sonder

penny

do you know where the sick babies sleep? i do. i know where they sleep.

there they go. under big glass boxes. under purple light so that the whole rooms lights up like a painful bruise. sore on your eyes when you stare at them. their limbs hang off their pea bodies, their limbs limp and tired. that purple light and god, the smell of cleaning wipes everywhere. i can't escape the smell of squeaky clean surfaces but dirty baby bodies that are infected, i can't. the purple light and the red blocky skin and the purple light and yellow milk in yellow bottles under the purple light. i can't forget it. the dizzy somber colors. i can't.

penny comes in at eight. she comes alone. i watch her scrub under her nails and up to her elbows from the copier. then she hits the buzzer to come inside and i walk away fast. i'm afraid to look like her one day; those shiny eyes with heavy lines under. ready to cry on command.

i was changing his chart in the corner i hate. the purple light made the paper the color of sickness too. purple light. purple light on penny's face when she comes closer. she taps the glass. glass keeping her baby prisoner of prematurity. i bite my tongue hard.

she watches me. i file the papers in the swollen binders and she watches. i try to move faster. i noticed her goldilocks sitting in knots on top of her head earlier and i don't want to notice them again. i keep my eyes low and pray she doesn't open her mouth. not a word. or a sound. not after nurses elizabeth and danika talked about her in the break room. i heard them with my head inside the fridge.

her husband jumped. maybe he saw something nobody else did. maybe he saw the whole universe under his feet and he wanted to be swallowed up by otherworldly floating, milky lights and colored up stars. maybe he was too sad to think of anything else. too sad to think of his wife with a baby growing inside of her. but they talk about him like he was stupid. like he was a stupid man with stupid sadness. he left such a pretty woman behind and such a pretty boy, stupid man, elizabeth says. i try not to think of elizabeth's voice inside my brain though. not when penny is sitting right here. i can feel her melancholia coming off her skin. i'm scared. i want to run away. but then her hair comes undone and i watch those twisted up curls fall over her washed up gray eyes. oh those eyes. mine burn and hers too. i hold my breath and hope she doesn't cry but i can't stop staring in her clouded-skied eyes because i'm swimming in sadness, in her soggy eyes and the purple light. i blink hard but she doesn't and i snap myself out of it quick enough to scamper away like a scared puppy.

penny dreamed of a family always. i heard her say it. the picket fence. the brick house. the bicycles laid outside in the backyard. the school lunches in brown paper sacks. the soccer games or dancing recitals. i heard her crying real hard. it's gone now, all of it. what did i do wrong? what did i do wrong? tell me what i did to make them go bad? was it me? what was it? tell me. tell me now.

every time i go to the corner i see her baby. tubes replace his body. he's gonna fade until he's nothing but machines and tubes and purple skin. shriveled up purple hibiscus. he'll never grow again. oh, penny. i think of penny and her eyes that forgot how to close. she forgot how to sleep. penny and her sick baby. she knows too now. penny knows where the sick babies sleep. and she will always wish she didn't.