Largo and Seraphine

Largo’s birth occurred inside a sealed tunnel of cruciation. Like the storm that changed the landscape forever, bursting banks, forcing deep-rooted trees to slide away down hillsides and destabilise all the ground on which I had grown.

He was four days overdue and there was a large part of me which could have dismissed the entire pregnancy. Indeed if the climax of labour had never occurred at all then I don’t think I would have questioned it, life would have carried on just the same. We would never have spoken of it again but that didn’t happen. The laws of nature followed their course and I was struck down with the first pains of labour, followed by steady ripples, a carnal upheaval, impossible to fight.

In the hours that followed, the sky lowered then a long period of rumbles and lightning strikes followed by darkness, destruction and floods. I was battered, disorientated and my sense of self shrunk me so small that I was able to climb into the tiny cracks deep inside my consciousness; a labyrinth of unlit places. Layers were peeled away, my protective coating ripped off to reveal parts of myself which had lay hidden for so long.

‘Breathe through the pain,’ that’s what they told me, strangers in a pastel coloured room were suddenly in charge of my body. I heard them but they seemed to occupy another slice of the universe and a sort of very personal panic, impossible to articulate, prevented me from taking their advice. I held my breath, I gripped the bed, lost my bearings and left everyone behind, their voices fading into distant echoes and the features of their faces gradually becoming meaningless arrangements of flesh. 

There were hours of it, humps and dips of groaning, guttural agony. I went so far into that bad trip that I found myself wanting to continue, onwards down the tunnel and pass through the curtain into the comfort of endless sleep. I was prepared to let it all go, to relinquish everything, even my baby. The tide of the cosmos thrust me back, not exactly into the here and now but to somewhere recognisable as earthly existence, hospital equipment, voices, people in blue aprons rushing, somewhere in the distance a radio played.

An intense stinging sensation marked the end of my labour, it was rather like being branded, singed with a new identity. This was followed by an episode of shaking, and shivering. I felt a sort of elation but it was purely physiological, relief maybe, that the terrible pain had reached its conclusion. 

I realised immediately that everything had changed; sounds and colours seemed different, bright and distorted as in a dream, the light was peculiar, it was a restless blue light, dull and indecipherable. Yesterday was suddenly so strange, so far away, lost into another dimension, buried now into the distant past, beneath layers of unfathomable twists. 

‘He’s eight pounds and four ounces.’ Somebody said in a tone which suggested an announcement, something of great importance. I heard this information repeated over and over again in the following weeks, sometimes from me, delivered in a monotone voice, sometimes from health visitors or friends or relatives. Despite the constant repetition, the figure remained of no real consequence.

In contrast, Seraphine was born easily and with stealth. I didn’t even feel her come out, she slipped through me, a snake, scaly and smooth. Her skin felt cold compared to Largo’s flesh which was remarkable since in that it was exactly the same temperature as my own, he had been part of me and giving birth to him, we both met and parted at the same time. I saw him breathe on his own and regulate his own temperature, outside in the air of our planet, albeit swiftly wrapped in a blanket.

Nobody seemed to notice Seraphine, there was a silence to her but I knew she was there, seconds after Largo’s arrival, her presence was so strong, it held me like a vice. Seraphine the constrictor, quietly watching and waiting, she fixated on both me and her brother as if it were all she had been created for but who created her, where did she come from? I never really knew although I had many theories, all of them too sinister to dwell on.

In that labour ward I had only a few precious twinklings with Largo, a brief flash of the blessings of motherhood. I’ve done this, I thought, I’ve had a baby and for just a few moments I almost touched the joy of the event, the blessings and sheer good luck. I had survived, almost in one piece and he was a healthy baby. 

