What Have I Done? by Laura Dockrill

Author:Laura Dockrill [Dockrill, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473575226
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

40

It was Saturday. Jet was booked in to have his BCG that morning at an open clinic. We’d been warned that it can be really difficult for the parents to see their baby have an injection.

My mum asked if Hugo and I would be OK and I accused her of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy and that she was making me ill just so she could take care of me. It was all her fault, her postnatal depression and her adoption had caused all this and she’d known that this would happen to me. She’d had a daughter deliberately to pass this cruel illness on to me.

I also accused of her of being overly weird with her sausage dog. (No, I don’t know what all that was about.) Daisy laughed a bit at that; maybe she thought, That’s more like the Laura we know.

I had hurt my mum. She never cries but she did then. She tried to hide her tears; it only annoyed me.

She’s only crying because I’ve exposed her.

At the surgery, I sat slumped in a stupor. I couldn’t speak. Blinking felt like an effort. I’d completely shut down.

Coincidentally, our midwife was on duty. She was passing through the waiting area when she saw me. She looked genuinely shocked. She took off her glasses and got on to her knees and held my hands.

‘Oh, Laura,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, lovely Laura.’

I gazed at her, blankly.

The midwife said, ‘After the jabs, I think you should get down to A&E.’

We were called in to see the nurse for Jet’s injections. ‘Is the mother present?’ she asked.

I looked around as if to say, ‘Oh, you’re talking to me?’ and raised my hand like I’d been snapped out of a daydream by a teacher in class. My face was frozen in a ‘mother’s grin’ but inside I was screaming, ‘COME ON, LAURA! WAKE THE HELL UP. Act normal or they’ll take your baby away. Act like you care.’

And the needle went in. And my baby cried, my fixed smile plastered on my face, like I was a mannequin.

LAURA

LAURA

LAURA

Your baby is having an injection. You are IN there! Laura, come on. You are THERE. You are THERE. Come on. Come on. Come on.

We left the surgery and went to Hugo’s dad’s partner’s house and from here onwards everything of that day is a dimly remembered blur of my bizarre behaviour. They made me tea and toast. I couldn’t stomach anything. I was too lost in the filing cabinet of my head. But I didn’t feel afraid now, I had surrendered to the feeling.

I should just say here that this was all from the viewpoint of me at my most unwell. The below is the version of events how I ‘remember’ them.

Hugo’s dad talked to me at the kitchen table. He was actually trying to rouse me out of my catatonic state, but I believed he was attempting to hypnotise me. In my delusion we were having some kid of ‘face off’ – it was like a psychological interrogation in a scene from a Kubrick film.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.