A Warm Blooded Comfort by Rosanna Bates

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A Warm Blooded Comfort

 
     The needle grazed my skin as the baby cried. The point pressed on the willing vein but my hand would not comply. The gurgles calling from the cot infected me with a different craving; some alien but comforting sensation that made me feel well.
      I ran a trembling hand over my pallid face, feeling where my eyes sunk into their sockets as though withdrawing from all they had seen. My body thirsted for the kick, a surging fury flooding through my blood vessels as it waited for the inevitable.
     My feet dragged me across the damp carpet, thick with condensation, littered with dirty nappies and baby wipes. Mould climbed the walls in a race to the ceiling, where a bare light bulb hung, buzzing with iridescent light. The cot was fixed to the wall, like they all were in council houses in this neighbourhood, in case some drug-addled junkie short on cash decided to sell it to secure their next hit. The thought had crossed my mind more than once before now.
      Reaching into the cot, my wandering eyes gazed down at my little creation. A teardrop shaped birth-mark dashed her earlobe. A witch’s mark, my mother would have said. She didn’t smile when she found me, not like other babies did with their mothers. What did she think when she saw me? Was I mum? Or just a figure that drifted into her life at feeding time?
    The syringe, heavy in my hand, resurrected heavier questions. Would I put her through all the heartache I suffered? Would she find me dead on the bathroom floor in seven years? Would she have twenty different parents and no place to call home? A rare sheen of tears blurred my vision, distorting her into a still, faceless thing.
      With my free hand, I caressed the fine tendrils of hair beginning to grow upon her head. A ghostly breath passed my lips and her hand touched mine with the softest, most gentle grace that dragged a raw emotion from the depths of my heart into my bloodstream.  There it was again. That inexplicable warmth, akin to the glow of sunlight on the skin that penetrated deeper, through flesh and bone to my core, to a part of me that drugs had somehow not yet touched.
     I left her. My skin burned with a longing to hold her, but I could only stumble to the window, grasping the frame for support. The forgotten syringe made itself known again, guiding my hand towards its chosen vein. It bulged from beneath my skin now, persuaded by the tightened band above my elbow. It edged nearer, my heart thumping faster with each inch it gained and faster still when it grazed again the surface of my skin.
       What was I doing?
      Another scream pierced the silence and I wrenched open the window whilst my hand paused, still clenched around my toxic sustenance. The pounding in my ears almost drowned out her wounded cries as she begged to be held, to be loved. My gaze fixed on the wretched syringe in my trembling hand. Every limb and organ, every square inch of me begged for, demanded the rush it promised. I couldn’t remember feeling a more intense instruction. Through the hazy chaos, one thought surfaced: she could give me more to live for than this.
     One hesitant finger at a time, I released it from my grasp. It fell out of sight, clattering down the fire exit. A part of me wanted to scramble down after it. I slammed shut the window and left my temptation out on the pavement where it belonged.
      My itching fingers searched for its new craving and plucked my little girl from her cot, holding her closer to stop the shakes that wracked my body. There, her little pink lips curled upwards, into a tiny, proud smile.

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Bio: Rosanna Bates was born in Worcester, England at the height of baggy jeans and boy band popularity. Her childhood was spent reading and writing stories she was too embarrassed to show anyone. She graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in Psychology in 2012 and enjoys feeding a constant impulse to travel.

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