I stood in my hospital gown and stared down at feet I hadn't seen in months. My legs trembled. I didn't know which pain the trembling was from; my body or my soul. Leaning against the tile doorway, I turned the water up as high as it would go, tossing pale blue fabric in a heap behind me as I stepped inside my sanctuary. No one could hear me in there. Maybe that's why they told me not to shower yet.
A sad choking laughter came from my throat as I looked to my feet again. My dad's socks were soaked. I had forgotten to take them off. But now, stained with thick rivulets of brick-red blood, I couldn't return them anyway. I tried to make a mental note to replace them. I tried to think of anything but where I was and why I was there. I closed my eyes and felt her again, lying on top of my stomach. She was so small and warm. I was afraid that I would break her tiny fingers if I touched them. But, God, she was beautiful.
My eyelids squeezed even tighter when I heard the words bouncing back through my head. That damned nurse muttering outside the door: "This is the adoption, right?" A lump as rough and awkward as a football lodged in my throat. I wanted to scream, "No! Never mind. I was wrong." Every ounce of me knew, though, that wrong would be to keep her. A seventeen-year-old girl and her alcoholic boyfriend have no business with a baby.
My eyes opened. Tears burned hotter than the water splashing into my face. I looked at my feet again. Her first home was gone. She was gone. My own hand felt alien against the empty sagging flesh of my stomach. I pushed, amazed at the void I felt. I pushed my fist even deeper, certain that I would feel my spine against my knuckles any second. My arm vanished beneath my wrist. No definition of "empty" would have made more sense to me. That was it.
Her bitter voice came again. "If she's throwing her away, she has no business putting anything but Baby Girl on the certificate."
Deep wracking sobs of grief came in waves. Pain unlike anything I'd ever known. I couldn't get the picture out of my head of my little girl squirming inside her little pink blanket. She wasn't just a lump anymore. She wasn't morning sickness, weekly blood tests, ultrasounds or screaming matches with my boyfriend's mother in the front yard. She was my little baby girl.
But she wasn't.
I heard them cackling around the nurses station. "Put somebody in her room with a baby so she can see how a real Mama behaves."
Water beat down on my burning skin like stones cast by a condemning mob. My knees wouldn't hold me up any longer. I dropped. Swirls of bloody water on bleached white tile splattered from the exhausted slap of my hands. Sounds that echoed back to me were the frightening howls of demons and monsters. I couldn't imagine them coming from my throat. They came from someplace deeper; someplace unrecognizable to me.
I curled up into the position she had kept inside of me, anguished by my newfound solitude. I lay still, whispering the name I would have given her had she been mine.