Tryhard

Mrs. Talpela rubbed and pressed down at her stomach as she continued to wipe away on the whiteboard so that she could rewrite math problems before her next class, her most difficult class, arrived. The class wasn't particularly made up of bad children, per se. No group of troublemakers there to ruin her day and make her lesson a mockery. No, she had always placed blame on the time in which the class had to arrive to her. Which was right after lunch ended. It was a known fact that anyone, grown, young, student, teacher, worker, lazy, was legible to succumb to the sluggishness from eating enough food, hopefully, to fill one's stomach. Fact was was that you just don't feel like working after eating. Everybody wants to sleep. But, because you're returning to work and have to put in more of it, you're prohibited from any rest. Your rest was supposed to be the food when you needed more rest to deal with the food. The logic was paradoxical and paradoxes means nothing but trouble for the participants. That was why she never went to eat lunch when time for it. She would eat a heavy breakfast in the morning and return home to eat a heavy breakfast in the late evening. While everyone else was on their break, she would be doing what she was doing now. Erasing the board, rewriting problems, going over her lesson plan, preparing a smile, and uplifting her emotions. A process she does every time between classes and without fail if she had to say so herself.

She promoted herself as a top-tier teacher and acted as such. But, this particular morning seemed to have been trying to throw a monkey wrench onto her intentions. What with the constant vomiting and intense stomach cramps. She found herself running to the teacher's restroom, maybe, three times that morning before or after a class to throw up and end up nailed to the floor cause her stomach pained her so much that she couldn't find the feeling to get up. It was the weirdest thing for her, not cause she had no idea what was going on, but cause she knew what was going on yet thought that she had gotten over it by now. The child inside of her was readying more and more to get himself out of her and she couldn't be happier to oblige. To say that it had been hard for her to teach with a beach ball protruding from her was putting the sentiment lightly. She absolutely hated how her body now handled. All bloated and blown up and constantly needing attention. Whether it be food, love, restrooms, rubbing, kissing, or gelatin-assisted scanners, it was all doing one thing to her. Making her inefficient at her job and top-tier doesn't correlate with inefficiency. She was ready for her pregnancy to end. The awkward vomiting that appeared out of no where. The constant bleeding from her “down below”, making it hard to tell whether she's urinating or draining her veins. The overall substances that she would see just trickling out of her that she had wished she had never known was a part of her body. All of it had been one consistent, long trial of life that she had been more than ready to see end and she was hoping that, with these problems happening more frequently, it was nearing just that. She'd be happy and so would her husband for that.

As she was half-way through jotting down the problems, she felt a familiar pang in her stomach and found herself hitting her head on the board and staring down at the floor. She quickly placed a hand over her mouth and sucked on her tongue and closed her throat. She was trying to see if vomiting was to come next and, sure enough, she felt something creeping up her throat. As the school's bell rang, she placed her marker down on the board's ledge and started walking calmly yet quickly out to the hallway. Just as she was about to reach it, she ended up walking into a crowd of students from her next class and ended up slightly pushing her shoulder into one of them. She muttered a “sorry” under her breath before closing her mouth back up tightly and continuing for the restroom. As she paced hastily on forward, she could hear one of the students whispering,

“Watch the hell she going.”

Too afraid to try reaching the teacher's restroom down the hallway in time, she decided to just use the student's stalls as they were just outside across from her classroom. She walked into the restroom and was quickly hit by the smell of cigarette smoke and perfume as a group of girls already inside were preparing to walk out from the sight of her. Mrs. Talpela paid them no mind and continued to one of the stalls. She swung the door and immediately smelt a mixture of urine and bleach emitting from the toilet. She clenched her mouth tighter as the smell was causing a gag-reflex and was making it harder to keep the vomit down until she was ready. She shut the door behind her and knelt down in front of the toilet. She scrunched her face as the smell had become stronger the closer her nose was to the toilet and quickly flung the toilet seat up. She propped her head over the bowl and finally removed her hand from her mouth. She pulled back her hair, opened her mouth wide, and prepared for the pain of what she felt would be intense vomiting. But, surprisingly, that wasn't what had happened. Instead of more chunks of her breakfast, she found nothing but strings of drool coming out of her mouth and whatever it was pushing up her throat had now transformed into a series of coughs. She spit into the bowl and started sucking on her tongue before opening her mouth again, thinking that the vomit was about to come now. But, again, it hadn't. She started gagging herself and, again, nothing happened. Finally, she pulled her head up from the bowl and stared curiously at the tank, wondering what her body was trying to tell her. If she hadn't had to throw up, what was that intense familiar feeling there for?

