2 min 33 sec

      I can see the clock on the wall; its black face and bold red digitized numbers seem obscene on the stark white surface. I hate white walls. They are unimaginative, boring, empty. They look so barren at this moment, as I lay here focusing on those blood red numbers on the black face on the white wall.

     POP, seems so far away for a sound so close. It’s familiar, yet foreign somehow. Perhaps the familiarity is fake and the sound itself all too real. The warmth that slowly surrounds me turns sticky and cold; as I watch the seconds turn in slow motion in red on black on the empty white wall.

     I struggle to move my gaze downward, afraid if I stop watching the numbers they will stop ticking away. Breathe in…breathe out. I hear noises, voices perhaps, whispering across the room. I know they are important, can’t really remember why.

     My foggy head is heavy. My eyes struggle to focus on anything other than those numbers ticking in slow motion. Each second a seeming eternity, each movement like dragging a body, my body, through mud. The sun catches movement. Flowing like hot tar, edging closer. It smells like metal, or tastes metallic, or both somehow.

     A stirring on my chest startles me. I almost forgot. How could I forget? My arms are too weak to move. My eyes turn slowly. I can’t see, but I know they’re there, if I could just hold on a little longer. I gaze at the clock. Watching those red numbers change on the black face against the naked white wall.

     The pool of red tar moving toward me reaches my own. It’s odd that they’re the same, yet so very different; mine being dark and sluggish, his more fluid, bright and still warm. I can see where he lays across the room, with the phone on the floor. Ah, yes, the voices were still speaking. Can’t make them out, but they are there.

     Another stir on my chest pulls my attention as I wonder if the pain dissipates in conjunction with the amount of blood that surrounds me. Cold and shaking, I try my best not to shiver, but I do. They stir and I wish more than anything that I could lift my arms to hold them.

     “Twins”, he said in drunken disgust as he cut through me to pull out the child he believed wasn’t his. There were two. I still smile at the notion. Praying that the voice on the phone means help is on the way. 31 weeks is viable, but the babies aren’t breathing. I don’t even know if they’re boys or girls.

     When he saw his own birthmark, he knew that they were his. Now he bleeds with me in silence and I can hear the sirens. If I can just breathe until they get here… as I watch the seconds pass in stillness, in red numbers on the black face on the stark white wall.