Phoenix: The Beauty in Between (A Beautiful Series Companion Novel) (17 page)

“Are you
alright love?” the cashier asks carefully, from behind the
counter.

“I…” I stammer.
“I think I need an ambulance.”

Pain rips
through my middle, and I cry out from the shock of it, my knees
buckling beneath me as I fall to the floor.

As I start to
lose consciousness a man’s concerned face appears above me.
Slipping away, the last words I hear are, “Be careful mate. She
looks like a druggy. Who knows what diseases she has?”

It sounds like
people are speaking underwater as a rocking sensation brings me
back to reality. Feebly, I reach my hand up and try to take the
thing off my face that’s causing some pressure.

“Leave it alone
love. It’s helping you breathe.”

I force my eyes
to focus so I can make sense of my surroundings. I think I’m in an
ambulance, an EMT flicks a light in my eyes, causing me to recoil
slightly, as he asks me who I am.

“Paige,” I say,
my voice muffled by the mask on my face. “Paige Larsen.”

“Ok Paige.
You’re in an ambulance on your way to the hospital. We’re going to
take care of you ok. Do you know how long you’ve been pregnant
for?”

“Pregnant? I’m
not…” I mumble, confused.

“It’s alright.
We’re almost there.”

Pain radiates
through my middle again, and I start crying. “Make it stop!” I
wail.

“Paige, we need
you to tell us what drugs you’ve been using.”

“I don’t… I
don’t… argh!” I yell again. “What’s happening to me?!”

“You seem to be
in premature labour.”

I let out a
howling cry as my abdomen screams again.

“It’s alright
Paige. We’re almost there.”

***

When we arrive
at the hospital, I’m wheeled straight through, as the EMT’s tell
the doctors and nurses everything they know about me. I get asked
again what drugs I’ve been taking, and I’m really not sure. But I
don’t think I’ve had any for a day or two. Not since I found
Maxine.

As we burst
through a set of doors, my pains are getting closer together, and
my back feels like it’s locked into one big painful knot. These
feelings can’t be normal. I feel like I’m dying.

Through my
painful moans, I’m poked and prodded. Checked and questioned.
Although, I don’t have any answers. I’ve been living in a drugged
out state for so long now. I don’t know anything…

A doctor comes
to stand beside me. “Paige, it seems as though something is wrong
with your baby. It’s coming far too early. Is there someone we can
call who can come and be with you? The father? A friend or family
member perhaps?”

“I don’t…no. I
have no one.” I think back, trying to recall who the father might
be. Numerous grunting male faces flash through my mind. I squeeze
my eyes shut tight. Blocking them out. I feel sick.

“Ok,” is all
she says in response.

Another pain
rips through me, and I clutch at the cool metal edging on the bed
as I scream out. The sound more akin to the soundtrack of a horror
movie.

“It’s coming,”
another woman says as she looks between my legs.

“No!” I grunt
through the pain. “No. Please. No.”

“I’m sorry. We
can’t stop it.”

I drop my head
back, and grit my teeth, unable to stop the primal moans and grunts
from escaping my throat. But my eyes are closed as I wish for this
all to stop. It’s too much.

I have no idea
what day it is. I have no idea what month it is. For the first time
since I was taken to Reggie’s I’m completely lucid, and I’ve awoken
to a nightmare.

The reality of
what’s happening hits me like a ton of stone that lands firmly on
my chest. How could I not know I was pregnant? I’m ashamed. Ashamed
that I was so busy getting high, that I didn’t even notice my body
changing.

“Argh!” I growl
through my clenched jaw, as my body forces me to bear down. Tears
burn a hot trail of despair as they stream out of my eyes. I feel
it, I feel everything.

“No!” I scream
as I feel an exiting from my body. “No!”

When it’s over,
there’s nothing.

No crying, no
gurgling, nothing.

“Show me,” I
whisper.

“I’m sorry,”
the nurse whispers, as she hands me my child, wrapped up in a
blanket that dwarves its body. “She didn’t make it.”

