Rejected At Birth
When mom fainted, my sister’s mouth was wide open, like she was crying, but there was no sound coming from her.
Maybe she wanted brēāst milk. No one could hear her, not even the nurses who left to call the doctor.
When they came back, the other nurse noticed that my sister was crying. She picked her up and said, “You should learn to cry well, so that people will hear you.”
My sister stopped crying, but she still wasn’t making any sound.
I think she might have tried to speak but realized she couldn’t and accepted her fate.
The doctor came in with the nurses and gave mom a certain dose of medicine. At least she was still breathing.
I let out a sigh of relief, but no one heard it. “What will these children eat?” the other nurse who carried my sister asked.
The doctor suggested they should mix milk with water and give it to us until mom wakes up to brēāstfeed us.
“The children are nāked, just covered with these hospital clothes. I’m not sure if the mother brought clothes for her children,” the other nurse said, getting the doctor’s attention.
He turned to notice us, covered with hospital clothes. He said, “We have so many clothes in this hospital. Just pick one and wear them. She will pay for it when she gets discharged.
And don’t forget to buy food for the lady. She will need strength.” The nurse nodded and went to find clothes for us to wear.
That’s how we ended up wearing used clothes from the hospital. When our father came, he didn’t buy any clothes for us to wear.
To make matters worse, we still couldn’t spëak.
A tear fell from my eyes when the nurse came back and dressed us in the clothes. Then she accidentally dropped me after dressing me.
She went out with a food flask to buy food for mom. I overheard them saying she’s a strong woman.
Even though she lost a lot of bloōd, she didn’t give up like other women in the hospital. I knew she was fīghting for us.
When the nurse returned and the other nurse had left, mom opened her eyes and saw both of us beside her.
She smiled and touched us. I knew she was tired, but she was holding on for us.
When the nurse entered the room, she saw that mom was already awake and asked how she was feeling.
Mom’s expression said it all. She wasn’t fine. The nurse asked her to sit up and eat so she could brēāstfeed her children.
Mom struggled to sit up and made some painful expressions on her face before finally standing up. She reluctantly started eating, as if the food wasn’t tasty.
The nurse watched her closely, asking if she was okay. Mom said, “I’m not okay, my stomach area is really hūrting.”
The nurse assured her that she would be fine, but deep down, I knew she wouldn’t be. I don’t know why, but I had a feeling. She was in so much pāin.
Mom managed to eat half of the food before the nurse took it away. She drank a little water, and the nurse helped her lie down for a bit.
I felt so bad for her. If only dad was with her, the pain would have been less compared to what she was feeling at that point.
She didn’t close her eyes. She just kept looking at us.I guess she was scared that the nurses would exchange us, but there was no need to be scared because nobody would exchange two dūmb children.
Although we were a beautiful set of twins, the fact that we were both dūmb spoiled everything.
It hurt me that we were born that way and there was nothing we could do. The society wasn’t going to be friendly, so I thought.
Mom’s mother, on the other hand, couldn’t afford transport fare to the hospital, so she had to walk all the way from the house to the hospital.
It took her two days to walk. There was no one to get it from, and in a society where single motherhood was a stigmā, she was forced to stay on her own to avoid being mōcked.
She finally arrived at the hospital, and I was sleeping when I heard a voice.
I wondered who it was, and mom opened her eyes. She called “mummy,” and then I knew it was grandma.
When mom saw her, she cried even more, and grandma didn’t wait for her to speak.
She was crying too. Finally, mom broke the news with a soft voice that sounded like a whisper. The children are dūmb.
She couldn’t complete it as she acted like someone was holding her neck.
I wasn’t dūmb. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I was talking through my mind.
If only I could scream a bit, dad wouldn’t have left.
Grandma būried her face on the bed and began to cry.
Then all of a sudden, the machine connected to mom started giving signals of danger, and mom was breathing heavily.
As the nurse opened the door, she bumped into grandma, who was opening the door, and they both rushed to call the doctor.
When he came, he used something to touch her heart, and it raised up and went down until he did it again.
Mom breathed for the last time. “I’m sorry we lost her,” he said as grandma held him by the collar, not saying a word and not letting go.
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So sad