During this run of fresh writing I’ve done over the holiday I’ve added extensively to the outline, trying to make sure each character is well drawn throughout the novel. The book is over half done now. I am still roughly on target to finish by the first week of February.

In this scene, we flash back to when Tina came home from the hospital and discovered Arnie had not just ditched her in the emergency room, but had left her life completely.

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 Tina bumped the door to her garage apartment open with her hip and flipped on the light. She was thankful her parents hadn’t pressed her lately to move back to the main house. She didn’t think she could manage being in such proximity to them again.

She dumped her bag on the ledge between the living and kitchen areas. The handle caught on her wrist, stripping the tape off one of her bandages.

“Owwwie! Crap!” she shouted, pressing the gauze back down against the fiery burn of her stitches. “Don’t ever slice yourself!” she called to the ceiling. “It hurts like a mother!”

She rounded the short wall and braced her arm over the sink as if blood might come pouring out any second. She peeled back her orange sleeve and examined the bandage. Half the adhesive had worked loose.

She tugged at the gauze and tape, revealing the pale swollen skin marred by three clean distinct lines, now crisscrossed with some bizarre mending tape. Steri strips, or something, they had called them. Better than Frankenstein arms, she thought. Black stitches on red welts on white flesh. Ick. Thank God for progress.

She walked down the hall to the bathroom, where the light was better. Leaning her arm against the chipped porcelain sink then spotting her haggard face in the mirror made her vision blur and every emotion she’d felt a week ago crashed back into her.

She lurched for the cabinet where she’d kept the box of razors. They were gone, of course, her parents had certainly scoured the apartment for anything sharp. She sat on the toilet lid, still holding her arm on the sink, and leaned her forehead into the crook of her elbow.

It had been so easy. She and Arnie had always kept razor blades around, as he sometimes painted on glass and needed them to scrape away mistakes.

She had come home from the hospital, clutching the Polaroids the hospital had given her of Peanut. Her parents wanted her back in her room at home, but she’d felt certain Arnie would be waiting for her, and she wanted to show him the pictures.

The baby had been so tiny, so feathery light. He’d actually been able to breathe for a while, each inhale a great movement of his entire body, a gulp of air, a shudder on the way out. They’d wrapped him in a white blanket with a blue stripe, just one small white disk with a wire attached to his chest, and laid him under a heat lamp. She’d touched his tiny cheek, but not stroked, as the doctors said his skin was very sensitive and to over stimulate him would cause pain.

They stayed this way for two hours, her leaning over the glass wall of the crib, hand warm under the light and resting lightly on his back, until the monitor beeped a warning.

A nurse stopped in and said something about apnea and called in a doctor. Peanut still took random breaths, now spaced very far apart. The baby doc came in and removed the disk and handed Peanut to her. “It won’t be long now,” he said. “You can hold him until then. It won’t hurt him.”

She let her mom and dad take a turn, but her mom got too distraught and fled the room. Her father followed her shortly and Tina ended up alone on the bed with Peanut. She pressed him into her neck, her hand on his back, often holding her own breath until she felt the shudder of his. She kissed his small forehead and after a while realized she had continued breathing when he had totally stopped.

She tucked him next to her on the bed and fell asleep then, the stressful hours now passed, labor, delivery, panic and fear, her overbearing parents and Arnie dashing out–all behind her. Peanut was still warm against her cheek as she dozed off. Sometime later a nurse woke her and said she would have to take him away.

Maybe her parents should not have left her alone with the Poloroids, but she had insisted, even when it became clear Arnie had moved all his stuff out.

She’d stumbled to the bathroom and saw he’d left one drawing on the wall, his rendition of what he thought the baby might look like. This image was so different from his others–all Goth women and red streaks on black. He’d outlined the baby in pencil based on the sonograms, then colored in the delicate skins and features with soft chalk.

The one work of his he hadn’t taken with him was their baby.

The world had rushed at her too hard. She felt completely out of control, her future whizzing through her body–back to the old school, the mountain of problems, bad grades, attitude, teachers who didn’t like her, mean kids. She’d been so happy at the alternative school, accepted, unique. She and Arnie were artists and revered over there. Girls without supportive boyfriends were so jealous.

But on that day she came home from the hospital, all she knew was that her baby was dead, her boyfriend gone, and she’d soon be booted back to the horror of public school. She washed her face and hands and the gleam of water on her white wrists seemed too pristine, too pearl. The razors lay neatly in the chest of art supplies and she stopped thinking, stopped rationalizing anything at all. The act wasn’t about killing herself, not in that moment, or about escaping, it was about marring the perfection of her arms. She was tainted, her baby had died, she was unloved and unwanted. She felt she should be marked by this–that her physical body should bear the scars of the death of her happiness.

She leaned her pale arm against the sink and didn’t hesitate once. Three sharp lines straight down from mid arm to wrist. Before she could feel weak or frightened, she switched the blade to the left hand and made three more on the right.

The blood didn’t pour like she thought it would. The lines raised to the surface, first white, then pink, then a thin red etching lifted up. She hadn’t been consistent in the pressure, so some parts bled before others, creating beads that slid down the curve. Then one of the cuts opened wide and pulsed out blood with every heartbeat. It streamed out more like she’d imagined it would. She sat amazed by the color, red on white, so bright and harsh. She still did not feel woozy. Only the sting of the cut felt different than before she’d done it. She stood up and that movement made the blood really come forth, and now it flowed down her palm and off the tips of her fingers.

She realized then she might die. She sat on the toilet lid and tried to decide. Did she call an ambulance and save herself, or did she lie in warm water and let the blood flow sweetly out? She could wake up with Peanut. No one could take him away from her this time.

Her arms hurt something awful now and she did begin to see stars–pinpricks of light. The color was draining out of her vision–everything turning black and white. Some instinct took over and she stumbled into the living room and snatched her cell phone out of her bag, leaving streaks of red everywhere. She dialed 911 and managed to tell them what she’d done and where she lived. When the paramedics arrived, she was still lightly conscious and even smiled at a cute one. He would make a good dad, she vaguely remembered whispering before her memory ran out.

Tina exhaled in an elongated rush and fingered a steri strip. She wouldn’t do it again, no way. The ordeal had been entirely too much trouble–parent freak-outs, another visit to the same hospital, then the sophomoric case workers who insisted she go to therapy and the pregnancy loss group.

Actually, she was glad about that part. She stood and peered into the mirror, tugging on one of her spiked ponies. She felt real grown up there and Melinda was nice. She felt like someone who had been through something, and everyone acknowledged it. Nobody thought she was crazy or a loser. She could say anything she wanted.

The baby’s drawing still hung over the towel rack. Tina lifted it off its hook and hugged it close to her. Peanut had been a real person. He’d actually lived. She had pictures to prove it and he’d even had a dad for a while–a dad who’d been interested enough in him to draw him before he was born.

If only he’d stuck around a bit to actually see him. He’d regret it one day, if he didn’t already. Tina didn’t care so much that he’d ditched her. Boys in high school were a drag like that. But to miss your kid’s entire life. That’s the kind of thing you always end up wishing you’d done different.