Suddenly, she had received her answer and, soon, threw the toilet seat back down before hastily sliding down her skirt and panties to prop herself on the seat. What came next was what felt like everything in her body draining itself out of her, painfully and substantially. She placed her head in her hands and rubbed at her eyes tightly. Then, she pulled one hand away and began rubbing at her stomach while wiping away tears from her eyes. This was a pain different than all else before. She hadn't felt this pain at all during her pregnancy or even, she considered, her whole life. Her legs were weak, trembling slightly. She felt slight tension shooting up her back along with cold shivers. And, she couldn't help but cry and sweat a little from the entire experience. Eventually, her body decided to stop flushing everything inside of her out yet she still found herself unable to move as her body felt too numb. She pulled at the roll of tissue paper to her side, finding it a little hard to do as the thick roll required careful pulling to not tear off too short of a piece. She wiped drool from her mouth and tears from her eyes before lowering her head again into her hands. Curious, she caught a whiff of what she had just let out of herself and was surprised to find that it didn't smell as putrid as she had thought it was. It smelt neutral. Neither good nor bad. But, sweet and rusty. And, old and icy. She opened her legs slightly and looked down between them into the toilet water. Though darkened by blocked light, she saw nothing but redness under her. A little scared, she lifted her head and stared at the door.

Red, she thought.

Forcing past her still numbed body, she lifted herself up off of the toilet and began pulling tissue paper to wipe herself. Looking back into the toilet bowl, she saw the redness again. Without anything blocking it, the bowl looked to have been a cesspit of dark red waters with spots blacker or lighter than others. It looked thick, splotched, and something ominous that seemed in need of disinfectant. As she slid her panties and skirt back on, Mrs. Talpela told herself that she would head to the doctor after school was over. She flushed the toilet and exited to the sink. She washed her hands and looked herself over in the mirror. She placed water on some paper towels and wiped her face of the dried sweat and tears. Then, she wiped her nose and threw the towels away. She looked herself over again in the mirror and rubbed at her stomach. She closed her eyes and, after a moment of silence, finally, left out of the restroom.

When Mrs. Talpela had returned to her classroom, she saw that the room was already in disorder with students leisurely talking with one another with chairs turned around to others' desks. Or, some children already succumbing to their filled stomachs and laying their heads down on their desks. Regardless, everyone was so caught up in whatever miscellaneous activity that they were a part of that no one noticed her standing at the entrance. Seeing all that was going on, she sighed to herself and walked into the classroom, making sure to keep her face away from the class. She had her head turned to the whiteboard and began finishing where she had left off with writing the equations. After a while, the students finally took notice of her and began lazily moving their chairs and desks back in order and picked their heads up in attention. After she finished with the last question, Mrs. Talpela turned to her class and gave her best, fakest smile to them.

“Afternoon, everyone! Everyone full and ready to go after lunch?” She asked.

“Ready to go to sleep.” One of the students in the back answered and many of the other students started laughing.

Mrs. Talpela laughed a little too under her breath. She knew from previous ordeals that the best way to deal with her after-lunch class was to make them upbeat enough that it would help them not yield to their urge to rest. And, if that meant having the kids make jokes and laugh and put a big smile on her face, then, it was all to make her job a lot easier.

