I didn't put a rating on this because I wasn't sure what it should be rated. However, I will warn you that it's sad, and there is some violence in here. Not the gorey kind, where I tell you about blood pooling in rivers, but I'd say this is for more mature readers nonetheless.
Please be as harsh as you want.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you like it.
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The baby was crying.
The baby was always crying.
Victor lay beside her, their limbs tangled together across the cold sheets. He had gotten a promotion today, she remembered numbly. She looked over; Victor’s gaze was darkly unreadable as he stared up at the pristine white ceiling, glowing in the moonlit room.
“The baby is crying,” he told her, rubbing his eyes. "I can't sleep."
She said nothing, just gently disengaged herself from his grip and turned onto her side. She wrapped the clean sheets, smelling faintly of the citrus Febreeze her husband favoured, around her body and tried to block out the song of the adamant wail from the nursery.
“The baby is crying,” Victor repeated, and she heard the razor edge of annoyance in his rich baritone.
She felt the need to reply this time, so she said, “I know.”
They fell silent as they listened to the life they had created – together – scream her lungs out in the room across the hallway. “Are you going to go get her?” Victor said finally.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, trying to tuck the sheets more tightly around her body. She wanted to sleep. She hadn’t slept in ages; these days she only fell into a fitful doze, roused by anything, even the rustle of sheets as Victor moved around beside her.
“Well,” he said, his words punctuated by their daughter’s heartfelt bawling. “Do you want me to get her?”
“No,” she replied, even as she pulled the pillow over her head.
“Jesus Christ,” Victor muttered, and now she heard it clearly – not just impatience, but flat out anger. “I’ve worked a twenty-hour shift, and I’m tired. Either you go get her or I will.”
She shifted to look at her husband’s haggard face. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles, and his cheekbones were far too prominent. Stubble marred his smooth skin. He was far too tired to be of any use to their daughter, she thought, but so was she. She hadn’t slept in six months. “I’ll go,” she said finally, crawling out from the smooth sheets.
Victor muttered something like “finally” and collapsed back onto the pillows as she went into the nursery, flipping on the light. Her baby’s face was red and her back was curled from the effort of crying, her body crooked into the shape of a question mark against the crib. Her body was as pale as paper against the rich purple sheets. She reached in and picked her daughter up, pressing her small body against her chest as she began to rock her.
She walked back and forth, back and forth, pacing the nursery as she hummed lightly, even as her arms bowed under the damp weight of her baby and her feet complained in protest. Her daughter continued to scream despite her efforts to make her quiet. Finally she lifted her up so they were face to face.
“What do you want from me?” she demanded, gazing into her daughter’s clear blue eyes. “What do you want, goddammit!”
The baby hushed, and she mumbled, “It’s about time.” For reasons she would never understand, her daughter started crying again, the sound even louder, more persistent than ever before.
Something in her snapped. “Just shut up! Shut the hell up!” Her body was a live wire, every muscle drawn taut. She vibrated with energy and fury. Her daughter continued to wail, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Victor get up, his body silhouetted in the doorway. He hesitated there, reaching out a hand, but she spun away from him, clutching her daughter tightly.
“Shut up!” she screamed, and shook the baby. She saw the head, capped by silky blonde hair, snap back, and she imagined she could hear the bones rattling in that slim body. She repeated herself, screaming, even as Victor’s angry voice crossed over hers, telling her to stop. She struck out at her husband, holding the baby by her shoulder, shaking her again, shaking her so violently the whimpers faded into silence.
Victor was there, yelling at her, trying to grab the baby from her arms. Those cries still echoed in her mind, loud and angry and demanding, and she shook the baby again. Victor was screaming unspeakable things as he pushed at her, slapped her across the face, tried to pry her hands from the baby’s still body. But she was stronger, adrenaline and anger causing a hot mixture in her blood and she railed against him, against the world, against the goddamn baby.
She threw the baby at the floor and then knelt down beside her. Victor struck, pushing her away. His face was twisted in rage, in pain, streaked with tears even as more welled up in his cerulean eyes. Her daughter had eyes like that, she thought as she reached for the still form on the floor. Her hands expertly sought a pulse on the thin wrist, coming up with nothing.
He was asking her too many questions, calling her too many names, as her baby lay on the floor. The last thing she saw was the bruised and battered face looking up at her with a glassy stare before the world went black.
