Close My Eyes by Sophie McKenzie Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t help but look back and wonder why he was so insistent.
    We left the soft surroundings of the consulting rooms to enter the steel-and-antiseptic world of the operating theatre. I was so scared before the general anaesthetic, my hands were shaking. I
remember Art’s warm fingers curling over mine, covering the raw torn skin around my nails, his eyes gleaming wet.
    ‘I’m here, Gen,’ he’d said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
    And then the silence in the recovery room as I came round. My eyes so heavy, struggling to open. Trying to focus on the clock on the wall, wondering where I was for a split second, then catching
a glimpse of a nurse scurrying past outside the room, her face turned away. Shifting my gaze a fraction. Seeing Art sitting beside me, leaning forward, his face lined with pain. No baby. No baby.
Dr Rodriguez walking over . . . a shadowy figure behind Art . . .
    ‘I’m so sorry we lost her,’ Art said. And his words sent me spinning and falling into darkness.
    After that it’s a blur: I remember the view from my window – a willow tree sweeping across a patch of grass with the curving glass roof of the birthing pod in the distance, a harsh
reminder of the labour I had hoped for. I stared at the tree and the grass and the glass roof for hours on end, trying to take in what had happened. Dr Rodriguez explained his suspicions –
later confirmed by the tests into Beth’s DNA – that she had a defective chromosome. We got the details weeks later. Full Trisomy 18, a random genetic condition that isn’t
hereditary and which can be suffered to varying degrees. It killed my Beth before she could live.
    I was numb for days, way past Beth’s funeral, way past the test results. And then, slowly, stealthily, Grief crept up on me. A monster, fighting me inside my head, where no one, not even
Art or Hen or my mum, could reach me. And with the grief, the anger. The unreasonable fury at perfectly nice people with babies and well-meaning women who tried to empathize by telling me about
their miscarriages.
    Unthinkable, uncontrollable, this pain seeped through me, gradually becoming a part of my life, absorbed into its reality. Wanting to move on and yet not wanting to leave Beth behind. No baby.
No writing. Just drifting. For the past eight years.
    I get up from the sofa. It’s still early afternoon. Art won’t be back until the evening. I wander listlessly into the kitchen, but have no appetite, so I wander out again. As the
afternoon wears on, doubt creeps over me again.
    I meander around the house, unable to settle to anything. In the end I find myself at the top of the house, in Art’s office again. I don’t want to look but I have to. If
there’s any paperwork on my stay at the Fair Angel still in our possession, it will surely be in this room.
    I stand in the doorway, looking around at the large desk and the rows of shelves and filing cabinets. Light strikes the wooden floor in stripes. I have no idea what I’m even looking for.
Immediately after the stillbirth Art took charge, making all the arrangements, signing whatever needed to be signed. I was glad at the time but, looking back, it’s like that set the tone for
the years that have followed, with Art increasingly in control of who and what he wants to be and me floundering. It’s ironic that the differences that brought us together – me drawn to
Art’s energy and sense of purpose, and Art attracted to my creativity and, as he saw it, unpredictability – are the very things that have driven us down parallel paths since Beth.
    The floorboards creak as I cross the office floor. They need to be re-laid – have done since we bought the house. I promised this year I would finally get around to sorting them out, but
it hasn’t happened yet. Art, bless him, has never complained about this or any other of my administrative failings.
    I don’t know where to begin, so I start opening drawers at random. Art’s filing