Landis, Corrine
JOURNAL ENTRY 07

For days I sit silently in the medical ward with the other women in my group occupying the beds next to mine. The first time I woke up after the conception ceremony felt like being born. The sallow light making beams through the window, giving visibility to dust particles drifting in the air. A dull ache covering me like a latex glove. As the feeling returned to my lower body, I attempted to shift in the bed and felt a stabbing pain between my legs. Lifting my gown, I could see a series of thick black sutures looping through my genitals. Beneath the stitches, horrible torn skin slowly mending itself and a urethral tube drifting from the tangle of mutilated flesh. At my bedside, a flimsy plastic bag full or urine making iridescent lenses of gold on my sheets as the sunlight penetrates the yellow fluid.

Days passing. Weeks maybe. I can't keep myself from eyeing the doors and imagining that Jonathan might step through them at any moment. He'd see me here, broken, and he'd see that I've done this to make things right, that I will do anything to make things right. Of course, Jonathan never comes.

Gurgling noises wrenching my stomach. A presence rapidly gestating there, feels like a tadpole, doctors ask me not to prod at my belly but curiosity continually gets the best of me. Swelling up each day, a stiff globe hardening in my gut.

"I didn't want to end the pregnancy," the woman in the bed beside me, Chloe, laments aloud. "My first one, I mean. I didn't have a choice, I swear. It was better for the baby. Better for me."

She looks at me, pools collecting beneath the messy blotches of pupils freshly erupted in her eyes.

"I want another one, you know? After this, I mean. After this, I'll have more opportunities, more money. I can have one then."

I manage to force a smile and nod at her. She smiles back, satisfied, and looks down at her investment, stroking the orb rising in her abdomen. Another sharp pain between my legs and the plastic bag full of my urine begins to bubble. I think that I might cry but when I try, nothing happens, like looking for water in the desert.

I turn and stare at the doors.