Free The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

a pregnant woman wearing so much make-up anyway?
    I look at the shoe and the blood and know there won’t be a next time. I’ll either die tonight or leave him and, from my place on the carpet, it feels like fifty-fifty. I don’t realise that dying is not as easy as people presume.
    As something shifts badly inside and the terrible pain starts in my belly, I know that as usual I’ve left things too late. My weakness is killing my baby. I scream, but not from the pain. Awful as that is, the scream comes from somewhere else, for something else and someone else. Someone I’m never going to know.
    In the distance I can hear the wail of the ambulance, but I no longer care. I should have seen that blue line and walked right out of the house. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Squeezing my eyes shut, unable to ignore the blood anymore, I cross my heart and hope to die.
    I don’t, of course. Wishes and fairy tales don’t come true.
    I am in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I give birth to my baby, but she’s already dead. She’s gone straight from the A of life to the Z of it, without any of the ups and downs and shapes of the letters inbetween. I landed badly and her tiny neck snapped and her skull was damaged. She was dead before we left the house.
    They clean me out with brisk efficiency, adding to the hollowness inside me. I wonder if they’ve taken myorgans out with her. It certainly feels like it. I am an empty balloon and there is nothing that can breathe air into me.
    He comes to see me and realises that it’s all over. He is afraid, which surprises me. It diminishes him and I hate that someone so small has caused all this pain.
    ‘I want a divorce,’ I hear myself saying.
    ‘Are you going to go to the police? About the … accident?’
    I stare at him for a long time, his self-concern etched into his shallow face and I wish I could have seen this clearly on all the other days. Like I see now. Right through the cracks.
    We agree a deal. I want to buy your house. It’s all that will stay in my head without wriggling out. I want to go home. And I want him to pay for it. I want him to pay for a lot of things, but I don’t have the energy for that so I take what’s easiest for him to give. Money.
    He doesn’t argue. He can’t. He nods numbly. He has too much to lose. Not like me – I’ve already lost everything. There will be no more babies. The doctor was quite clear on that.
    After I’ve signed the papers, after I see the relief in his weak and broken face, I sink back into the drift that’s been waiting impatiently for me and I let the pain take over. I hear the doctors whispering. They talk about pills and rest homes. I push myself further into the bed. The pillow is soft. I wonder how it would feel over myface. Not too bad, I imagine. Not compared with this.
    I go into the drift for a long time. From somewhere inside I know there are people looking after me and I wish they would stop. They insistently drag me back to the world with their talking and medication and care. Eventually I can’t fight them any longer and let them bring me round to not-quite-normal. It’s a couple of months, however, before they let me leave and I can feel their eyes on me, wondering how long it will be before I return. The drift is like that. It never really lets you go. And they know that.
    I go straight home and buy your house, ready to fade away in it, and so the new chapter begins. I go into the bedroom. I find the fairy tale book. It tears at my heart and I drift a little.
    *
    I come out of the drift slumped against the windowsill, the fairy tale book discarded on the floor. I can just about make out the white of its worn cover. The cold fills me and I shiver, only vaguely confused at the loss of time. I’m used to these things now. The world is often disjointed at the edge of a drift. My eyes slowly adjust to the gloom. They feel sore and gritty from crying. I rub them.
    The room is dark with only the street