Watching

Chapter 23

I was back home. The doctors had let me go. The nurse had never reported anything that I said to her in the bathroom that day. I could feel myself becoming a shell of the person I used to be. Maybe her plan to fix our relationship worked. Maybe we are stuck together forever now. I didn't want that to be true. I wanted to run away from her. I wanted to get away from all this bull shit.

I was laying in our bed. There was still a blood stain on the carpet. I had memorized the shape of my blood stain. I mapped out the edges and would find myself imagining how the blood poured out of my head. Where the blood spread first. How it seeped into the carpet and soaked down. My daughter opened the bedroom door slowly. Light crept in from the hallway.

She made her way into the bed and tucked herself in. She and I hadn't talked since I woke up. We hadn't played together. We were just strangers. Maybe I was asleep for too long and now she doesn't know who I am. Maybe I was pulling away from her. The most likely answer is both.

She snuggled up to Nora. Nora opened her eyes and put her arm around the baby. She pulled her even closer to her and shut her eyes again. They were close. Closer than close. I knew that was because they were so similar. Nora's mini me was just as odd as she was.

I could bring that with me when I left. I would catch myself thinking that somehow she couldn't be mine. She was missing anything from me. She looked like her mom and that was it. She had none of my personality. She was nothing of me.

If Nora could bash my head in for cheating then I should have been able to do the same due to the fact that I knew in my bones that the baby wasn't mine.

I rolled onto my back as slowly but surely I knew I would be kicked out of my bed. I could see it coming. I knew the baby was either with me or against me and she was definitely against me.

I had planned out my escape. I would be leaving as soon as Nora brings the kid to school and goes to work. She had been talking about working again now that I was awake and she could trust that I wouldn't go back to sleep forever. I had been pushing it. I wanted her out of the house so I could get out of the house. Being there just made every moment of my brain almost leaking out flash before my eyes whether they were open or closed.

I could smell my blood in the air. I knew that was in my head. I knew a lot was probably in my head but I didn't care what was real and what wasn't. I wanted to get away from my wife and kid. I wanted to start over as someone new. I had been going back and forth on whether I was deserving of a second chance at everything but I am. I shouldn't have to live in a house with my blood stains on the carpet. I shouldn't be stuck with the girl who could kill me at any moment if I piss her off enough.

I should get to have the life I wanted. I should get a normal fucking kid and wife who I don't think could kill me. I deserve everything I wanted and what she had promised me without using the words.

I knew that she understood the promises she had made me and yet she broke them. She wasn't the girl I married and she wasn't the girl I made her into.

When she went to work and brought the baby to school I would use my time to pack up all my clothes and important things. I would then drive to the back. I wanted to take out enough cash to buy a plane ticket and enough to find a place to stay until I could get a job and fix my life. I would have only used cash so she couldn't follow me due to the shared bank account we had.

I would then drive to the airport and buy a ticket for anywhere far away from here that snowed. Once I was there I would meet a girl. Hopefully she would be about 25 and we could start dating and then be married by 27 and she would have our first baby by 28 and our second at 30.

I had it all planned out. I could make it happen just like I made it happen here only this time I would do it right. I would be able to fix all my mistakes and create the perfect family. I shut my eyes and hoped for sleep as the two girls rolled over more towards the center of the bed so I would end up on the edge. This could not be my fucking life.