SHAMEFUL GIRLS… a teaser
Hi there … a little post Christmas reading for you.
This is the prologue from my completed work
SHAMEFUL GIRLS.
While this novel is a work of fiction, it draws heavily on my personal experience. The prologue content is my story.
Head to my contact page if you want to leave some feedback.
prologue
1970 - Hornsby Hospital
She was dying.
Tearing apart and dying, here in the labour ward.
All those hours of lonely pain.
Lying in a hospital bed all day and night.
Waiting, wanting it all to be over. She was trying hard not to show how frightened she was, trying to be a good girl and just do as she was told. All these hours of pain, spent alone in a hospital bed. Yearning to hold onto her baby who had grown under, and into her heart all these months.
‘Pushpushpush – come on, push!’
‘Bloody hell!’ The two midwives jumped as the lightning flash lit up the labour ward through the clerestory windows. A few seconds later, they laughed when thunder rumbled off the tiled walls.
‘Looks like this little one has brought a thunderstorm with them.,’ said Sister to the student nurse. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be good luck?’
The young girl shivered – was it from the cold temperature of the room as Nurse had explained? ‘Labour wards are always kept cool, you know - labouring ladies work up a sweat.’ Or was the shaking due to being scared about what was to come after fifteen hours of lonely labour? There was no-one in her corner, out in the waiting room.
‘Another big push and it will all be over. Come on – let’s get this done so we can all have a hot cup of tea.’
Sister mumbled softly to student nurse; something about pillows on her chest. ‘Lie back now – it’s all over. Just look up at the ceiling and we’ll soon be putting the kettle on.’
Spent and empty, she felt a rush of fluid between her legs, and a profound feeling of relief that it was almost over. Sister was dealing with what must be the afterbirth - she remembered that bit from Matron’s lessons. She felt tugging between her legs and another rush of fluid. She looked at the ceiling as Sister had told her, pleased that she wasn’t making a fuss as Matron had cautioned in one of her instructional sessions back at the Home, ‘… the nurses are busy people and they won’t have time to deal with blubbering wrecks.’
Annoyed that she couldn’t see what was happening, the girl peeked around the pillow tower, to see the student nurse hurrying out of the room with a cloth bundle gathered to her chest. The girl spied a tiny foot and heard a squark before the heavy door closed behind them. She wondered if this was the only part of her baby that she would ever see. Matron told them it was better if the girls didn’t see their babies. Better for who?
She felt two fat tears slipping down her face, trickling into her ears. Every part of her body wanted to reach out for that tiny scrap being whisked away. Taken not to the nursery to be washed, weighed and returned to her like all those ladies on the ward. She jammed her cries of anguish deep within her. After tearing her body apart for this baby, it was gone.
Taken.
Already leaving a huge gaping emptiness.
‘Here you go, my cariad.’ Nurse nestled another pillow behind the young girl’s head and made sure she could reach her hot cup of tea. ‘Be a good girl and drink this up and then have a wee rest before we take you back to the ward. It’s all over now.’
She sipped the welcome tea. Nurse had called her dear one in her Welsh language. This somehow made her feel less lonely. She smelt the whiff of iron and rusty nails gathering in the darkened corners of the labour ward, lurking just out of the warm glow that the old wall sconce threw onto the bed. With a start, she realised the smell wasn’t crouching in the corners, it was wafting up from her own exhausted, bloodied body.
The bright lights of the labour ward and the strobing lightning flashes of the midnight storm were gone; she was alone in the tiny circle of light, feeling exhausted and lost.
Sore and empty.
