Page 105 of Spiralling Skywards: Fading
His arms fell to his sides and the expression on his face was one of agony.
“I fucking love you!” he screamed. “Never, never have I considered you worthless and without purpose.” Tears streamed from his eyes as he spoke, his face twisting as if he were in physical pain. The machine monitoring my heart was frantic with its beeps, and the blood pressure cuff was tightening again. Nurse Judy barrelled through the door this time, eyebrows drawn into a frown, looking like she wanted to inflict harm instead of help me sip water.
“This is a hospital, can you please keep it down? Otherwise, I will have to ask you to leave.” Her eyes met mine and softened. “Are you okay, Sarah? The doctor shouldn’t be too long now.” I nodded my head and gave her a small smile through my tears. She looked pointedly between us. “She’s been through enough, you really should give her a break right now,” she told Liam.
He shook his head, but she gave him a long look before she shrugged her shoulders and left.
“All you had to do was talk to me, just open your mouth and say the words. I would’ve listened. I would’ve gotten you help. I would’ve done anything, any fucking thing for you, Sarah, but this, what you’ve done . . . I don’t . . .”
“I had an abortion.”
There, just like that. Four little words, and my dirty secret was out there.
He stepped back, no, he staggered back from my bed. His mouth hung open as he drew in air.
“What? When? I don’t . . . Why?” Confusion, panic, disbelief. I saw it all in his eyes. There was nothing but sheer horror written all over his face.
“Six months ago. I knew I was pregnant almost immediately. It happened when we were in the South of France, when I forgot to take my pills with me. That last night.”
He closed his eyes tightly, bent over, and gasped in air like he had just run a marathon.
“I went two whole weeks without contraception, and you promised you’d be careful. You . . . we weren’t.”
He stood up straight and looked right at me.
“It was mine? You weren’t having an affair?”
I wanted to cause him physical harm for that comment. Despite everything—the situation I’d created, what I did—I was shocked that he would think that I would ever do that to him, to us.
“No, I wasnothaving an affair. I have four children, three of whom are under five. I can’t take a shit without at least one of them in the bathroom with me. When the fuck would I have time for an affair? But aside from that, I would never do that to you. I would never do that to us.”
He laughed sardonically.
“You’d never have an affair, but you’d go behind my back and murder my child, then try to top yourself because you can’t live with the guilt?” He was frothing at the corners of his mouth as he spat out his words through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know you any more, Sarah, and that breaks my heart. I don’t know you, but right now, I fucking hate you.”
He lifted both hands to his head and gripped at his hair whilst he tried to draw in a breath. His face was wet from tears, his nose was running, and he could barely breathe. He was broken. I had broken him. My husband. The one and only love of my life. I had broken him.
“You murdered my baby,” he stated very quietly. “Without even discussing it with me. Fuck. Fuck. After everything we went through to bring them into the world? How could you do that without talking to me?” He picked up the chair he was sitting in earlier and smashed it repeatedly against the wall.
I cowered in my bed and cried.
“We’re done! We’re fucking done, you murdering cunt. Right now, I don’t think I care if I never set eyes on you again.”
I curled onto my side and cried harder, not bothering to watch him walk out of my hospital room and my life.
