RISK & REWARD ✔️

105 | 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥

remember when i said i cried

HER FULL NAME is Billie Hera-Jade Ross. She was born at 7:49 p.m on September 13th, 2000, at Ascension St. Mary's Hospital in Chicago, which makes her just shy of twenty-four years old. She was a small baby, weighing in six pounds and two ounces and measuring in at a whopping fifteen inches and one quarter. They have pictures of her that they get faxed over from her birth hospital; she's like a miniature doll, wrapped in a little pink blanket that she's clinging to like it'll run away otherwise. She looks sort of pissed, to be honest; she's got her big eyebrows knotted angrily in the middle of her forehead, and she's got her little button nose all scrunched up, and her eyes - fifty shades darker than they are now - are practically scorching with infant fury. She's got a full head of hair; in one picture, it's just frizzing around her like a big swab of black wool.

In the second picture, though, it's being pushed back by a gentle hand, and she doesn't look so mad. She looks at the hand taming her hair back like it's from a different planet, eyes wide and little lips parted like she's surprised. In the third picture, though, she's decided she doesn't like the hand on her; her tiny, toothless mouth is open and she's screaming with pure fury, face flushed a deep shade of oil-brown.

The fourth picture is different. In the fourth picture, she isn't mad anymore. She has her eyes closed and even as a newborn she has those thick black lashes that she's so fond of hiding behind. She's got a pout on her mouth, like a baby version of her usual scowl; she has frizzy little pom-pom pigtails tied up in little light-pink ribbons, though they look like they've been snatched at and yanked on by a tiny, angry hand a hundred times already. The culprit, presumably, isn't so angry anymore; it's right up against her chin, serving as a little headrest for where she's laying on her mom's shoulder.

Her mom's name is Aphrodite. Aphrodite and Baby Billie. That's what the faded pen scrawl on the bottom of the picture says. September 16, 2000. Her mom is laughing; she's got one arm wrapped around a pillow, and the other resting up on her baby's back. She's pretty; they have the same face. Heart-shaped, sort of catty; she has the same eyebrows and nose especially. Her eyes are dark, but her smile is a dead ringer for my girlfriend's. I try to think back to what I'd learned in the pool; did she know her husband was having an affair yet? In every one of the pictures, I don't see James; I just see Aphrodite and her little girl, new mother and newborn daughter.

I wish they'd stayed that way. I wish they'd stayed that way, just the two of them. Just a doting mom and her little girl sleeping on her shoulder. Things could've been so different. She could've grown up with a parent that loved her, adored her, treated her like a daughter and not a dog living off of scraps.

I realize I'm crying after one of the pictures - the one of her sleeping on her mom's shoulder- starts to melt apart in my hands.

After a week, they move her to a different part of the hospital. They call it the Quiet Ward, and it's a sleepy place; the lights here are warm gold during the day and deep indigo during the night. The hallways are almost always silent; the nurses come by less, maybe three times a day, and they keep offering me paper cups of cold water and little bags of crackers. I keep turning them down.

It's a warm, sunny day when they let me see her. The Quiet Ward is the least hospital-looking one I've seen; the rooms aren't that bleach-white color but are instead painted a pale shade of warm baby-blue. There's a window in the back wall, and there's a tree outside, blooming great and green against the glass. I can hear birds, and I can smell summer-sun, grass, wind. Fuzzy shafts of golden sunlight dapple the tiled floor-and as I step into the room, they leap up onto the bed in the corner of the room, play in a nest of mostly-black hair and sparkle on black lashes.