Cricket: Ember's Story

I'm Not Dead

I wake up disoriented in an empty hospital room. It's still night outside the window, and my brain goes to work trying to figure out how long I've been here. I know I went into that bathroom right after the sun set, and now I can see a line of pale pink light slicing through the darkness.

I'm not dead.

My hands automatically go to my belly. It's deflated like a popped basketball. The baby isn't anywhere to be seen. Did he die? Why did I not die? I pushed out all my guts. I saw it.

"Hey!" I call out. My voice is scratchy from crying and screaming so much.

It's a minute or two before a tired looking nurse walks into the room. She's dumpy in a way that makes me think she's always been dumpy. She wears the extra weight with ease, her worn out flats expertly keeping her balanced as she waddles over to my bedside. Her Snoopy hospital scrubs are spotted with stains that look suspiciously like blood, and her hair, once brown, is streaked with grays. Dark eyes narrow like spikes as she stares down at me. I can feel that she doesn't like me.

"You're awake," she says flatly.

"Yeah. I-"

"I'm going to check your vitals. I need your arm," she says snippily, grabbing it before I can give my consent.

Nurse Snoopy wraps my arm in some kind of black sleeve thing, and I feel it tightening as it inflates, squeezing my flesh so much it hurts. Just when I think I can't take it anymore, the pressure releases as the balloon deflates back to a normal sleeve. Nurse Snoopy starts typing something into the computer beside the bed.

"How am I alive?" I ask softly.

The thick Velcro makes a loud ripping sound as Nurse Snoopy takes the sleeve off my arm.

"Your boyfriend called an ambulance. You lost a lot of blood, but we've patched you up pretty good."

"No... I mean... I accidentally pushed out all my insides when I delivered the baby. I saw it. It was-"

The nurse laughs, but it sounds cruel. I know she's laughing at me.

"That was the placenta, girl. The placenta. You know, the thing that feeds the baby when you're pregnant? It comes out after the baby does."

The way she looks at me makes me want to hide. I shake my head, and she laughs again.

"Wait 'till I tell the girls this," she mumbles softly. Then to me she says, "You don't know anything do you?"

My anger flares, but I'm too humiliated to fight her. My face is hot with shame. "I know some stuff," I say defensively, and my eyes are welling up with tears on top of everything.

"I'm guessing you didn't bother getting any prenatal care?"

I shake my head.

"Not surprising. Maybe if you had they would have told you about placentas. Maybe they would've also told you not to use drugs, but it's a little late for that," Nurse Snoopy says coldly.

My body goes cold. "What do you mean?"

"I mean your baby is addicted to heroin."

The words hit me like a ton of bricks. Doc told me it would be fine as long as I smoked it instead of injecting it. "It won't get in your bloodstream that way," he'd said. I shouldn't have listened. After all, this is the same genius who told Jesse we wouldn't get addicted if we only smoked it, and look where that got us.

"Where is the baby?" I asked in a choked voice.

"Withdrawing."

"Can I see him?"

"No. He's been placed in state custody."

"What does that mean?"

Nurse Snoopy makes no attempt to hide her eye-roll. "It means he's not yours anymore. Somebody from DCF will talk to you about it tomorrow."

"Not mine anymore?"

Big tears are running down my hot cheeks. It's all too much to process, and everything hurts and my emotions are swirling like a tornado. I can't believe I did this. Maybe it would have been more merciful to leave Cricket in that trashcan. Either way, I'm a monster.

"Look, get some sleep. You can figure all this out tomorrow," the nurse says.

She does a few more things to me before leaving in silence.

While Nurse Snoopy is no doubt having a good laugh at my expense with the other nurses, I lay there with the thin white blanket pulled all the way up to my chin, and I can't stop crying. It scares me. I've always been able to stop crying. It's that kind of crying that makes it hard to breathe, and before long I have hiccups too.

Sure enough I hear laughter coming from down the hall, and I close my eyes. Maybe if I go back to sleep I'll wake up and this will all be a dream. Maybe I'll wake up nine months ago before this nightmare started. Maybe I'll do everything different. Maybe I can make it all disappear.