Then something slipped away, he faded from my view and became completely unreal to me. His soft, unformed features began to appear bizarre, alien even. I studied the shape of his head, his wide little hands and the tiny, plastic-like form of his blunt nose. I honestly didn’t really know what I was looking at but I knew I had to love him, I’d read all the books, read all about it. Loving him, that was to be my duty, my job and I was used to being a professional. I could fake the actions behind a non existent feeling but I was somehow convinced he was the wrong baby. I sensed it, somehow, for reasons I couldn’t understand, I had given birth to a false baby. 

I spent the night in a private room on the maternity ward. The midwives told me how fortunate I was that it had been a quiet day and one of the rooms was free for me to make use of. Compared to being on a large, communal ward, I suppose they were right. It was a large room, painted bright white with black metal framed windows, single-glazed. There was a starkness to it, a coldness, the view was like a snowscape, white with dark, dirty slush where grey cardboard kidney dishes were stacked. However the temperature of the room was hot and clammy. 

I lay very still for hours just staring into space, trying to make sense of the shifting parameters. I didn’t really know what had happened but I knew the shift had been seismic and somehow I was going to have to adjust to the new ground beneath my feet. There was a part of me which could almost have dismissed the previous twenty four hours and just walked out of the hospital without my baby, gone home and put the kettle on but stitches prevented any form of journey.

Hospital sounds played, ambulance sirens, footsteps, voices and general bustle. A tiny lady came in with a meal, hard, dried up potatoes like musket balls and some rubbery, unidentifiable meat. Another lady checked in on me and changed Largo’s nappy, her movements, brusk and business-like. At dusk I sleep-walked a few steps from my narrow metal bed to look out at the view of a car park and a long metal chimney throwing out smoke from the incinerator. What was burning?

Largo whimpered a little, reminding me that he was a real, breathing being who would die without the constant care of an adult. I lifted him up and held him, his tiny body still curled up stiffly, as in his previous position inside the womb; soft unformed knees pressed into my chest. It just didn’t seem possible that he had left my body. I held the back of his floppy head and found myself feeling dizzy, sick with the burden of keeping him alive. 

Seraphine didn’t like it. She willed me to open the window, lean out and let her brother take his first breaths of the cold outside air. It was such a long way down, my room was on the fourth or fifth floor, I didn’t know but it was high up. Her will was strong, resisting her desire made the palms of my hands sweat and her potency in the room removed any of the natural pleasure a normal mother might have experienced, holding her newborn. I felt a sense of sheer terror.

I placed him back in the plastic crib. Just stay in bed, stay in bed and breathe, I told myself, over and over again, ignoring his wimpers. Eventually sleep hijacked my exhausted body but when I woke up I found that I was floating somewhere up, up above my newborn baby, near the ceiling, watching him sleeping in his plastic crip. I could feel the surface of the polystyrene tiles on the ceiling and the silver metal strips between them. I tried so hard to get down but my hands pushed the tiles in, into a cavity above the tiles and I couldn’t get enough of a push to get myself down. I hovered there, feeling hotter and hotter as the warm air of the room rose up, stifling me, I tried to call out for a member of staff to come and help but my voice was a whisper.

Outside the sky had gone dark and the ambulances sounded. I couldn’t understand why nobody came or why they hadn’t noticed me, through the window or perhaps the window in the door. Largo was motionless beneath me, his arms bent at right angles, his wide little hands level with his ears as he lay flat upon the little mattress. I decided that my only option was to try and reach down into my bag and grab my phone, then I could tell Steve what was happening and that I urgently needed help. I reached so hard that my shoulder went into a spasm of pain.

I gasped and found myself awake in the hospital, my shoulder and left arm had gone numb where I had slept in a strange, unnatural position. It was daylight, people walked up and down in the corridor outside and I suddenly remembered my son, Largo. I turned and saw him sleeping next to me like a little doll.

Throughout my pregnancy I’d had no idea I was going to have twins and after the birth it remained a secret. I didn’t speak of it, not even to my family. They were told only of my new baby boy, except he wasn’t mine, I questioned whether he was even real. Seraphine was so strong, so present, I wondered how long she’d been waiting for us, or perhaps it had been me waiting for her.