Page 32 of Chaos

“Administer more,” Dr. Kane ordered him and glared at him over the drape that curtained her neck and body. He nodded in response. I tried to read my blood pressure, but my vision was just too blurred. Closing one eye, I could make out the bottom number to be 45 mmHg, but I may as well have forgotten reading the top digits. I gave up. It wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered now was Noah.

One last nauseating tug happened, and everyone fell silent. My eyes darted to Mom’s as I waited for any emotion to flash in them. I needed some sign. No one was telling me anything, and I didn’t have the strength to be as loud as I normally would be.

A last, the most amazing sound filled the room, and it was incredibly loud. Noah screamed so loud I was sure people in the waiting room would be able to hear him. Mom’s eyes filled with tears of joy, mirroring the emotion that quickly transitioned in mine. Pure happiness.

“He’s absolutely perfect, Eris,” Dr. Kane proclaimed, lifting him up for me to see he was healthy and then handing him to the nearby nurse. Of course, at this point Mom had pulled her phone out and was capturing our happiness. She was right. This was a moment I would need for the rest of my life, even though it only began a few seconds ago. I thought I was alive before Noah was born, mostly because people and science told me I was, given the breathing and moving around I was doing. Technically, I was, but they were all wrong if you ask me. I knew in this moment, I was born right alongside Noah. Watching the nurses clean him off and take pictures of Mom pretending to cut his umbilical cord, I knew this was the first time my eyes had actually seen the world, and I understood the reason Mom took so many damn pictures.

I awoke with a smile, knowing my son had been born just moments ago, and then it faded into the most guttural scream I was capable of creating. I hated everything about this world and the breaths I was allowed to take. Nothing made sense about death. Knowing I’d been allowed to do more than my share of living and continued to breathe not only baffled me, it pissed me off. Seven years wasn’t enough time to even get to know the world, much less hold enough breaths to have them taken away from you.

Hate burned my throat and tears crept into my eyes, but I didn’t fight them. It was pointless. There was a breaking point with anyone, and mine had split along with my heart, repeatedly for years. A vicious cycle that repeatedly left irreversible damage in its wake. Many people said a heart wasn’t capable of truly breaking. They were wrong. If they’d endured even a millimeter of what I had, they may quit rattling off that stupid scientific nonsense.

I’d intentionally left behind all the pictures and the living people in them back home. I didn’t want to remember. Splinters of heartache had webbed across my heart for years, but tonight, I’d reached my quota. Misery burst through and shattered my soul into millions of little pieces.

I pounded my fist against the tub until I saw blood streaking down its hard white surface and then danced across the cold water as it mixed together. Holding my tongue between my teeth to prevent another scream, I raked my hands through my hair, not caring at all if the remnants of blood were left on my bangs.

My knuckles stung when I hastily dunked them into the water to clean the blood from my skin. I knew I couldn’t break my tub, but that couldn’t be said for most things in my apartment, and I didn’t have that much in here to destroy. I needed to leave or I’d be left to pick up the physical pieces of my life, alongside the mental ones I knew I’d be gathering tomorrow.

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