4304.201 · July 19, 1984 AD
The Drumbeat Above Me
There is warmth. There has always been warmth. The drumbeat above never stops—thum-thump, thum-thump—the only song Luke knows whilst floating in thick, sweet darkness. Sometimes he swallows and it tastes like the feeling when the drumbeat is slow. Safe. That's not a word he knows, but it's what the taste means. Until the taste changes. Sharp. Wrong. Like metal in his mouth. And the drumbeat races too fast, too hard. The warmth around him turns sour. Something is happening. Something bad.
Luke exists in perfect darkness. Floating. Connected. The drumbeat above him his only constant—she-who-carries-me, her heart his entire world.
Then the taste changes. Metal. Fear flooding through the cord that connects them. Her pain becomes his pain. The drumbeat stumbles, skips, races. The warmth curdles.
Something breaks. Not him, but near him. A sound like the world cracking open.
The walls of his warm darkness press in wrong—violent clenches instead of gentle waves. Sounds pierce through, harsh and angry. Everything shakes.
Then bright. Wrong. Cold.
Something tears through the wall of his world. Not from where the squeezing should come, but somewhere else. Somewhere that should never open. An emergency extraction. His ocean drains away.
The cord is cut. He is alone.
This is his first knowing: he came through breaking, not through birth. His first feeling: he was pushed out by fear, not by love. His first truth: something went wrong, and he is the wrong thing that happened.
In the NICU, machines beep fake rhythms. Lights buzz fake warmth. Hands touch with fake comfort. Everything is fake except the breaking.
And somewhere, decisions are being made. Words being said that will become the story of him. But they're not the real story. The real story lives in his cells, in the way he'll startle at sudden sounds, in the way his body holds the shape of violence.
The lie is being born with him. Wrapped around him like blankets that try to replicate warmth but never quite manage.
The body knows what the mind hasn't learned yet. And Luke's body knows: he carries the breaking. Will carry it forever, even when he doesn't know what he's carrying. Even when they tell him a different story.
The breaking remains. The breaking is his beginning. The breaking is him.
