Deceiving Warmth

Your hand was warm.  It lay softly in mine as I cradled it, listening to the steady beat in the background as I reached out towards you with my thoughts.  I watched your chest rise and fall in stubborn, continuous rhythm, and listened to the repetitive rush of air as the machine determinedly forced oxygen into your ruined body.

You were still beautiful.  I’d always thought so and I didn’t stop now; I wouldn’t let circumstances change how I saw you.  The bluish tinge around your lips and under your eyes made you look cold, and without realising what I was doing, I shrugged off my jacket and laid it over you, avoiding – or maybe ignoring – the tubes that were keeping you in my world.  I didn’t like to think of you as cold... I knew how you hated it.

Your face was so peaceful.  The stress of the last eight months seemed to have faded away into the lax muscles; you looked like you were sleeping.  I used to love watching you sleep.

They were waiting.  Impatient, but the rules and conventions of this cruel world of ours – now mine to face without you – held them back from hurrying me.  The youngest surgeon had looked scared of telling me, but what could I have done?  My tears would have done nothing to change anything, and yet still I cried.

I stood up, and leaned over you; your cheek was soft, smooth and warm as I kissed it.  That warmth made it so hard to accept what I knew to be true, and what I knew I could no longer deny.

Keeping my hand over yours, I nodded sharply at them; the Reapers came forward and grimaced in practiced sympathy.  I tried to ignore the chill that swept into the room; I was entrusting you with them, and I didn’t know whether that was right.

I heard the machines stop, and the monitor cease its steady beat.  I kept the link with your hand throughout, and rested my other hand on my warm stomach; in one, I held you – I held death.  In the other, a life which you had given to me.

Just a month to go, love.  So close.  You will never see our baby.

Love's Hate - Sonnet Interpretation of Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'

Is not Love a dual-faced pretender?

One that tricks thee to laugh and weep the same?

To she who dares not kill - fears not to maim -

Still yet we offer sanctuary.  Hers

Is poison divine; that ivy creeper

Gropes our hearts and draws forth the Shadow Dame.

Masque stained ruby red from devotion's pain,

She taints blind bliss with dark doubt's bitter curse.

For are not Love and Hate much the same?  Does

Not Love bestow that which Hate tears apart?

In Her anger, She breaks that which She knows

She creates, for this artist loathes Her art,

The magnificence woven from Her own

Longing: The Jekyll and Hyde of our Hearts.

Supported

I ached all over, from both the routine trauma of physio, with all its unforgiving pounding and straining, and the powerful bleach-like antibiotics they had pushed into my system. It was contagious, they said. A nasty infection that could be passed on by flesh-on-flesh contact. Whilst it was not fatal, it was certainly unpleasant, and my family, oh-so-weary of my unending stream of maladies and their subsequent complications, had seized upon the opportunity of absence, fleeing the hospital in a barely civilised manner.


I? I felt distinctly abandoned. I hurt, everywhere, and the ward sister, having shut me away for the night in a small private room to prevent my contaminating the entire ward, was noticeably inattentive. I never could understand their attitudes. They made me feel like this was all my doing, but I hadn’t been driving the car that had fractured my spine on impact – I hadn’t asked for any of this. I’d actually enjoyed the ability to walk. Learning to do it all over again as the localised paralysis shifted from day to day was not something I’d asked for. But none the less, I was a drain on NHS resources, and a drain on everyone’s time and patience.

It was startling how that day had changed my life… How stepping into the world had been such a course-altering decision to take. My perspective on everything had completely changed. After all, things look very different from way down in a wheelchair.

Using my arms, I pulled my legs up to my chest and hugged them to me, curling up defensively against the pain from within; I didn’t notice the door open, nor him until he’d slipped into the uncomfortable hospital bed with me.

Nothing was said. Nothing more than the sound of his heart beat thrumming in my ear as I lay my head against his chest was needed. I wasn’t really surprised to find him holding me that night, as he had done so many times before; a part of me had known he would ignore the orders to stay away and avoid infection. He, like I for him, would risk so much more than just that for the sake of my happiness.

As I curled up with him, my closest friend, the one who had kept me sane throughout the last few months stuck on a hospital ward, the pain was soothed away, and I knew that as long as I had him, I could live without walking.

As long as I had him, I’d always be flying.

Dedicated to Mitchell Dytham <3