touch her. He didn’t get to hold her. He didn’t get to cut the umbilical cord. He didn’t get to kiss me and smile proudly at us, at his daughter, at the piece of him we waited for. Where one life had begun, his had been robbed from him. At the end, Billy got what he wanted, even in death.
He destroyed my life and Conor’s.
He left a bloody footprint in time. An irreversible moment that I would spend countless nights begging the world to rewind.
Because this couldn’t be real, could it?
I had to wake up eventually.
And cruelty took form in my dreams, haunting me, rewinding those moments. My mind erased the event, pieced together a reality where Billy had not come to take me, and it was Conor instead. It was Conor who drove recklessly through town, who took me into the hospital room and held me with warmth, giving me cherished kisses as I gave birth to our baby.
The dream was endless. Every night it continued. We left the hospital and he fitted her into the baby seat. He held my hand the whole way home, looking at me occasionally with love and passion in his eyes.
We made our house a home, and we fitted Penny into her room. We smiled dazedly at her as she slept quietly in her crib, and then he held me, kissed me, and I revered him in return, thanking him for being there for me from the start.
The dream was wicked and mad. It made me wake up with a gaping hole in my chest. I gasped through my sobs, soundless and desperate. Wracked with despair, I held Penny to me and breathed her in, clinging on to her because she was the only piece of Conor I had left.
I would spend the long hours wondering…
What was he doing in that very moment? What was he feeling? Were our heartbeats still synchronized, or was the distance cutting off the circulation? Like air, I felt deprived of him, and I suffocated slowly, feeling my chest crush against the force of the pain Billy left behind.
Billy was dead, but he still haunted me. The ghost of him sat perched on the edge of my bed, smiling cruelly at me.
The absence of a loved one due to incarceration was agony. With Conor, it was made worse because he wouldn’t let anybody in. I mourned him like death. I went through stages of grief, finding myself deeply isolated for months while trying to simultaneously be emotionally present for my baby.
Depression started like a cloud, but every day that passed, I felt the cloud hardening, until I was carrying a boulder on my shoulders and struggling to stand up straight without reminding myself to breathe.
I needed help.
I needed a soundboard, but I didn’t have anyone to turn to.
Megan was always working at the hospital. Ember was never present, period. Laura had moved on to the city to live with Jamie, and while she kept in touch with me every single day, I couldn’t find the courage to pick up the phone and call her.
I struggled communicating my emotions. Had struggled with it all my life. Conor was the only person I’d ever let in. I kept thinking I could handle it, but the weight grew heavier every morning I woke up.
One day, I snapped. And on this particular day I was having an argument with my insanity.
“You’re still upset,” Billy said, following me as I set Penny down in her swing. This was going to buy me ten minutes of peace. I sat down on the couch opposite her as she swung slowly, staring up at the baby mirror. I took a deep breath to try and steady my heart, but he wouldn’t stop talking.
“You’ve never been upset this long,” he said, sounding wounded. “I said I was sorry. How many times do I have to keep apologizing?”
I didn’t answer.
“Don’t ignore me, Char. Please.”
“You’re not real,” I gritted out.
I refused to look at him. I was aware I’d gone off the deep-end. He was a figment of my imagination. A part of my subconscious talking to me, but I didn’t want to hear it.
“I’m real enough to you,” he replied, a note of arrogance in his tone. “Real enough you can’t let me go. Why is that, Char?”
I looked at him, this being that wasn’t there. This fucking insanity I was manifesting in the form of the one person I loathed. The one person that was responsible for