Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Lilly Philipps: Thursday, 25th December, 2015

"Perinatal asphyxia...It's a complex thing. I mean, diet, anaemia, stress, the positioning of the baby during birth...It all contributes..." A midwife in the corner of the room murmured to Carl Philipps. "We did everything we could for your daughter's little girl but it just wasn't enough. I'm so sorry."

It was 1:37AM.

It was Christmas day.

Sienna was gone.

The midwife was making an effort to keep her voice down but it didn't matter. Though Lilly heard the words, they didn't penetrate. Like when you put on your favourite song but get distracted and then have to wind back because although you knew it was there, it was nothing more than a noise, like the chirping of crickets on a sultry summer night or the dull tick-tocking of the obsolescent clock you've had in your room for years on end. There wasn't any point in the woman holding a hand up to her mouth either. What was she attempting to do? Stop Lilly from lipreading? There was no danger of that. Again, she stared blankly at the back wall of the room. She couldn't be bothered to move her gaze; it seemed like a task that would require God-like power. The air itself felt heavier, harder to ingest and exhale. She felt heavier. Everything felt heavier. Luca was doing his best to help, wiping stale tears from Lilly's cheeks with his thumb, pushing the strands of hair plastered to her damp face behind her ear, the nurses vacuously commenting on what a "true gentleman" he was. "You heard her! She doesn't want one." He'd said firmly as they'd tried to push Sienna's body, mottled blue face peering out of the blanket, onto Lilly for one final photo, ignoring her barely audible whimpers of "God, no, please, no!". She knew that some mothers did that but she didn't want to. The midwife later told her it was "a shame". She would've been "grateful for the memory" in the future.

"Grateful"?

Lilly had almost spluttered.

Her dad had done his bit as well, once Luca left the room, crouching down to her level and taking her hand as if she were a little girl again.

"You know, you keeping this from me...it can't have helped. I'm sorry, getting so angry at you after you missed the wedding. I'm sure there would've been a good reason why but I just jumped to conclusions and didn't give you a chance to explain. I know it hasn't really been the same between us since you came home for Christmas and I'm so, so sorry-" He had said, voice wavering, the tell-tale sign of a person about to burst into tears. She couldn't be dealing with that.

"I know, dad." She said, cutting him off before his words had the chance to melt into sobs. It wasn't that she was afraid him crying would make her cry too. She had done enough of that already. It was time for the tail end of the carnival; anger, that was. You don't deserve to be comforted, she told herself. It was your job to protect that baby and once again, you were too fucking weak. "You know," She'd turned round and said to her dad, "all the people that have left me and all that's ever stayed behind was the way they said goodbye. Most of them didn't....or couldn't. This baby had the potential to be everything I ever loved about the people that fucked me over. The things that made me love them in the first place. She had the potential to say things I was always too afraid to say. Sienna. Her name was going to be Sienna. But instead, I lost her, just like I lost mum. I'm too fucking weak to save anything good in my life." It had only been a whisper, the last part, but it was like the breaking of a dam, unleashing water that had been barricaded behind it for decades. "Everything goes to shit and I can't do anything to stop it. Everything's just shit, dad." She had shaken her head and spat her words out, like a furious youth in a street fight. Her dad had just watched her open-mouthed, his initial utter loss for words very familiar, like the pair of them had been transported back to that moment: Lilly at 11 years old wailing over her first period, him silently fiddling with the scarlet stained bed sheet.

"Lilly..." He finally said. "It doesn't work like that, sweetheart. Everything is not..." He hesitated; Carl Philipps had always had a thing about swearing. "Everything is not shit. Despite what you've been told, good and bad are not sworn enemies. They are the universe's oldest soulmates...You will never find one without the other, you know? You break some, you mend some, you build a little on top and before you know it, you'll have a castle. That's life for you. This, right now,-" But Lilly, not in the mood for a motivational speech, cut over him once again. Her anger had incinerated all that fear she kept stashed away of speaking out of turn.

"Sometimes," She'd said, "I think of all these questions that I never got to ask mum. There are all these answers to stupid questions that I'll never know. Like does she believe in God? Aliens? Ghosts? Does she think that evil truly exists? That WKD is tacky? Pizza Hut or Pizza Express? Cadburys or Galaxy? What does she think of the fucking Kardashians, you know? I never told her that I hated her, or to go fuck herself, or that she was a cow, or that I wish I'd never been born or shitty teenager things like that. I was terrified, all this time, of her...my baby, being without me, like I've been without mum. I never even thought about the reality of me being without her...I didn't think that something that cruel could possibly happen. I let that happen. " She had tried to turn her head towards the incubator in the corner, but her lower lip had begun to tremble. "God, I thought I was done crying." Her dad had stayed silent but not present for much longer. He'd called Luca back in, let him take over again and went to speak to the midwife, leaving Lilly where she was sat in that moment.

1:37AM.

Christmas day.

Sienna is gone.

She is never coming back.

A few months previously, after years of being most frangible of feathers, hurtling along in the wind, Lilly had finally realised. Realised that if she were to sprout some more, feathers that was, that she could fashion wings to fly against the current and maybe harness the wind itself.

But now?

It's all your fault, Lilly repeated to herself, feeling feather-like again. You're just too fucking feeble. 

And the weak? They're at bottom of the food chain. Just asking to be eaten.