“I think you should have been the one to give birth to me.”
That’s what she utters between tears, with wide, confused child’s eyes, when she wakes up after the surgery that was supposed to rid her of the C-word once and for all. A harsh, taboo, painful word that reeks of hospital and a fragile life insidiously unfolding before your mind’s eye with all its what-ifs, if-onlys, might-have-beens, could-have-beens, and too-lates. A word that parades in a coat made of too much hair left in the brush. A word we dare not speak, clinging to the hope that ignoring a reality might erase it.
“I think you should have been the one to give birth to me.”
But I’m just a child in adult’s clothing, watching another child in a hospital gown, peeling a banana for her. I stifle my sobs, vowing to hold them in until I’m home where I can release them unseen. Because if I break down, she drowns in despair, and I yearn for her to breathe freely, as if her lungs were still intact. I’d give her one of mine. Probably any vital organ. I’d give her my very flesh. I’ve had more time to breathe easy than she has, even though I’ve lived 20 years less. And she deserves to breathe easy. Nobody deserves to breathe as hard as she does.
“I think you should have been the one to give birth to me.”
But I’m just a child, this time in child’s clothing, looking at another child in adult’s clothing, wondering…
