In too deep, p.9
In Too Deep, page 9
“My baby boy…” he gushes. “He’s here. He’s been born. He’s… oh my goodness.”
Marcus collapses into emotional sobs which causes me to fly over to him at a million miles an hour. I hug him tight to my chest and comfort him. “Well done,” I whisper, as if he’s done anything at all. “Congratulations, big bro! You’ve done it! Is Liza ready for us to come in and see her yet?”
“She’s just with Sephy for the moment.” He wipes a stray tear away from his eye. “She’s been a God send, honestly. What an amazing girl. I don’t know what we would’ve done without her.”
My chest swells with pride, I’m so glad that everyone can see what a kick ass girl she is. Of course she’s been great, I can imagine her being awesome in an emergency. She’s the sort of person who becomes the glue to hold a situation together. God, I love her so damn much! I can’t wait to see her again and also for the moment to be right for everyone to know about us at last. Not long now.
“Okay well let me know when we should all go in, I know everyone is keen to see her.”
Marcus takes a seat and he grabs the coffee I brought for Mom. He swigs it back as if he’s in the middle of the desert and it’s an ice cool glass of water. I almost want to chuckle at him looking so messy and put of control, but I don’t. I guess I’m just happy that everything is okay.
“So, what is the name you’ve given the baby?” Dad asks in a firm tone of voice.
“We haven’t decided yet. We’re just going to let everything calm down first.” He gives me a look as if that isn’t quite the case, but I’ll get the gossip from him later. “Anyway, maybe we should go.”
We all pile up behind Marcus and walk eagerly towards the room. Even Mom’s hard faced façade breaks a little bit. I can almost see an emotional tear balling up in the corer of her eyes. Liza and Sephy’s mom is of course a sobbing mess, but I wouldn’t expect anything more from someone who wears her heart on her sleeve. Dad’s face hasn’t changed, but I suppose it won’t.
It’s a happy moment… at least it should be, but for some reason it isn’t. I don’t know why, I’m not sure what the hell is going on, but I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my chest. My stomach feels ice cold, my heart’s stopped for just a second, my limbs are stiff as a board. I don’t know why, it seems to have come from nowhere but I have a horrible feeling. I know that Marcus said everything is okay, but I don’t think it is. There’s some strange intuition in me that suggests it isn’t.
“Hold on.” I grab onto Marcus’s arm breathlessly. “Wait for just a moment.”
“Are you okay?” Marcus furrows his eyebrows at me as if I’ve confused him. “What’s wrong?”
“I… I…” I can’t say it because there isn’t any basis for my fears. I try to shake it off but my blurry vision won’t go. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Come on, let’s go.”
But every step feels like I’m walking towards somewhere horrifying. The muscles in my shoulders ache with the tension. I don’t know what I’m about to face but I already don’t like it. The positive feeling of a new start zaps from my body completely, as if it wasn’t ever there.
Then, as if to confirm my fears, a belly aching scream bursts free from one of the rooms which chills me to the bone. Bile swirls in the back of my throat, I feel like I’m going to be sick. I turn to stare at Marcus with wide and shocked eyes. His expression matches mine, he opens his lips a couple of times but no words come out, so I take it upon myself to speak instead.
“What the fuck was that?”
15
Persephone
Who’s screaming? Where the fuck is that sound is coming from?
It aches my ear drums, it makes my stomach fall to my feet, my whole world turns upside down. There’s something horrifying about that noise which I hate. I want it to stop, I need it to stop… but it can’t because it’s coming from me. I can feel it vibrating in my throat and ripping my heart apart.
It’s Liza, she’s cold, too cold. So cold that it isn’t right. One minute she was talking to me, babbling on about some stuff that admittedly I really didn’t want to hear, and now she’s lying there lifeless. Her eyes have rolled back into her head, her skin is already icy to touch, as if it’s changed in an instant, and now I don’t know what to do. I need to do something, but I can’t. I have baby Benji curled up in my arms and I can’t exactly just drop him. I need someone, but I can’t think straight to act normally.
“What’s going on?” All of a sudden, Alex’s very welcome voice rings out from behind me. I turn to see him with my tear stained face. “Sephy, are you okay? Is it you screaming? What’s going on?”
“L... Liza,” I stammer out, unable to vocalize my fears. “She’s cold, I don’t know what…”
He rushes past me and grabs onto my sister. His parents, Marcus, and my mom follow allowing me to step back to the wall of the room. I need to lean up against something to keep me standing upright. I feel like I could fall at any moment, and I really can’t collapse. This baby needs my strength.
Once my back has crashes against the wall and I stare down at Benji. Despite everything that’s going on around us, Benji has a face of sheer bliss and peacefulness. He looks exactly like Liza does when she’s content and happy which only causes the tears the stream down my face even more.
She knew something was going on, that’s the worst thing. I can tell from what she was saying to me. Maybe she knew for a while. She has been sick throughout her pregnancy. She’s always played it off to me as if it’s nothing and I took her words at face value, but now I can see a depth in them. Maybe she knew for a long time that this pregnancy wasn’t going to end well for her and she didn’t tell me.
