Karlee Kapler

 
One afternoon, several weeks into my stay, I quietly ducked out for a walk in the neighborhood. The wing of the hospital where we were housed had a back entrance that staff used and was concealed from the street. We were instructed we must always use that door and had to be permitted to leave for only a short time. After taking a few steps on the path that led through some hedges into the street, I struggled to pull the black men’s jacket across my middle as the wind picked up from the slight breeze it had started as.

As I walked along the street, I dragged my feet hearing the crunch of the leaves that had fallen from the overhead trees, and as I did so I passed an elementary school with a group of young girls playing on the sidewalk within the schoolyard. The group was jumping along the sidewalk, pigtails, and ponytails flouncing as they bounded up and down chanting a song.

I stopped briefly to watch them and admire their freeness. I longed to be that free and unblemished again as I too was still just a young girl, and only a few years ago it seemed I had played similar games in the schoolyard. The girls were chanting and cautiously jumping over cracks in the pavement, chanting superstitions as their rhyming game.

“Step on a crack and break your mother’s back!”

“Step on a crack and break your mother’s back!”

“Step on a crack and break your mother’s back!”

I stood, leaning with one hand into the chain-link while completely enthralled in the chants of the young girls. I was tired and I believe I had zoned out for a moment, my vision slightly hazed as the girls continued with their rant. I rose my hand to my stomach to calm the chaotic fluttering of tiny heels and fists. The baby would begin a series of twists and kicks around the same time every day; I suspect it was due to being hungry as it would arise at lunchtime.

One of the girls broke from the line and skipped off to the side and bent down to reach for a brown paper lunch bag. From it she pulled an apple, and just as she slid it out of the bag she glanced up and our eyes met for a moment. She quickly glanced at my middle before turning away, and at that moment I had decided it was best I began my walk home. As I turned away from the girls, I attempted to hitch the second-hand jacket around myself. The fake wedding ring I was forced to wear when I left the hospital snagged on a loose thread and I shook my hand free.

I turned to leave, but not without one more look at the girls, and then I headed away from the school. As I walked, I could still hear the chants of the children. I made sure to stomp on every single crack between the school and the hospital as I could with as much emotion as I could muster. I could only wish.

I had been alone in the hall outside of where we slept when the pain began to roll from the centre of my stretched stomach. I braced myself on the nearest wall as I let my body sink inwards and absorb the shock of pain that spread in waves. After the contraction passed, I stepped as quickly as possible as my condition would allow and entered the shared bathroom. Closing the door behind me, I lifted my nightgown and slowly lowered myself to the toilet. Four tiny droplets of blood in the water of the toilet spread and sunk to the bottom of the bowl as I leaned my head against the wall beside me. Closing my eyes, I breathed in as the pain began to spread in a slow crawl from my abdomen to my back. Once the pain subsided, I reached for the toilet paper from the roll on the wall and wiped.A small streak of red. But not the one I had been praying for 35 weeks ago.

A nurse making her evening rounds found me on the floor outside of the bathroom and called for help. Someone with a wheelchair, I didn’t recognize the face, helped lift me into it and I was taken to the labour and delivery ward of the hospital. From the pain and the ripping and the gas I was given, I vaguely remember a gloved hand placing a pen in between my fingers and guiding me to sign a document. The pain was so fierce, or perhaps I was too high, but the words on the document bled together and had fuzzy outlines.The pain came and the relinquishing urge to bare down followed and then I remember only fading into darkness. The darkness came from the outer edges of my vision and swallowed everything around me. It became so still.

A hand roughly shook my shoulder and I was startled awake. It was the same room I had been brought to in a wheelchair. Now it was empty besides the nurse forcing me awake and was clinical again. Not a single trace of pain or chaos. Not a streak of blood. I was half-heartedly placed into the wheelchair and as I sat down, I could feel the pain dull and sometimes from between my legs. The nurse pushed me methodically through the corridor and a set of swinging doors. Out of habit, I placed my hands on my middle and to my horror was greeted by a soft and deflated hump. I turned to speak in protest but did so in time to see the nurse striding away from me, and the swinging doors violently throwing themselves inwards, almost close enough to smash my nose.

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