Twenty seven days. Feverish, I ask the doctor why. He looks at my notes, yellow folder telling him nothing and everything.
It will pass, he says.
Everything passes.
Take paracetamol, he says.
Universal panacea. Won’t it harm the baby?
It’s your first, you’re bound to be anxious.
- Anxiety knows no bounds as I lie there and sweat.
Do you feel the first lump, or do I?
It’s just your glands. You must be fighting off an infection.
Late night screen glows with possible diagnoses, cancer never far from mind.
My stomach grows, skin stretched taut, and I daren’t ask.
We … just … need … the … months … to … pass.
And one day the lumps have gone anyway and I don’t think again, awash in breastfeeding.
Anti-apoptotically, your host cells persist and replicate.
Pro-apoptosis effector proteins, are disrupted,
Conformational change,
Proteins stymied.
The host will eat itself,
T.gondii triumphant.
- It’s amazing how quickly time passes with one young child, then a second.
- The first trace is a splash of yellow, bordered with black on the glowing red-orange of the back of his eye. Technology is marvellous, the doctor says as she shows me on the screen.
Can you cut it out, I ask.
It’s been there for years. He has two eyes. If you hadn’t had his eyes examined he might never have noticed.
Perhaps we should have remained ignorant. We were never meant to see the inside of our eyes.
- Is it obvious to everyone else? Omniscience is inhuman. Who knows?
I didn’t. And if I had known what could I have done?
I’m up late on the internet again.
Raw meat, soiled fruit, catshit? Nausea comes, years too late.
- Late nights are typical of teens, I read. In fact, it’s against nature to wake them early.
Let them sleep.
It’s normal for boys to become uncommunicative.
Of course it is.
It’s not normal to see things, hear things, that no-one else can perceive.
By then it’s too late.
Knife descends, repeat, and I wish I could have cut it out years ago.
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