***
She snapped upright in bed, her heart pounding, her throat dry. She rubbed her eyes and then clapped her hands across her head, trying to block out the image, trying to make her mind forget about the nightmare. It was that same dream, over and over again, that one where she shook her darling baby to death. Slowly, she began to come back to the world of the living, to reality.
The sheets were not cool, but hot, drenched. They smelled of sweat and fear, not Febreeze. Instinctively, she reached out beside her, but Victor was not there. Victor hadn’t been there in years.
She blamed him, and she blamed herself. She had withdrawn from him, distanced herself; but he hadn't tried to bring her back. He hadn't comforted her, coaxed her. Instead of letting their experiences draw them closer, he had let them separate her from him, as he let both of them stew in their pain. Then he had filed for divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences and just walked away. It seemed so easy for him, and it had added to her misery to know he could walk away with his head high while she couldn't even dream of moving on.
When she woke up, she still reached out for him. Her body remembered him and she knew that if she ever saw him again, he would fit comfortably into her embrace as he always had. Her ears still heard his voice and her eyes constantly saw his face; it was an image burned into her mind. She remembered him when he was smiling and clean shaven, remembered the glow that would light up his eyes when he saw her. Purposely had she erased the image of his face as he was later on, haggard, every line drawn in pain. There was only a dull glint in his eyes when he looked at her then, absent of recognition, absent of emotion.
She closed her eyes, thinking of him and in her mind, his clear blue eyes gazed back at her. Immediately her mind conjured up an image of her daughter’s sweet face, those same eyes again. She raised her hand to her cheek, not surprised to find it already wet, as she reveled in the burn of tears in her eyes. Her entire body shook as she sat up, drawing her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her body as if she could somehow hold herself together.
“Oh God,” she whispered, swiping at her eyes. Beside her, the clock flashed 6:00 in panicked LED. She let herself cry for another minute and then pushed herself out of bed, stumbling into the washroom where she splashed cold water on her face, hoping the sting would erase the horrible memories.
She turned the water as cold as she could, a penance she had been serving for many years. She scrubbed at her skin until it was an angry red, burning painfully. Wrapping a towel around her chest, she pulled a suit randomly from the closet, zipping up the skirt and buttoning the jacket without thinking.
Her purse slung around her shoulder, she rummaged in the kitchen drawer, drawing out the battered watch. On the back, words stared up at her: Love you forever. –Victor. She turned her head away as she strapped the watch around her wrist and took the pen engraved with her name from the drawer and put it in her bag.
She did not eat breakfast. That had been a family affair.
The clock read 6:30 now, as it always did when she was heading out. Her clinic did not open until nine, but she had a detour to make, the same one she made every day. The streets were slowly filling up with cars, but not many turned onto the country lane on which she now drove. The Mercedes handled easily, gliding across the smooth cement, weaving amidst Victorian mansions and creeping through residential streets.
She parked it outside, not bothering to lock it. If someone stole it – well, that would just be more welcome punishment.
The wrought-iron gates were heavy and richly carved, heated under the sun’s glare. She held her palm against them until it began to burn, part of her daily effort to punish herself, since no one else seemed willing to. Ancient oaks cast shadows across the soft grass as she clutched her purse to her chest and made her way to the back of the field.
It stood alone, beautiful white marble Victor had chosen.
Rosemary Anne White
Our angel
The strongest baby to have ever lived
Fight back against cancer, the monster that took her life
They say it is easier to blame someone else.
But it was so much easier to blame herself, because while she could be tortured, feel pain, cancer never would. She hadn’t killed her daughter, but she might as well have, because she could not save her.
The soft breeze carried her words to the sky, to Heaven, where Rosemary surely was – “my angel”.
***
I wanted to clarify: First, thanks for the great review! Secondly, I guess I pretty much failed at this story, because the woman did not shake her baby to death; the part where she's in bed with the drenched sheets was supposed to signify that she hadn't killed her daughter, her daughter had died of cancer (as the gravestone says), but she feels guilt over it so she has those nightmares where she shakes the baby. I added in an extra paragraph that I hope will clarify that she is waking up for a nightmare. Rereading this, I realise I wasn't very clear on this point. xD
Edit: Thanks for the awesome reviews, guys! I did a bit of editing and I will duly work on the second part later, whenever I find the time to do so.
), but I think you could make more of a point if you change the hyphen to a colon and the comma to a hyphen. That might be completely grammatically incorrect, though. 
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