No, I think firmly to myself. Don’t assume the worst. She’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.
“Your mom is okay,” I reassure Benji quietly while nestling into him and drawing some comfort from that wonderful, new baby smell. “She’s going to be just fine. They’re going to help her.”
Alex races from the room with a panic stricken face. I force myself to avert my eyes away from him because I can’t stand that look. It makes me feel ill. Liza will be fine, this is just a blip. This is just a worrying moment that we’ll all forget about later on when we’re all playing happy families. Pregnancy complications are normal anyway, I’m sure. It’s impossible for a woman’s body to go through all of that and not come out of it without quite a few tears on the other side. It’s going to be fine.
It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. If I keep telling myself that then it will be. I has to be, doesn’t it. “It’s going to be fine,” I tell baby Benji. “Don’t you worry at all.”
There might be a guttural noise coming from Marcus, one that sounds like his whole world has come to an end, but that doesn’t mean anything really. He’s just worried like me, like we all are, and I don’t have to take anything from the fact that Mom is on the floor weeping, she’s always like. An emotional mess who can’t deal with anything like an emergency. It means nothing at all.
Alex comes back in a little while later with a couple of doctor’s by his side. I feel an intense sense of relief as he does. Thank God, that’s a great sign. Now we can finally get some actual help.
Everyone else falls back to join me at the wall as the doctors get to work. There’s nothing that any of us can do now but remain strong for Liza. Or not, as the case might be for some people. I keep my eyes fixed upwards, looking at the lights so I don’t have to see Liza and her pale, sickly looking face. I can’t stand to see her this way, it’s a memory that I really don’t want. I’d rather blind myself.
“Time of death…” The world falls out from underneath me as I hear those three dreaded words. Time of death… that means there has been a death, which means Liza has to be… no!
If I didn’t have Benji clutched between my hands I’d fall to the ground entirely. I’m unsteady on my feet as it is, everything is spinning wildly, but he’s anchoring me. Him and my sister’s request for me to look after her child. No matter what. Now I know what she meant by that, she didn’t want me to babysit, she wanted me to be there for her son. She wanted me to take care of him, to love him as she would have done, to basically be his mother in her place. I already know how complicated that’s going to be but I don’t care. There’s a sick determination that I need to do what she’s asked of me.
My heart pounds violently against my rib cage and I can barely breathe. The walls close in on me, I can almost feel them shutting around me and squeezing the life out of me, I need to get out. Without even thinking, I bundle Benji closer to me and I head towards the door without even thinking.
“My wife!” Marcus screams from behind me, sounding like the world is exploding around him. I know that feeling, I understand it really well. “My wife is dead, my wife is dead!”
I feel for him, I get his pain, but she’s only been in his life for just over a year. She’s been in mine for my whole life and now she’s gone, just like that. Without me even knowing that it was going to happen she’s been snatched from my existence forever more. I no longer have my sibling.
I feel numb. I mean, of course I feel upset and heart broken, but mostly I feel numb like all the emotions have been completely stripped from my body, leaving me a shell of my former self.
I should have known, I torture myself as I run through the hallway to get outside. I should’ve seen this coming, there were so many signs, so many ways that Liza tried to tell me. I didn’t want to see it.
I have a lot to feel guilty for, so many reasons why I should hate myself but with Benji in my arms I can’t lose myself to that. I need to just make up for what I’ve done instead.
“Miss.” A buff looking security guard clamps his hands on my shoulders, stopping me just as I’m about to break free into the fresh, welcoming looking air. “Is everything okay, Miss?”
“Mhmm.” I don’t want to give him too much, I just want to get out. “I just need some air.”
“I can’t let you out, not with that new born baby in your arms. I have to assume that he isn’t yours for one, and two he only has a small blanket wrapped around him, so he’ll get cold.”
I suddenly realize that he thinks I’m kidnapping Benji which is a mess that I really need to clear up despite my messed up foggy brain. It’s really hard to think straight, but I have to. For him.
“Sorry, no you’re right, he isn’t mine. This baby belongs to my sister. She’s… well there were pregnancy complications and now I think…” Shit, the babbling falls away as a thick golf ball lodges in my throat. I have to finish this sentence somehow, I need to. “I think she’s… she’s dead.”
For a security guard who works in a hospital, he looks really put out by the mention of death. His expression flattens, I can tell he doesn’t know what to say, so he takes a step away from me. With his hands held high in a gesture that suggests he doesn’t want anymore to do with this, he leaves me.
This time as I walk towards the door it’s slower, my movements are more purposeful, but as I get near I stop and glance down at Benji. Maybe he will be too cold outside, these are the sort of things that I need to know if I’m going to raise a baby. Is this the sort of thing that people just know? Maybe it comes with the pregnancy hormones, which I didn’t get to have. Somehow, if I’m going to do with Benji then I need to learn it all. I wonder if Liza knew that she was putting her faith in the wrong person. Does she have a purpose for trusting me? Is this something she thought would be okay?
I sigh deeply and turn to walk back towards toward the dreaded room that I never want to set foot in again. I can’t run away, not when I’m so clueless. There’s no way I can do this alone.