“Oh,” I breathe
as I look over my daughter’s tiny blue face and raise a shaking
hand to gently stroke her nose, so perfectly formed.

I carefully
unwrap her and touch every part of her body. Her fingers, her toes.
Everything is perfect, and small, and… still.

“What have I
done?!” I gasp, my vision blurs as torrents of tears flow from my
eyes. I hold my little girl to me, and I howl. The noises coming
from me are the primordial wallows of a woman who just lost the
final piece of her soul.

No one in the
room says a thing as they move about, quietly doing their jobs. The
nurse beside me wipes at her eyes as she pushes back my hair,
stroking me like a mother would her child.

It makes me
ache even more.

While I sleep
it’s easy to forget where I am and everything that has happened,
but the moment I wake and hear the constant noise of the hospital
ward, I remember.

I’m a
murderer.

Tears fall
silently from my eyes, as I roll over onto my side and press my
face into the pillow.

Why wasn’t I
the one that died?

Why did it have
to be an innocent child?

Over the coming
days, I’m given a wealth of information about my own health, my
baby’s, and why she didn’t survive.

Of course, it
was the drugs. They tell me this, like it was actually possible it
could have been something else.

A woman comes
to visit me to talk about my ‘options’. She is trying to be
reassuring, by telling me that I’ll still be able to have more
children in time. But I don’t want to have children. I don’t
deserve to have children.

I’m told that
I’m lucky I didn’t catch any other sort of disease from my drug use
and promiscuity. I wonder if that’s true. Is there anything about
my situation that’s ‘lucky’?

I ask if I can
have a hysterectomy, but I’m told I can’t make that decision until
after I’m eighteen, and even then, they’re unlikely to do it.

It turns out
that I spent over six months as one of Reggie’s girls. All that
time and I have very little memory of it. When I think back, it’s
just a lot of flashes involving faces and acts I’d prefer not to
think about.

I’m being
transferred to a rehab facility, so I can get the ‘help I need’.
Really, I just want to lay down and die, but there’s something in
this world that wants me to live – as long as I live miserably.

Finally, I am
officially in the system and so is my baby. She was developed
enough that I had to name her. I also have to bury her.

I’ve called her
Phoenix, in the hopes that one day she will be born again to
another mother, who is far more capable of nurturing her than I
ever was or could be.

I need to have
hope in that. Otherwise, what was the point in all this?

The clothes I
came in wearing, never came back to me. I have a feeling that they
were so disgusting they took them somewhere and burned them.

Standing in the
small hospital bathroom, I dress in some clothes I’ve been given
and ready myself to leave. The girl I see in the mirror, now holds
very little resemblance to the girl I remember. This one is pale,
with large sunken eyes and colourless lips. Her hair is long and
matted, and her bones can be seen clearly through her skin. This
isn’t me.

When I step out
of the bathroom, there is a woman out there waiting for me. She
carries a clipboard and a small travel bag and introduces herself
as Justine.

“I’ll be taking
you to your new home today,” she tells me, smiling broadly. I
suspect she is trying to gain my trust, but I’m all out of that. I
should have stopped trusting the moment my parents kicked me out of
home. But I was stupid. I trusted, and I trusted like I actually
believed I might belong somewhere. That someone might actually want
me. But it was all a bunch of sordid lies. I was naive - now look
where it’s got me.

I’m nothing.
I’m no one.

I nod my head
curtly, and follow along behind her as she leads the way out of the
hospital. I notice a sad look some of the nurses give me as I leave
the ward, they feel sorry for me. I really don’t think they
should.

Justine tries
to make conversation with me during the hour it takes us to drive
to the facility. But I don’t give her much in response. I seem to
be all out of words. There’s simply nothing more to say.

“We’re here,”
she says, as we pull up in front of a large white brick building,
surrounded by neatly kept gardens.

I get out of
the car and look over what Justine called my new home. It isn’t
much of a home at all - it just looks like another hospital. As we
walk through the front doors, it’s more of the same. Everything is
white and sterile, and it seems like misery radiates off the walls.
I don’t want to be here.

