Changeling
By Carol Quinn
Cara?
Silent crying on the operating table; a kind nurse wiping her tears; two surgeons small-talking the merits of local school districts; feeling no pain, not even the pressure she’d been warned to expect; smelling no disinfectant, no burning flesh. The room cold, clean, cold.
David?
Hand sweaty in hers, voice shaky, breath like twenty-seven hours eating peanut M&Ms: it’s good, you’re good, this is good, she’s good.
The baby?
“She’s out.”
“She’s out?”
David’s face loose with terror, the shivering white curtain. And then the thin screech, loud enough.
The baby. Her baby.
They bring the baby, Cara’s baby, to her chest, and it (she) blinks its (her) eyes, rests its (her) head above Cara’s beating heart.
Hello, Harper.
Five days and her milk still hasn’t come in, and the baby, her baby, Harper, screams. She latches to Cara’s nipple with an insistent tug—nothing, colostrum is nothing—and Cara’s stomach lurches and the baby’s nails sliver crescents into Cara’s clavicle and she does not stop screaming until, “Enough,” says David. He takes the baby, feeds her formula from a dropper as though she were a kitten rescued from its neglectful mother, and Cara’s incision throbs deep in her belly, hot like something evil.
A thought occurs, and once occurs, reoccurs: she had not seen the baby emerge.
Who could say what the surgeons had pulled from her?
Her belly, swollen still and sore to the touch.
Who could say what they had left inside?
David?
Cooing and bouncing and smiling; pointing at pictures: the grandmas and grandpas and aunts and cousins; introducing important vocabulary words: squirrel, breakfast, Subaru.
Cara?
Centipedes and rats and spiders dart in her peripheral vision. Mornings and evenings, slow walks alone, stepping off the curb without looking.
The baby? (Her baby. Harper.)
Wet eyes. Wide mouth.
Cara’s incision scab-flecked, yellow-bruised. Pressure when she reaches, pressure when she twists. Pressure testing her, probing for weakness.
What had been: Suture scissors, anatomy scissors, fine tissue scissors. Retractors, bulb syringes, cord clamps. Scalpel. Forceps. Laparotomy sponge. Gauze. Hands, fingers, surgical gloves.
What may yet be: Exploding seed pods, roots infiltrating. Hatched larval wasps, tunneling free.
Snakes in her belly, writhing, spitting. Snakes unfurling, biding their time.
Fish in her belly, leaping, arching. Salmon straining, tumbling upstream.
Rats in her belly, gnawing at stitches. Rats in her belly, clawing at scars.
Harper reclining, soapslick, solemn, fontanel pulsing in time with her heart.
David tickling, David splashing. Toweling, diapering, kissing a nose.
Cara?
Cara in the mirror, seeping, puffy. Cara in the mirror, a spreading stain. Cara in the mirror, stapled and glued, until (it’s good) something unravels, until (she’s good) what’s inside gets out.
THE END
Author Bio: Carol M. Quinn's fiction has recently appeared in The Tusculum Review, Grist, and The Normal School, among others. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in New York with her family.