Short stories: A little suspense

Mother and child

In the end, I only have what slips through my fingers, the stuff of dreams, fading. My feverish brain drugged up and loopy, held together only by flashbacks, of a pelvis cracking open, all fissures and splits. I couldn’t sleep in case the contractions exploded, even though my child slept beside me. The birth over, my brain determined to stay awake and watch for more danger.

No rest, only the bits of panic jumping off the hot skillet of my brain. An exquisite manic madness, agile, deft, quick.

I wake and dip, wake and dip surfacing under the moonglow of a large black tv, alien mother of this ward, spewing silent colors that splash and swallow. Gloved mummies come and go, pressing my uterus for leftover blood. I don’t know where they’ve put the placenta, medical waste in a biohazard bag at the bottom of a plastic bin? I didn’t opt for a lotus birth, carrying the placenta around in a bowl, still attached to the baby, salting it for freshness. I wasn’t among those in my yoga class that vi