Infinitely

Sarah, you have to get dressed

Numb.

It's the best way I can describe how I've spent the last few months. Drifting through each day, not really absorbing anything that happens.

I hear the conversations going on around me - about me. They want me to get help, they want me to make decisions, they want more and more of me. Sarah, you're having a baby. Sarah, Luke wants to be with you. Sarah, you have to get dressed. Sarah, we're taking you to a doctor.

I go to these appointments, to this therapist, sometimes with Charlotte, sometimes with Luke, but mostly just on my own. I can hear my voice as I tell my story again and answer questions. Twice a week, for 50 minutes each time, I feel like I say the same things over and over again. How this time, these sessions that feel no different from the FBI interrogation, can help me I don't know.

I don't know if I want to be helped.

Most of the time it's too hard to get out of bed. I'm exhausted and everything I eat makes me sick to my stomach. If I'm not physically tired I'm just worn out from staying alive. They say I have PTSD and that no one should be surprised by that after all I've been through. Those letters don't mean much to me. All I know is I don't see the point in going on.

When I do leave the house I get all the attention I wanted. Paparazzi follow me, fans come talk to me. It gets worse when they find out I'm pregnant. Luke tells everyone about the baby and says we're back together. So I let us be together. I hold his hand and hide behind him when we're outside. It keeps me from having any accidents. Like the time I almost got hit by a car because I didn't bother looking before I walked into the street.

I'm not lost in my head though, I have a vague understanding of what's happening around me. Luke moved in sometime in July. He and Charlotte started classes in August. It's September now which means Caelen is standing up anytime he has something to hold onto. Justin's starting to tease his fans about a new album. Quinn is here too, moving in the background like the washing machine does.

Charlotte is the perfect mommy, just like I knew she would be. My older sister always was at her best when she had someone else to take care of. Now she has Caelen and me. Food appears on my bedside table. Clothes, ones that will fit my strange new body, appear in the drawers.

I move because I have to. I talk because I have to. I don't think because nothing makes sense anymore. Everything I was taught my whole life isn't true, except that life goes on outside me like it always has so maybe it wasn't all wrong. I don't know. I can't sort through it.

I can't decide if it matters. If anything matters. Just thinking that much wears me out so I try not to do it. I don't do it.

I don't let myself pay attention when Luke puts his hands or his cheek on my stomach. I can't see the way his eyes light up when that baby moves or listen to the things he says to it. Her. It. I'm not ready for a baby, any baby. I close my eyes and send my mind far away whenever someone starts to talk about it.

I pretend the room next door, the one painted with butterflies, is for Caelen's little sister.

That's why when the contractions start I don't say anything. They're early, a whole month early, and I know it means something is wrong. My water doesn't break in some dramatic puddle. It leaks slowly all day. I wear a pad and change it when I have to.

Luke is asleep beside me that night, blissfully unaware of anything I'm going through. He's a heavy sleeper and I think I could make it all the way until morning without him noticing except that the contractions get worse and in that pain I grab him and anything I can reach.

I know before he calls his mother what Maeris will say. We go right to the hospital and they waste no time getting me into a bed and then into an operating room.

"You'll let me die, right?" I ask the nurse.

"To save your baby? I understand what it feels like, sweetie, but you're both gonna be fine without all that," she tells me.

It wasn't the answer I wanted but I hold on to it anyway.

They make me numb and I start to dream of running away. I picture the baby as a cord that's tied me here and without it I'll be free again. There won't be anything to keep me going or keep me from going, if that's a better way to look at it. I make my plans while a doctor is digging around inside me. I think of a beach, somewhere foreign.

It's the last thing I remember.