Chapter Sixteen
AVA-MARIE
I’d call myself a monster, but that would be inadequate. There wasn’t a term in this world that would describe the kind of heartless, deplorable, lack-of-a-person I was.
The child sat inside four clear walls, lying upon a soft bed.
Two days had passed, and I’d finally rolled into the NICU once I’d received my discharge papers.
I hadn’t been sure I wanted to visit, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.
The baby was getting Anichi healing treatments to keep his strength up, but it wasn’t enough for him to forgo modern medical support, so he’d be stuck in that incubator for weeks.
He was still hooked up to so many wires— feeding tubes, monitors, IVs.
His chest rose up and down as he took soft breaths, a strange alien life force.
Though many mothers would tear up at the sight of their baby inside an incubator, I felt as if I was watching him from somewhere outside my body, observing a screen instead of my life. It reminded me of my recovery after I’d gone into the Infernal Underground. I bitterly hated it.
The baby stirred. I expected some sort of rousing of emotion, but my heart remained cold. All I could conceive was emptiness and shame.
I was completely detached from this baby, from any idea of parenthood whatsoever. I didn’t feel any different from before I’d given birth to now, which made me feel broken, because everyone around me had said parenthood was a life-altering experience that changed who you were forever.
They’d all lied to me.
I came closer, looking intently into the incubator and trying to convince myself that if I stared hard enough, I could find something magical about this baby that would suddenly invoke feelings of deep, all-consuming love.
It didn’t work. It was just a baby, like anyone else’s baby. It could be stolen away from me and I wouldn’t feel anything but relief.
Tears burned my eyes, but it was more out of confusion than it was the idea that I didn’t care for this child.
How could I look at this little baby and not have any sense of compassion?
It was heartbreaking to see any child fighting for their life, but this baby was supposed to be mine.
I could barely register how sad it was that he was such a small thing…
let alone how terrible it was that I wanted nothing to do with him.
I couldn’t even breastfeed. The baby had to take formula through his feeding tube, because I hadn’t produced any milk and couldn’t manage to make any…
even though I’d secretly tried pumping on my own.
Breastmilk would help him recover as a premature baby, but I couldn’t even give him the natural medicine he needed to survive.
My body had let me down once again. I was a complete failure of a parent all the way around.
The intense guilt was the only thing I could cling to.
It was the one feeling I experienced toward Casey that wasn’t complete apathy.
I had to be some kind of sociopath. Maybe all I cared about was myself, and I only valued love based on what the people around me could offer.
This baby couldn’t give me anything, only take away, so I didn’t value him.
Perhaps I felt the same way toward Charlie. He’d stopped being useful, so I’d thrown him aside. My worst fears about how cruel I was had finally come true, and I couldn’t avoid them any longer.
I should’ve stayed dead. It would’ve been better for everyone. At least I wouldn’t have brought this child into this world, cursed to live with a mother that despised him.
My mother silently entered. She stood by me, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “A few more weeks and he’ll be out of the incubator and feeding on his own.”
“Not like it matters. He’ll have to take a bottle.”
“He’s getting fed, which is what’s most important.”
“I can’t even feed him,” I cried. “My body doesn’t work right. It can’t walk, cast magic, make breastmilk or even grow a baby to term. All it does is malfunction and fuck up.”
“You made a beautiful baby. He doesn’t have to be fully-grown to be perfect,” Mama insisted. “You’ve been working on getting better for yourself. Now you can focus on him.”
Mama squeezed my shoulder. “I’m proud of you for coming to see him. It’s progress.”
“Progress? I don’t feel anything for him!” I burst. “What kind of a mother looks at her child and doesn’t experience any love? He might as well be any baby, not my baby.”
I was defective. Like everything else in my life. I couldn’t be human, because no one who was normal felt like this. Some sort of cavernous hole without a bottom had opened once he’d been born. It had swallowed me up, taking away all light and blocking escape.
“But he is your baby, and he can sense that you’re around,” Mama encouraged. “Just being here with him is helping both of you.”
“It’s not doing anything but hurting us.” I wasn’t given the opportunity to bond with him at any point. The nurses did everything for Casey that he needed. I was just an outlier in his life, the vehicle through which he’d entered the world and not an important piece he needed to survive.
