Sorry

Chapter nine

I met Madeline outside the next morning. The early air was crisp and sharp. I could pick her snowy white coat out easily among the fall colours. She sat on one of the wrought iron benches, where I asked to meet. I sat next to her.

"Well?" she asked. "What's so important?"

I sighed, a lengthy, loud gush of air.

"You have to promise not to tell."

Madeline crossed her heart.

"I promise. If I break my promise... then I will remain a crazy loon forever," she said solemnly. I cracked a small smile.

"Okay... Well, you remember me telling you about Aiden, and what he did?" My voice cracked. Madeline nodded, all hints of her usual quirkiness gone. Madeline was the only person I had ever willingly told about my ordeals, with no persuasion. She understood.

"Something happened after him. I found out a few weeks later from my doctor, and I made her promise not to tell my parents. Doctor patient confidentiality, you know? I really liked that doctor, she was so nice and patient and-" Madeline cut my rambling off.

"Heather. What did she tell you?"

I took a deep breath, and whispered, "she told me I was pregnant."

Madeline covered her mouth, her already wide eyes growing as large as saucers.

"Oh my god. You're a mother?

"Shh," I hissed at her. "Be quiet." I took  another breath, trying to relieve my pent up stress.

"No, I'm not a mother. I told Aiden a few days later. He got so mad, yelling and screaming that it was my fault. He said I was a disappointment, and whatever kid I had was going to be retarded and deformed, because I was too.

I felt so terrible, the things he was saying had to be true. I didn't know why the boy that loved me could say such things. So I planned a meeting with Dr. Oppenheimer, an abortionist. I skipped school one day and went to his office. I thought maybe if the baby was out of the picture, Aiden could forgive me. But he couldn't. He told me to die alongside the baby."

Madeline put her hand on my back, sorrow written all over her face.

"You didn't," she said. "Did you?"

I was crying too much to to respond now, but I nodded. My shoulders shook with silent sobs, my hair soaked with salty tears.

"Did your mom know?"

I shook my head.

"Oh Heather." Madeline crushed me into a tight hug. We sat together like that for a while, the wind biting our faces and drying my tears, only to be rapidly replaced by new ones.

She didn't say that she was sorry, or that it was sad. She didn't tell me I'd be fine. She just held me. So much raw emotion was pouring out of me. It was more than I had ever known. The feeling was surreal, as if my life was a movie. I was just acting and would stop crying when the director cried "cut!"

I never heard the cut.

When I had first decided to get rid of the life inside me, the guilt had been overpowering. I couldn't believe I had killed something without giving it a chance.

I had killed my child.

As time went on, as the names got worse and my depression got deeper, I became numb. I couldn't feel my guilt. I had been numb to emotion, cold to the touch. I might as well of been dead already.

Living, breathing corpse. That's all I am.

Now the idea of not feeling regret for killing a child was like swallowing a slug. It disgusted me.