto the wall as my vision blurred and a gross bulge formed in my throat, stopping me from breathing normally. I mindlessly locked the door to my room and lay on my bed, not bothering to get beneath the covers.

I just needed some quiet, and my heart was kind enough— or perhaps just weak— to allow me that.  It's fast rhythm slowed to a low hum and the blood rushing through my ears stopped in their tracks. I stared at blurry ceiling, the only thing I could feel being the tears streaming across my cheeks and down my neck.

My eyes shut, and I half-smiled, finding a peace in the darkness.

But it quickly faded when I found myself trapped... reliving every second of that moment.

***

I woke up in a pool of sweat, and a furious headache. I groaned and turned my head to the side, wanting to go back to sleep, but fearing what lay behind my closed lids. A second longer in the result of the nightmare that replayed in my sleep caused me to get out of bed and get in the shower.

The water was ice cold as I stepped in, not caring to remove my clothes until I was already under the stream. I was consumed by the thought of what awaited me upstairs.

My nightmare, although it played on a steady rotation, each time getting more gruesome, gave me no answers as to what happened. I saw with my own eyes my dead child, held him, and yet here he was.

If they switched the baby out, when did they do it? I know I was focused on Sofi, but even before then I had watched them do everything they could. So when? If they hadn't switched him out, then what had they done? Kill him and then somehow resuscitate him? Or had he actually died, but he came back and they...what, just took him? But why?

A cry racked through me and I slid to the floor, leaning my head against the extra cool wall of the shower and sobbed. The sobs were foreign and loud to my ears, loud enough to block out the sound of the bedroom door being opened.

A knock came from the bathroom door and I stared at it, lodged a sob in my throat.

"Zhara?" I lowered my head and sniffled, fighting the threat of another round of tears. My eyes started hurting from the headache that was now enraged and unleashing it's wrath— it was becoming unbearable.