Visiting him didn’t feel like a priority. It was just a chore, an obligation I couldn’t get out of.
Devastation was a word that other people would use to describe my mental state, but it wasn’t close to what the truth was. Destroyed was more like it. The fact that I couldn’t love a baby I made proved I was unfixable, so broken nothing could heal me.
“Bipolar women have a high risk of experiencing postpartum depression. It’s not unusual for women like you to struggle to connect emotionally to their children once they’re born.
It’s common for someone with your condition.
That doesn’t mean you can never bond with him at all,” Mama encouraged.
“Your father and I were prepared for this whenever you chose to have your own child. We worried this would happen, but since we did what we could to look into it, we’re equipped to help if you let us. ”
“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want him.” I turned my back on the incubator, unable to look at the baby any longer. It was suffocating me to keep watching him.
“You may feel that way, but he’s here now, and you can choose to want him. He didn’t do anything wrong. His existence isn’t a crime.”
Her words rattled me. My entire life, and Charlie’s, had been about proving our innocence to the world whether we were guilty or not, because the world always chose to blame us anyway. It didn’t matter if we were the victims or the perpetrators.
But I was taking on that role by blaming this baby and declaring him guilty for the simple act of being alive. It wasn’t fair to make him a criminal when he’d barely taken his first few breaths.
“I’m afraid to love him. If I do, I’ll go back to Charlie, and I don’t want that.”
“You’re afraid of getting attached, because of what this means,” Mama said. “But you can choose Casey and not stay with Charlie. They’re not one and the same. Choosing motherhood doesn’t mean choosing marriage.”
“He deserves a family with two parents who are together.”
“He deserves a mother who is happy,” Mama insisted.
“That’s never going to be me.” My lip quivered, but I held it in.
I was so sick of crying. If I shed any more tears, I’d dissolve into mist and fade away.
“This child deserves more than what I can give him. He’d only be a burden to me, and he shouldn’t feel that way.
If I can’t give him what he needs, I need to find someone who can. I owe this child good decisions.”
“You have the ability to make them.”
“No, Mama, I can’t! There are so many people who can’t have babies who desperately want them, who’d give their lives to have kids, but I got stuck with one that I don’t have any feelings for because I was stupid!”
I dashed away moisture on my lashes with the back of my hand, and Mama stared. “Have you held him yet?”
I scoffed. “No.” I didn’t want to— and nobody had bothered to ask, either.
“I won’t push you into doing anything you don’t want to do. But it might help,” Mama offered.
“You can’t make me.”
“Just try,” Mama pleaded. “If it’s too much, I’ll take over.”
I allowed myself to glance at the baby. He’d probably been longing to be in my arms the minute he came out, and I wasn’t able to give him that.
I could give him that now, though. My shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fine. One minute.”
Mama reached into the incubator, carefully withdrawing the baby. She nestled the child into my waiting arms, being careful not to snag the tubes. She hovered over me, watching me carefully.
I could feel her eyes on me. She didn’t trust me not to hurt him. She wanted to believe this baby was safe with me, but she wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t, either. I didn’t feel any rush of love or powerful feelings. Casey felt like a warm, light weight in my arms, something that had a tiny heartbeat and little hands he waved in the air.
I didn’t want to harm him, though, and no thoughts crossed my mind of doing so, which was more than what I expected. I let out a short sigh of relief.
“How are you doing?” Mama asked cautiously.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Though he’s just a baby.”
Mama nodded. “Progress, remember?”
I stared at the baby, taking in his soft wisps of black hair. “When I was born, Eagle Spirit took Charlie’s soul to you. He saw you giving birth,” I said. “You guys couldn’t see him, but he was there. He felt my part of our spirit dying, and knew he had to do something to save me.”
My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades as I choked, “He gave up his eyes.”
Mama nodded, biting her lip— a tell that she was struggling to remain calm in the light of emotional news. “That would make a lot of sense. We knew that someone on the other side intervened, and that your birth was supernatural.”
The baby wiggled slightly, which made me stiffen in discomfort. “You think Charlie and I should work things out.”