“How do you
feel after laying your child to rest?” my therapist asks me, the
day after Phoenix’s funeral.

I blink rapidly
as the memory fills my mind.

I’ve only been
in rehab for a couple of days, but I was allowed to say goodbye to
the daughter I’ll never know. I was escorted off the premises to
attend her publicly funded funeral.

I stood there.
On my own, staring down at the tiny coffin that held her body. No
one was there, no one cared. They didn’t know her, or even know of
her existence.

Her burial was
witnessed by myself, my case worker, and the minister presiding
over the service. That’s it. That alone is devastating to me. Her
death is so significant. I feel like the whole world should be
mourning in the streets.

With a bunch of
flowers purchased from the service station on the way, I farewelled
my precious girl, and vowed to never take another drug again and
never to bed another man. The cost is just too severe.

“Paige?” my
therapist prompts me, my eyes come to focus as a drop of water
slips from my cheek and splashes on my hand. I touch my face to
find I’ve been crying.

“I’m sorry,” I
say, wiping at my tears and frowning slightly. “Um… what was the
question?”

“I asked how
you feel about the funeral yesterday.”

I move my eyes
so they meet his with a steady gaze. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”

Group therapy.
I’d love to know who the genius is that came up with this one. I
feel like I’m sitting in a room competing for the title of ‘The
Most Fucked up’. But we’re all fucked up – just in different
ways.

“Paige?” Our
group counsellor, Edith, calls on me. “Do you think you’re ready to
tell us how you got here?”

“In a car,” is
all I say in return. It’s been almost a month, and I’m yet to speak
up. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to share my experience. I
sit here, listening to others breakdown and cry, as they tell their
stories. Each one is sad. Each one is hopeless. I don’t want to add
mine to the mix. It’s hard enough listening to theirs.

“How does it
make everyone feel when Paige gives us an answer like that?” she
says to the group.

“It makes me
feel like she thinks this is all a joke. That she doesn’t take this
seriously,” says Vicky, a small twenty-five-year-old Islander girl,
whose voice is thick and gravelly and betrays the fragility of her
size.

“I think she’s
just being honest,” Liam, a nineteen year old high school dropout,
says. Everyone calls him ‘Poor Little Rich Boy’ because he comes
from money. But he’s just as lost as the rest of us. “By car is
exactly how she got here.”

“Yeah, you
would think that. You’re not exactly the best sharer here either,”
another girl, Kerri, says.

“I just don’t
have anything to say. I took too many drugs. End of story.”

“What? You
think you’re better than us. Just ‘cause you’re some rich kid who’s
had an easy life?”

“You don’t know
anything about my life,” he spits.

“Yeah. ’cause
you’re too chicken shit to say anything about it.”

“Fuck off
Kerri. We can’t all be tortured souls like you.”

“Alright.
Alright. That’s enough,” Edith calls out, holding her hands up to
tell everyone to quiet down. “This isn’t actually helping
anyone.”

The argument
continues regardless. People are on edge in here. It seems like we
all took drugs to forget something. Remembering is painful. It’s
easier to be angry.

Liam stands and
points his finger, moving across everyone in our haphazard circle
as he speaks. “Just because you all have a ‘woe is me’ tale to
tell. Doesn’t mean I have to as well. I’m sick of listening to your
bitching. I’m sick of listening to your fucking judgement. If I
don’t want to talk. I don’t fucking have to, and neither does she.”
His finger lands on me, and I wish I could shrink down in my seat.
I don’t want to be singled out. “I’m sick of this fucking place!”
he yells, kicking his chair back from the circle and walking
off.

“No smoking
indoors Liam,” Edith calls after him.

“Fuck you,” he
throws over his shoulder, lighting a cigarette anyway. He thumps
his hands against the glass doors and pushes his way out into to
the garden, blowing a lungful of smoke inside through the gap as it
closes.

“Well, I think
we might let that be the end to our session for the day,” Edith
announces, as he walks out of view.

Relieved, I
stand to leave, picking up my jacket from the back of my chair and
swinging it around my body as I slip my arms inside.