30 - Empty
Cordelia
The world around me muddies into a jumbled state of sights and sounds that I can neither see nor hear.
My eyes are open, but nothing brings me clarity.
Not the nurses and doctors dropping in to check my blood pressure, or the slow drip of fluid into my veins.
Not even Logan’s soft utterances that have long become muffled by my disassociation.
He holds me because he’s afraid he’ll lose me. Like the minute he lets go, I’ll dissipate into a puff of smoke forever. Only I think he already has. Lost me, that is.
I’m nothing but an empty husk. Hollow. Devoid of feeling anything but pain.
He tells me everything is going to be okay. Keeps repeating it like a broken record. But he’s wrong.
Nothing is okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. That moment will remain etched in my psyche until the day I die. The rhythmic beat echoing through the torturous silence. It stole the very breath from my lungs and split my own heart straight down the centre; a crevice that would never heal.
A singular heartbeat.
Representative of the single magpie I saw this morning. I searched high and low for a second one. In fact, my desperation nearly caused a full-blown panic attack.
I never found one.
“I want Mama.”
When I pull away from Logan, the loss of warmth adds to the ice running through my veins.
The words that slip from my lips shock me, and judging by his reaction, him too.
Amidst the confusion, he nods, albeit reluctantly, and retrieves his phone from his pocket.
I can see it in his eyes; he wants to demand why on earth I would want her as a comfort blanket, but he doesn’t question it.
The flurry of emotions is like a raging fire. Mama is cold, predictable. She’ll stomp my heart to ashes and spit on them. But that’s what I crave right now: normality. Someone I can rely on to leave me to rot in my numbness and not bombard me with complicated questions I have no answers to.
Logan’s holding back his own emotions, refusing to show me his tears.
What kind of man can deny his body that release?
A fucking monster. That’s what Logan is: a monster who steals the breath from your very lungs and rips your beating heart from your chest. And yet, the way in which he caresses me with such gentle tenderness.
Or how he strokes my hair when I stir from sleep, when the nightmares take hold.
He’s my oxygen. A lifeline.
So why is my body shunning him, trying to escape itself? Is it the fear of losing myself completely? Or the notion that needing him this much could end in heartache? Destruction.
Devastation.
A quick call to Mama and she arrives in record time. Aptly covered in splattering of red paint, with bits of plaster clinging to her dishevelled hair, and a face like thunder. She hovers at the end of my bed, hands pinned to her hips, mirroring the stance I usually own.
“What the hell have you done to her?” Her spite is intended for no one but Logan, who scowls at the ludicrous accusation.
Eyes narrowed, and lip curling in disgust, he answers with a threat. Which is his default response to most challenges or disputes.
“Watch who you’re speaking to,” he spits, rising from the chair to square up to her.
Mamas on the short side, like me. I wasn’t lucky enough to inherit Papa's 6ft frame and therefore stopped growing at around 5.4. It’s why we both wear heels all the time, to appear taller.
However, even with her tallest heels on, Logan dwarfs her petite figure.
Mama shows no signs of being intimidated, though.
Her eyes glow with the ferocity of a lion protecting its cub.
“Please. Can we just go home?” I mumble through the charged tension.
They both turn to me, their expressions starkly different from each other.
“Of course, sweetheart,” Logan says, blue eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’ll get Ez to bring the car around.”
“Not with you.” I shake my head, swallowing the bitter taste on my tongue.
“What?” Logan’s expression shifts, and it’s like his eyes are taken over by a sudden fog, a tempest so consuming he’s on the brink of unravelling. “You’re coming back with me, Cordelia.” His voice is strained and doesn’t hold quite the same composure as usual. “We need each other.”
“No.” The execution of the single word hits hard. My voice doesn’t sound like my own as I whisper, “I just want to be alone.”
“You can’t— “
“She can do whatever she wants,” Mama snaps, her eyes cold and sharp. “And if that’s coming home with me, so be it.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” Logan sneers. “You don’t give a shit about her on any normal day. Why now?”
“Logan!” My cry pierces the air between them. I can’t stand to hear them fighting. There’s so many emotions spinning around my head, so much pain clawing at my insides. I can’t cope with them slinging insults at each other too. “Stop it! I’m going home!”
I’ve never seen him so dejected and furious at the same time.
His eyes turn this sombre shade of grey, pale and far from the usual turbulence smouldering in their depths.
His shoulders fall like a deflated balloon, and he bows his head.
