With child

Fever confined me to bed when I found out I was pregnant. I didn't know how many weeks old I was, how the fetus was, I didn't know if it already had a sex, I didn't even know if it was still alive. I had a terrible feeling that it was dead. In many dreams I had during that time, it was. In others I was. I'd wake up and look at my belly, wishing it was all a nightmare, but it was still there, swollen, bulging, with a worm crawling in between my bladder and rectum. The world was suddenly silent, the only sound was that of a fly buzzing around the room until the day I happened to grab it, and it kept flying in the fist of my unconscious corpse until it ran out of strength or the oxygen. I couldn't smell anything, and I knew I smelled because I couldn't get out of bed without collapsing into it after a few minutes. When I felt like throwing up, I used the nightstand drawer, held up my hair by myself and wiped my mouth with the corner of the sheet, before facing the flashes of cold sweat. I only felt a rotten taste that transformed my womb into a cemetery. I licked the tears off the pillow for the few seconds of taste the saline solution gave me. I woke up with wet sheets fearing it was blood, but it was only fear that made me incontinent. I ate whatever I could grab from the grocery bag on the floor below the bed, whether it was raw or cooked, smeared on my fingers or sprinkled with crumbs on the blankets, I didn't care. It was a question of surviving and saving, or dying and killing. Whatever choice I decided to make, I had to decide twice. I was sleeping twice the hours I needed. I couldn't go anywhere. I wasn't bad enough to end up in hospital, I was only sick twice.