Empty

Jane shifts in the chair. Despite the rough powder blue fabric stretched over it, it is not soft, and she feels it pressing into her, flat and harsh. She has crossed and uncrossed her legs more times than she can count, but the one resting on top now has already begun to prickle with numbness and the one on the bottom feels hot and tense from holding its weight.

There is a TV with the volume down too low for her to hear anything but a quick and constant muttering. Faces flit across it, all of them bright with long-lashed eyes and big mouths, always open. A ginger haired woman laughs and shakes her head at a little boy with the same red curls. She looks about twenty-five.

A car passes across the screen. Jane closes her eyes.

She feels how badly she is slouching against the chair. The smooth wooden edge of its back buries itself in the space below her shoulder blades, and from there her back sags downward, inward. She imagines her spine buried inside her, clinging to every soft squishy thing with its angles, taking her with it as it curls. She tries not to imagine other things.

A magazine, filled with stories of lush dresses and lurid affairs, sits in her lap, partially wedged between her thighs. It is still cool, and she hears its pages bend when she twitches. She grabbed it at random off the stack by the front desk, thinking it would help, but she hasn’t opened it.

She reaches up and pushes her hair behind her ear, slowly, sweeping her fingers along her aching temple. Her hand still smells of Purell. Her other hand rests in her lap, with her forearm pressed against the side of her stomach. She likes the feeling of something heavy holding her.

Jane remembers sitting in a room like this six years ago with a hand on a rounder, softer belly. She sometimes misses that feeling of something being in there with her, something moving and alive. There was that stretch of two months after he was born when she felt as though her battery had been removed.

She is tighter, now, drawn in by time and sleeplessness. Her cardigan barely brushes against her skin. Despite the layers she wears, she feels goosebumps popping up on her arms.

Her foot is asleep.

When Jane opens her eyes, it’s at a “Ma’am?” sounding from somewhere close. Too close. She looks up at a woman in a white coat who does not smile.

“Your son.”

Silence.

“I’m so sorry.”

Jane closes her eyes again.

by A.J.