My heart screams at me not to do this to him, but my conscience demands I distance myself from him.
To protect my baby from the threats he poses.
He tries once more to convince me, to make me see sense.
“Cordelia. Please don’t do this, don’t push me away.” His words are a desperate plea, begging me to reconsider. Logan never begs.
My gaze drops to the tube pumping saline into my body, and then to my painted nails. Red.
Everything is always red.
I shake my head, ignoring the constricting ache gripping my chest. A moment of silence passes over us, punctuated only by the quiet whir of machinery.
Then, he erupts in a maelstrom of destruction.
Tearing through the room in a reckless rage; ripping frames off the walls, upturning tables of medical supplies, smashing anything he can get his hands on.
At one point he charges at Mama, but she ducks out of his path just in time.
Logan’s utterly consumed, lashing out in the only way he knows how. And all I can do is sit and watch.
The mirror above the sink shatters beneath his bloodied fist. And as he stands there, forcing ragged breaths from his lungs, he glares at his fractured reflection with the kind of hatred reserved only for your worst enemies.
Grey eyes sweep over me, taking in the stark white of my own eyes, my knees drawn up to my face, back rigid against the headboard.
Regret. Self-loathing. Heartbreak. The emotions crash through him all at once. Staring at me through glassy eyes, he turns and storms out of the room without another word. A ruckus of male voices emerges from outside the room, followed by further noises of destruction.
That’s when fresh tears break through, streaming down my already puffy cheeks.
The irrational side of my brain orders me to leap out of bed and chase after him down the corridor, like some melodramatic protagonist in a romance drama.
Of course, the rational side reminds me I’m still hooked up to various observation machines.
The doctor arrives shortly after to discharge me and remove the tubes.
By the time I step out into the hallway, the boys are gone.
Did they have to sedate him? It certainly sounded as such.
On the way home, Mama doesn’t shower me with comforting reassurance or loving gestures.
In fact, she’s as cold as ever. She lectures me on how silly I’ve been to occupy myself with such unsavoury characters.
And how we can’t possibly tell Papa because he’ll be so utterly disappointed.
Eventually, I tune her voice out, and it becomes nothing but white noise mingling with the hum of the engine.
All I want to do is hide. Hide from the world and everyone in it.
The doctor said I did nothing wrong, so why do I believe I’m completely to blame?
Why is every fractured segment of my heart telling me I killed my baby?
It’s just one of those things, people will say.
Statistically, it’s quite common. But why did it happen to me?
Why am I the one who’s heart has been ripped apart? Why is it me who has to bear the crushing guilt? It plays out like a surreal nightmare. But the dried blood staining my thighs remains proof of the trauma.
As soon as Mama stops the car outside the front of our house, I leap off the leather like I’ve been burnt.
As soon as she unlocks the door, I dash upstairs to my bedroom, burying myself under the covers, pulling them up all the way to my chin.
The exhaustion is almost unbearable. My eyelids are so heavy, yet rebel against sleep.
I wish I could close my eyes and never wake up.
The pain would end. The barrage of self-blame, and the intrusive thoughts assaulting me from every angle.
Am I being punished for my negative perspective? When we were told at the scan, there were two heartbeats, I panicked. I wasn’t ready for one baby, let alone two. Is that why one’s been taken from me? If it’s happened once, what’s saying it won’t happen again?
Through the haze of tears, my phone lights up on the bedside table. Logan. His calls and messages have been relentless. He’s determined to reach me. I know he’s heartbroken too. But I can’t comprehend speaking to anyone right now. Part of me hates him. Wants to scream in his face and shake him.
He did this to me. Him and that stupid bet.
As the days pass by, it becomes increasingly difficult to drag myself from the minor comfort my bed brings.
The weighted blanket that usually provides security and a shield from the outside world feels limp and useless.
No material possession could ever heal the wounds tearing me apart from the inside out.
Countless notifications sit on my phone. I’ve read none of them. I can’t bring myself to communicate with anyone. I can barely form words.
Two pieces of bread stare at me from a china plate, cold, stale. It’s been days since food has passed my lips, or even water for that matter. My stomach rejects everything. Mama has been bringing different things each day, trying to encourage my appetite. But it doesn’t work.
My hands shake as I reach to grasp the slip of card between my fingers.
Swirls of monochrome blended to create the ultrasound scan.
The only evidence I have of proof of my baby girl.
The paper is cool against my heated chest as the tears well behind my eyes.
Except they never come. Because I’m so empty I can’t even cry.