Jamie

• Alicia Varghese, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2006

She steps back and I step forward. The nurse is holding a tiny thing in her arms, her cheeks are sucked in and her hands- old and slender- stroke the thing’s face. She is passing it to me now and I stretch out my arms stiffly.
‘No, no darling. Cradle him, support his head.’
‘I’m so sorry, how do I-’ The murmured drumbeat of panic becomes louder and faster until I want to throw him to the wind and run away.
‘Goodbye all-’ I would say, ‘Goodbye dear mother and father. Goodbye Troy, goodbye love and all your minions. Goodbye and good riddance!’
‘You alright love? I’ll pop back in a minute. Keep supporting Jamie’s neck, there’s a good girl.’
He has lovely eyes, so human; they hold me still. I spread his very little fingers out, follow his palm lines.
I don’t remember calling him Jamie. Will it sound good- Jamie Andrews? He needs a middle name. He is so small, so fragile in my arms, and he’s alive because of me and that short night that is so very far behind us now; it reaches us here, me and Jamie. I thought I had closed that book and laid it aside. But its tendrils still clasp my hands, they curl around my waist and neck and I am drawn in again. If only this were a book, it would all turn out alright, some miracle would happen, a cure would be found, Troy would love me, mother would forgive me. But this is nothing but reality, and here I am, holding Jamie’s little hand.
I threw a glass at Troy when he first refused to marry me- how satisfied I was when it smashed on the fridge, hearing it shatter! I knew I would get my own way and I have. This is all my doing, all my lovely plans have come to this. All I could think of was mum holding Jamie in her lap while I walked down the aisle and I would look at Troy and then I would look at Jamie and I would throw up; I would vomit at my own wedding because I couldn’t stand to see what a patchwork job we had done in creating a family.
If only the doctor rushed in this very moment, all smiles, ‘My dear girl, we’ve made a ghastly mistake, it turns out your boy’s perfectly healthy-’ or if a specialist is flown in from God knows where to do God knows what to fix you, I’d take anything, do anything, to see this as a memory.
What excuse shall I give you now, my darling, what shall I say to escape the blame? How was I to know that you would be like this, that the nurse’s apron would be tearstained, that I would sit beside this window with you in my arms and watch Troy have a smoke in the parking lot?
Would you forgive me Jamie, if I told you that?

Alicia Varghese, year 11