She'd kept her tumour after the operation - she was surprised that they'd even let her but after all the years of back-and-forth for chemotherapy and the checkups so frequent she felt as though she lived in the hospital, after spending years of her life with the nurses she'd made some strong friendships there. Friendships that had an understanding of what the tumour now meant to her, what she overcame and the sheer size of it.
Her chances of survival had honestly been quite slim at one point but she'd pushed through and come out of it with a pinky-red blob the size of a grapefruit and a sizeable scar along her stomach. It had always been hers, she thought, and now she had physical proof that she'd come out the victor. Now she had the very thing that had kept her up at night wriggling and prodding at her in ways she'd never admit to anyone felt a lot like her first pregnancy. The one she lost when she was diagnosed with cancer five months in.
A small part of her hoped it was her baby coming back and that it had been saying goodbye the only way it knew, by moving to show her that it had been there and it was still alright. It gave her a sense of comfort, even when the chemo made her lose her hair, her weight and her energy she still had her little bundle of movement.
It might be in a jar now but she'd keep it somewhere warm and dark, feed it every hour - no half hour - until it was big enough to come out and be her baby and grow up and she knew, she knew it wasn't going to work but some desperate hope in the back of her mind recognised that it wasn't an ordinary tumour and needed to try. Just in case.
And so she hid it in a box under her bed, right beside the radiator and fed it baby formula every half hour hoping that it would grow into the perfect little baby she'd lost once before. It almost did, it could have been a child if she'd been alive long enough to keep caring. But the tumour had many smaller siblings and from what her cousins found when they were scouring her apartment for her last will and testament was some kind of half-formed fetus.
They called it a goat and threw it in the trash, ignoring the way it reached for them and the way its cries sounded like mama.
Her chances of survival had honestly been quite slim at one point but she'd pushed through and come out of it with a pinky-red blob the size of a grapefruit and a sizeable scar along her stomach. It had always been hers, she thought, and now she had physical proof that she'd come out the victor. Now she had the very thing that had kept her up at night wriggling and prodding at her in ways she'd never admit to anyone felt a lot like her first pregnancy. The one she lost when she was diagnosed with cancer five months in.
A small part of her hoped it was her baby coming back and that it had been saying goodbye the only way it knew, by moving to show her that it had been there and it was still alright. It gave her a sense of comfort, even when the chemo made her lose her hair, her weight and her energy she still had her little bundle of movement.
It might be in a jar now but she'd keep it somewhere warm and dark, feed it every hour - no half hour - until it was big enough to come out and be her baby and grow up and she knew, she knew it wasn't going to work but some desperate hope in the back of her mind recognised that it wasn't an ordinary tumour and needed to try. Just in case.
And so she hid it in a box under her bed, right beside the radiator and fed it baby formula every half hour hoping that it would grow into the perfect little baby she'd lost once before. It almost did, it could have been a child if she'd been alive long enough to keep caring. But the tumour had many smaller siblings and from what her cousins found when they were scouring her apartment for her last will and testament was some kind of half-formed fetus.
They called it a goat and threw it in the trash, ignoring the way it reached for them and the way its cries sounded like mama.
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