The things nobody says
Chapter 2 is now up
She slept less and less every night. She managed to focus on work when she was in the office, but as soon as she was done for the day, she would start spiralling. Episodes like the one she’d had when she first found out started happening more often. By the end of the third trimester, she had at least one a day when Steve was away and two or three times a week when he was home.
Until, one day, she had a very ugly episode at work. She panicked after one of those endless, useless, meetings that could have been an email. She was about to leave the conference room, thinking how it had all been a waste of time and she should have left hours ago. A voice in her head had said that if the babies had already been born she would have been in trouble. She would have been late picking them up from day-care and, if that happened too often, social services would have to be called and her children would be taken away from her because she was a terrible mother. Then, her children would hate her forever and they would get into bad friendships, and then they would get addicted to drugs or alcohol and they would get in trouble with the law and end up in jail and it would all be her fault.
She collapsed on a chair, her pupils dilated, her breath frantic. She tried to get back in control of her body but people where all over her, touching her, telling her what to do, shouting over one another. An ambulance was called and she was taken to a hospital. After her breathing and heartrate had been brought back to normal, she had been taken to the psychiatric ward.
Great, now everyone would think she was crazy!