That evening, Luke wasn’t home long when the buzzer went. Warily we looked at each other – we really couldn’t cope with a ‘well-wisher’。 Then my phone beeped with a text.
‘It’s Mia,’ I said. ‘Downstairs at the door. Fruit Mia. From NA.’
‘Oh? Okay. You want her to come in?’
Not really but I felt I should.
‘Hey.’ She was rushed and apologetic, her cuddly-toy face anxious, her brown eyes huge. ‘I’m not here to bother you. Just need to give you something then I’m gone.’
Her candour was hard to resist. ‘Come in.’
Already she was fishing something from her ivy-coloured messenger bag, which she wore cross-body over a red leather jacket and what looked like a pair of men’s suit trousers. She was an attractive combination of cute and cool.
She stepped into our living room, then saw Luke, his top three buttons opened, his hair mussed. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude …’
‘You’re not,’ Luke said. ‘Hey, Mia.’
She nodded at him, her face flushing. ‘Hey.’
‘Would you like to sit down?’ I asked.
‘Seriously, no. Just need a quick word.’
This was Luke’s cue to leave so Mia and I could speak privately, but he didn’t move.
‘At the meeting today you shared that you couldn’t sleep?’ She put a small jar in my hands. ‘Melatonin. It’s non-addictive, natural. Safe for you and me to use. Might help.’
‘Th-thank you.’ I was touched and suddenly hopeful. Why hadn’t I thought of melatonin? In the past I’d used it for jet lag but hadn’t thought about using it for insomnia.
‘I’m not good at sleeping,’ she said. ‘Never really was. Tried everything. As you know, Rachel …’ Mia had arrived in NA after a dependence on Ambien and Xanax had brought her to her knees. ‘I also brought you –’ She fumbled in her bag and produced a punnet of dark, glossy cherries. ‘Left over from today.’
She held them out and Luke stepped forward to take them.
‘I hope the melatonin helps,’ she told me. ‘But if it doesn’t, one thing to remember, no one ever died from lack of sleep.’ As she turned to let herself out, she said, with great sincerity, her gaze moving from my face to Luke’s, ‘I’m really sorry about your baby. It sucks so bad.’
The door rattled shut and she was gone.
For a short while, Luke and I stood in silence, him holding the punnet of cherries, then, with a trace of a smile, he said, ‘How nice was that?’
53
In the park, I held my face to the sun and urged its rays to work their magic on whatever part of my brain controlled sleep. Daylight – apparently that was what I needed. With the amount of time I’d been spending in the apartment, maybe it was no wonder I was trapped in insomnia.
No one ever died from lack of sleep, Mia had said. Maybe not, but you could go mad without it. The previous night, my fourth without sleep – even though I’d taken Mia’s melatonin – I’d felt trapped, like a rat in my own head, where time kept jumping – I’d forget what had happened, thinking I was still pregnant, waiting to give birth, only to discover that it was all over, but I had no baby, then I’d tumble into horror.
I prayed and prayed for sleep, to not go mad.
This morning, when Luke had brought me tea he’d seemed lighter somehow.
I dragged myself up to sitting, exhausted and queasy.
‘You didn’t sleep?’ He was very surprised. ‘Not even with Mia’s melatonin? You mean that from midnight to seven a.m. you literally didn’t nod off once? Are you sure?’ For the first time he had sounded impatient about it.
The heat on my face dimmed – the sun had gone behind a cloud – so I opened my eyes and looked around the park. It was a small, scrappy affair, but it was the closest to our apartment.
In the playground, a man with a weighty little bundle strapped to his chest sat on a swing. Gently he rocked back and forth, talking to the bump …
… and for a moment I was wondering if that really was a baby on his chest? What if he was chatting away with a bag of potatoes or his sweatshirt rolled up in a ball? It was a strange idea, almost funny, and maybe that was the thing about having had almost no sleep in five days – everything felt off, slightly mad, as if I was dreaming.
Then I spotted a baby in a stroller headed towards me. My first urge was to get up and run away – I was afraid of getting too close to what I had lost – but a horrible fascination kept me frozen in place. Closer it got, then closer, the mommy walking jauntily and singing a song.