Darling Callie,
Please, please don't go. I don't know what I'll do if I lose you too. They've taken you away from me and put you in SCBU, the Special Care Baby Unit. I'm so frightened. But you're having trouble breathing and you're losing too much weight so they've put you in an incubator. I sit in the chair beside your incubator and will you to get well. I have to put my hands through two arm-sized holes in the incubator to touch you and stroke you. I try to pour all the love and hope I can muster out through my fingertips, so that it washes over your skin and through you and around you constantly. I can't even hold you to me and it's killing me.
It's so hard here, tougher than I ever thought it would be. Mercy Community Hospital only has four incubators. Just four. But I don't have the money to take you to a private hospital with better facilities and more resources. The bulk of the money my grandma left me is all tied up until I'm twenty-one and, when I moved out after Callum's death, Dad froze my allowance. I can't ask Dad for help and I won't ask Mother.
I'm being selfish, aren't I?
Callie, I won't sacrifice you on the altar of my pride. I'll give you a few hours more but if you don't improve, if it looks like you're actually getting worse, I'll call whoever I have to, to make sure you survive. I'll even phone Dad if I have to.
If I absolutely have to.
I feel so helpless, so exactly like the day Callum was killed. No... this is worse because although I can't help but hope for the best, I fear the worst.
It's all my fault. After all my fine sentiments, I tried to use you to get back at my family, my so-called friends, at everyone who allowed your dad to die and never said a word, never lifted a finger. Never even phoned me to show they gave a damn. So I put an announcement in the personal ads of all the quality newspapers because you're quality, you see. I thought by the time the announcement was run, you and I would be back in my flat but then you got ill and we're still in the hospital. Nurse Fashoda told me that the hospital has already had loads of phone calls, condemning me and the hospital's part in all this. She told me with great relish how there are some people out there who think Callum got off easy by being hanged. They think he should've been boiled in oil and tortured on a rack first. And there are some people who think Callum was a traitor for taking up with me, 'his oppressor'. When did Callum and I become emblems and symbols and all that other rubbish? When did we stop being people, being human? All those people phoning the hospital, full of poison, full of hate Noughts and Crosses alike. I shouldn't call them people. I should call them coins people who hold extreme opposite views but who are basically saying the same venomous thing. Noughts and Crosses shouldn't mix. Noughts should go back to where they came from wherever that is.
I'm not quite sure what I meant to happen with the birth announcements. I guess, I just wanted the notice to be a kick in the teeth for Dad. It hasn't happened that way. Even if Dad does know about you by now, why would he care? He's the one responsible for the death of your father and I mean less than nothing to him now. So why was I stupid enough to think he'd give a damn?
Is all of this happening to you, Callie, because I put that ad in the paper? I can't bear the thought that it might be. Is it because I wanted to use you to stick two fingers up to my dad? It wasn't only that, I swear. I wanted the whole world to know about you and how much Callum loved you and, oh, lots of reasons. It wasn't just to get back at my dad.
Get well, Callie.
Get well and I promise I'll never, ever use you or your birth in that way again.
Just get well.
I couldn't bear to lose both you and Callum. If you die, you'll take me with you. Please, please don't die.
Oh Callum, I wish you were here. I need you so much.
