TW - childbirth/complications

45. LOVE

It was horrible. It was a nightmare.

It starts with a phonecall.

And she had looked at the caller ID and hesitated, because after everything, months after everything had…she still felt that same…

...They had made promises to each other; promises that no one else knew about, promises just between them. A phonecall broke all of them. She had told him if he felt it, if he had ever felt the same, that he should never contact her again.

And until the phonecall she hadn't given much thought to it; the inevitable. The repercussions of actions, the irreversible day when nothing would ever be the same, her golden haired, angelic little baby, in pain. Because it wasn't just him she felt it for.

She only remembers the phonecall vaguely. She had thought by now that she would feel numb, or bitter, but his voice and the words he says touches those very feelings that still lie burning on her bare skin, raised and red, rubbing painfully against clothes, like nettles. He knows what to say, and how to say it to make her sting. He always did.

"She needs you here. I need you here."

Then she had ran. She ran so hard her eyes watered and she could hear the cracks spreading across her frantically thrumming heart. Her boots had made a ruckus in the hospital corridors and had alerted him to her coming. He seemed desperate to see her, much like their reunion after the terrible fire. Stilted and awkward. Guilty and hopeful. They had exchanged smiles in the doorway of the room - his much more genuine than hers - and then shuffled and danced to get out of one another's way.

Melissa's hand was clammy when she clutched it and her forehead was burning to the touch. Despite everything that had once transpired between them, she had found that the words of encouragement and support had flowed, and the way her sister had looked at her; as if she were god, and the way she was so able to soothe her, felt like atonement. When they lock eyes with one another, those feelings still burn. She was her daughter. No. Her sister.

The room was such a pressure cooker of determination and pain and screams and emotions, for the most part she was able to keep her eyes off him, standing awkwardly at the other end of the room, helpless and stoic. Her heart still bled.

The birth is a hot, messy rush. She had planned not to allow herself time to fall. There wasn't room in her sticky, stinging, complicated heart. Auntie Rachel would slip out as the tension dissipated and relief and emotion and other feelings washed over the parents. Invisible, she would fade out and go home.

But the baby. Small. A girl. Was silent.

She was whisked immediately from Melissa's arms, rushed past her dazed aunt and from the room. Eddie's face had drained of colour as he and her sister had reached for one another's hand.

She had spun and staggered. The room was hot and she had to narrow her eyes to focus.

She hadn't left in time and now it was too late. Now she was running again, staggering from wall to wall, door to door in the painfully white corridors until she finds her. She doesn't know her. She has no name. She took everything from her. Yet when she hears her finally splutter and scream her way into the world, her heart splits again. There was room after all.

She is placed in her arms and she thinks she would die for her. If they had needed a heart, air, a body full of blood, they could have taken hers, to let this little girl live. "Take her back along to meet mum and dad whenever you're ready." - but she doesn't. She stands still and is paralysed by the feeling. A person, amalgamated of the two that she cares for most.

Then he is in the doorway, and they are staring at one another. There are tears in his eyes.

"She's alright." a stifled sob, a smile, watery words "She's alright. She's alright."

And although there was always room in her heart for all of these complex and flawed and perfectly new people, it turns out her heart is too big for her body. Because when he takes them both, his girls, into his arms, and presses his lips to her forehead, she simply cannot keep silent anymore.

"I love her. And I still love you."