Gone

It’s the small things … the way he holds his head … the way he smiles. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. There is just this uneasy feeling … the feeling something isn’t quite right. It’s always been there, if I’m honest, but I’ve never actually articulated it to anyone. I can only entertain the thought in the darkest moments. Most of the time I push the idea away and tell myself not to be silly. It couldn’t possibly be true. It would be ludicrous. How could it happen in this day and age of modern hospitals and modern medicine? No, no, no.

But then there are the hazy dreams, the half-remembered moments, coming round from the general anaesthetic when you were taken out of the cradle of my arms, I don’t know why, to be weighed, to be checked. A large bustling nurse, I can see her now, leaving the room, leaving with you, and I wanted to call out to say ‘stay’ but I was too tired from the drugs and I just had to watch you go. My enduring memory is of your tiny arm and tiny hand poking from the blanket as you disappeared out the door.

Later, after a sleep, I woke to see the cot beside my bed was empty. And the baby I was handed by a different nurse was not you.

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