My husband is mad at me.
"They knew; they knew and you didn't tell me?!" I don't think he's ever yelled at me before. I'm uncomfortable in my seat - the brown microfiber scratching into my skin. "Why wouldn't you tell me? I would have been screaming at the doctor's and demanding to talk to their lawyer, what the fuck Roze!"
It didn't occur to me.
"It didn't occur to me."
I just didn't think it mattered.
"I just didn't think it mattered."
I twitch my legs again because this stupid couch suddenly itches so much it hurts. I pick at my nails, or try to really because I've already picked so much there's hardly any skin left around them. "You told them..." "I told them."
"What if they do it to someone else?" That though hurts my heart. People always say that, that their heart hurts, but it's not that simple. It's like fingers digging into the fibers of my heart and constricting. It's bricks pressed against my chest so roughly it feels like I can't expand my lungs enough to breathe. It's wet and cold skin; sticky skin that pulls underneath the tips of my fingers when I drag them across my arms to hold myself. Because... I guess I never thought about it like that. Or maybe I just never really thought about it period.
The fact that I told them I could feel everything before we even entered the OR was irrelevant because I suffered through a repeat c-section while feeling every tiny bit. That I said it more than once didn't matter. It didn't matter that I said it again before they started. It didn't matter because I had so much more to focus on.
"Roze!?"
My eyes refocus then blur again; though this time it was tears biting at the corner of my eyes and not memories. I bend my lips upwards. It wasn't so much a smile as a macabre play of one across my lips. "I'm here."
"We could sue Roze. Roze.."
Do you believe I don't understand that? I think about it every time I barely attend doctor appointments because the thought of doctors makes my head light. I thought of it when I cried through my entire x-ray because the lights reminded me too much of lying on that table; strapped down and jerking against the ties across my thighs. I definitely thought about it when I almost skipped my spinal because I was breathing so fast and hard that I couldn't breathe. I think about it everytime I have to skip over television episodes that send me spiraling back. I think about it every single fucking day. I think about it.
"I know."
It just didn't occur to me.
"Amidst everything else that happened during.."
Feeling them slice and rip my skin apart like thickened paper. So much fucking paper.
"That what happened before would matter."
He left for work then. I stayed home shifting against the itchy couch and willing myself to keep breathing. If I just breathe eventually even my worst nightmares will end.
They have to, right?