“Oh my God, Sephy.” A tear stained Alex catches up with me. I can tell by the horrified look on his face that what I already know is definitely one hundred percent true. Liza is gone. “Where did you get to? Is the baby okay? Are you okay? This is all so horrible, I don’t know what…”
I look desperately at him knowing that all of our lives have been turned upside down forever more. There isn’t any coming back from this, nothing will ever be the same again. None of us will ever be truly happy again. I know for a fact that I certainly won’t be. How can I be, alone?
“Benji is fine,” I hiss back desperately. “He’s okay, I think, I mean I don’t know…”
“Come back with me.” He wraps his arms around me and guides me back towards the room. The warmth of his skin does nothing to comfort me today. “Everyone is looking for you, they are all worried. They want to know that the baby is alright. Marcus is… well, he’s a mess.”
“Liza asked me to take care of Benji,” I tell him, needing him to know. Once we get back into that room, I might lose control of everything and I need Alex to know what Liza wants from me. “She asked me, just before the eyes rolled back in her head and she went all cold. She asked me to take care of her baby no matter what. She wants me to help him… what do I do?”
He doesn’t answer me, instead he continues to walk with his eyes fixed firmly forwards. I have no idea what’s going on in his mind, I don’t know if he’s going to help me, but I seriously hope so. If he’s anything like the man who I think he is, then he’ll support me with this… I hope.
We get to the door and I freeze, I can barely breathe anymore. I don’t know if I can face this, I don’t know if I want to. “Don’t make me go back in there,” I beg. “I can’t do it. Don’t make me.”
Alex nods and allows me to sit on a chair in the waiting room. “Okay, you stay here and I’ll take control of everything. You don’t have to worry anymore.”
The only problem is I know I’ll never stop worrying again.
16
Alex
My head falls into my hands as a wave of distress washes over me again. The last week has been the worst of my entire life and it doesn’t show any signs of getting better. I cannot believe my dad still has me coming into the office to ‘hold down the fort’ as if I’m not hurting too. I mean, even if I didn’t know Liza well, I still hate to see my brother so broken, and I don’t think anyone can be okay after seeing a dead body. That rocked me to my core and still gives me horribly sad nightmares.
“Are you okay, boss?” one of the interns who’s name I don’t even think I know, asks me sadly. “Is there anything I can do? Anything you need help with? You seem to be in a bit of a mess.”
He isn’t wrong, I’m in a right state. Trying to be my dad when I don’t have any knowledge or passion about the industry is impossible. Especially when I can barely think straight.
“Yeah, I mean, I could definitely use some help getting organized,” I reply with a mirthless sound. “I don’t know where to start, I have no idea what my father does on a daily basis.”
I wish he was here, I really do, but he isn’t. Marcus can’t be here because he can’t get out of bed, and my dad is on a mad custardy fight because he needs to find a way to control this situation. He can’t stand the fact that this all happened without him having any say in the matter. It’s so dumb. I don’t think he gets that Sephy hasn’t taken Benji out of spite, she’s done it because Marcus admitted that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he can’t cope, and also because her sister asked her to. If he would just stop being a jerk then I’m sure we could just come to some sensible arrangement.
“Yeah okay, I’ll take a look through your paper work and see what I can do.”
As the intern gets to work, I grab my cell phone and I stare at the screen morosely. I know that there’s no point in calling or messaging Sephy again because it isn’t getting me anywhere. Whether it’s purely grief or I’ve done something wrong, I don’t know, but she isn’t speaking to me. She doesn’t want to know, I guess everything that we once shared shattered the moment Liza died. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to communicate with her again. If she doesn’t want me with her during the most horrific time of her life, then maybe what we had wasn’t that strong at all. I don’t know, I’m driving myself nuts over it. I can’t eat or sleep, I can barely function. All I can think about is her.
“Are you okay?” the intern asks again. “Sorry, I don’t want to impose, I know this is a shitty time, I don’t want to get in the way but I just want you to know that I’m here.”
“Yeah, thank you,” I answer in a hollow tone of voice. I am grateful for the gesture, but I can’t respond to it in the right way because I’m a mess. “I might just have a break if you don’t mind.”
I push myself up from the chair and wander through the hallway to the break room. I hate this fucking building, it’s always made me feel ill but now it’s even worse, now it represents how trapped I am. I came back to see my brother start this journey into his new life, and now I’m stuck here after it’s ended. I’m under no illusion that this will get better any time soon, if anything I think it will get worse. And I really don’t want to spend this time stuck here in a place that I despise.
“Fuck it,” I mutter to myself like a crazy person as I continue walking. “Fuck it.”
I don’t want to be here any longer, even to help my family out. I can’t stand it. I’m not any good anyway, I’m not doing anything useful. I’m just making everything worse if anything. It’s torture, I need to get out, I need to be somewhere else. Of course, my itchy feet want to head straight to the airport and to get on a plane. My heart yearns to escape to some wide open space with long beach or something, but I don’t think I can. I can get out of here, but not out the country. Not when my family needs me, and also on the off chance that Sephy might get in touch. I know it’s tragic to hold out for someone that might never want me again, but I can’t help myself at all.
