“WHERE DO DEAD BABIES GO?”
The nurse walked closer with the stainless steel hanger, bent on the sides. I heard her say things about this being the last time she will get involved in the death of a child. She blamed the government for her unemployment, and while she prayed to the heavens and gods to forgive her, my mind wandered.
Two months ago, we had one of those fights again. Justin walked out of the room and mumbled a few words about being back later. I lived for these fights, not how it starts off but how we end it; the feisty and explosive sex was everything you can imagine it to be. I listened to his car drive off and picked up my phone to text what had become my most used words “I’m sorry, Justin”. I watched the message receipt show “read”, and no reply came in as I expected. I had become familiar with playing the fool for Justin. I walked into the room, picked up my bag and searched for nothing in particular.
“This girl, open your legs, we don’t have all day”, the nurses’ words sounded too familiar. I tried to keep my legs open, but I imagined the pain, and it kept my legs shut. The nurse administered an injection shot to me, but somehow my body was still alive.
“Am I not meant to be numb? Should I not be sleeping? I thought you said the shot will make me sleep” I asked the nurse endless questions while holding back the tears in my eyes. I had promised myself I would stay strong through it all.
“Ehe, other people, I inject them once and fiam, they sleep off”, she tried to cajole me into being strong as I won’t feel anything. I finally got my legs to open up; I looked to the right side of the room. I wondered if the passers-by knew that there was a slaughterhouse for innocent babies behind the regular looking pharmacy. I looked at the curtain, which used to be white but now soiled with dust and dark bloodstain. The ceiling had a better view, it maintained its whiteness, but as I always do, I tried to worry about it. I wondered how many young girls the ceiling had met, how many of them it has watched get ripped apart with a hanger. I thought about the ceiling in Justin’s house, how different it was.
Justin came home that evening, a box in his hand. I stirred from the bed and knew what he had gotten, lingerie set from the store he saw me checking out on Instagram. Justin knew the way to a woman’s heart, and it was hard to stay mad at him.
“I want to see how you look in those”, he said as he threw the box on the bed. I didn’t need him repeating himself; I was ready for what came with this gift. While in the bathroom, I heard him pull the drawer; he pulled out the kit, and with the quietness in the room, I knew Justin had lined the tools up; from right to left, the cuffs down to the whip. I walked into the room and smiled at how accurate I had been, the typical Justin make up starter pack. I knew what to do. Next, I climbed on the bed, look up to his ceiling made of mirrors and stretched my hands to him.
“You see, I told you, one minute and it’s over”, the nurse said as she dropped a lump of blood into a dark green bowl. She washed her hands and dried them on the curtain.
“Can I see the bowl please?”, as expected, she gave me a weird look and passed the bowl. I would throw up at the sight of blood, but this darkened blood-clotted lump was mine, my child, Justin’s too.
“Where do you want me to cum?” he asked as I held him in with my thighs. He laid on my body and asked why I let him cum inside of me. We had fought that morning because my ovulation pain had me so cranky I cancelled a plan we had made months ago.
“You were okay with being called daddy some minutes ago”, I said while he uncuffed my hands from the edge of the bed. Justin rolled his eyes and pointed to the bathroom. While he was gone, I looked at myself in the ceiling mirror and giggled at the thought of a real baby calling Justin “daddy”.
I asked the nurse the question that had been on my mind all day, “where do dead babies go?”. She took the green bowl away from me, hissed and ignored the question. She ordered me to get off the table and gave me a sanitary towel as I was bleeding a lot. I picked up my phone to check if Justin had called, nothing, just as I expected. I wore the sanitary towel and kept my eyes fixed on the nurse and my child in the green bowl. Maybe if I had kept my baby, I wouldn’t bother about where dead babies go.
“Justin, I’m pregnant”, I stretched the pregnancy test strip to him. He held his hand on his head, laughed and asked if I was joking. He insisted I did something about it because he wasn’t ready to be a father. I begged, cried, and held on to Justin’s leg like the helpless seventeen-year-old I am.
“Nne, you have to leave now; I have other people to attend to”, the nurse said while giving me a pack of pain relief tablets. I thanked her and staggered outside, and flagged down a taxi immediately.
“I have sent you some money. Make that baby disappear, send it to wherever dead babies go. I do not need any drama in my life now”, those were the last words I ever heard from Justin.
While sitting in the taxi, I occupied my mind with a million thoughts.
“What had the nurse done with my baby.”
“Is it okay to text Justin now?”
“Will I stop bleeding?”
“Will I ever know where dead babies go?”
THE END.