She felt another pang in her stomach and placed a hand on it before quickly shrugging it off. She placed her hands on the long table in front of her, an open marker in one hand and the cap in another. She looked to her students and smiled,

“So, as I told you all yesterday, we're a little behind from the other classes because we haven't been able to cover the subjects that I wanted us to on Monday. So,” She looked over the room. “We're going to have to play a little bit of catch-up before the week is over or all of you will be very unprepared for the test that will be given next Tuesday.”

The student's expressions didn't change to Mrs. Talpela's words. Blank and lacking of any concern or worry for their situation. Some of them barely understood the point that she was trying to make while others were ready to ask why she just couldn't just move the date of the test if it worried her so much. But, they kept quiet and continued to let their teacher speak.

“So,” She brought the marker up and pointed to the board behind her. “That's why I'm going to have you all do a little bit of more hands-on learning. I'm going to need some of you to volunteer and try to answer the problems I have here on the board behind me. You're going to have to show your work, of course, and don't worry. This isn't a grade. This is purely just to see if you what to do and to show you what to do if you don't.”

“So, to shut myself up already,” Mrs. Talpela spotted one of her female students sluggishly nodding her head in her palm. “Who wants to get up here and solve one of these problems?”

Mrs. Talpela picked herself up off of the table, feeling on her back a little from some slight discomfort she had felt from there. She scanned the room in search of the student willing to do as she had asked and come up to the board. In the back of her mind, she knew that none of them was going to do it but, it was something of a routine, or obligation, to just throw out the chance for someone to do it of free-will. But, these kids going on to college by next year just don't understand yet. When they get into college and into the “real world”, raising a hand won't be considered a bad thing but the difference between taking a step forward or still standing back. She gave the room one last look over again before finally deciding that she would have to force one of the students to come up to the board.

“Fine, I'll choose.” She said.

Mrs. Talpela tried placing the cap back on its marker but, she was so focused on her class that she wasn't paying attention on her motions and ended flinging the cap down on the floor and had it bounced and rolling towards the students. The cap stopped just under a desk and the student sitting there reached under to pick it up. He held it up and Mrs. Talpela thanked him before walking towards him with a hand out to take it back. A respectable student would have gotten up and given it to me, she thought to herself. But, regardless, she had gotten around the table and neared the student before she heard a wet squeaking noise from under her. She stopped where she was and looked down at the floor to see what had made that sound. Lifting her foot just a little, she saw her shoe print made in what seemed to be red ink on the floor. Her eyes trailed up from the print onto her shoe and saw that there was red ink there as well. She continued following the trail that the red ink was leaving for her until it ended up out of her view from under her skirt. Anybody, if they saw what she had, would've been able to tell what was going on by then. But, through enough shock that her thoughts were left stiff and stuck, she just continued staring down at her leg wondering why and how red ink had gotten on it. Then, through intervention from one of her students, the same boy who had held up the marker cap for her to take, her brain was finally allowed to process the truth of what was going on with her.

“Mrs. Talpela,” The boy almost yelled. “You're bleeding.”

She felt pain rise from inside her stomach and immediately dropped the marker on the floor and started quickly marching out of the classroom. As she left her class, she could hear the “eew's” and “damn's” from them before someone finally said what took her somewhat of forever to realize.

“Her water's broke! Her's water broke!”

Mrs. Talpela quickly ran down the hallway towards the main office as carefully as she could with both hands on her stomach and legs closed to, in her mind, not allow anymore blood to trickle out of her. Eventually, she reached the office and got herself inside and in front of one of the desk assistants. She scared the young lady almost to death as she slammed her hand on the table and, the words almost spilling out of her mouth, said,

“Call the hospital and my husband. I think I'm having my baby.”

-------------------

Hours later, Mrs. Talpela was laying on her side, staring out of her hospital room window onto the setting sun behind the silhouette buildings and batted her eyes. They were crusty with tears and burning from redness. Her face was dry from sweat and her voice was hoarse from overexertion. She had no strength left in her body and no substance left to release from it. All was quiet around her except for the beeps and drips of machines and the low hum of volume from the television sent through her remote. But, to her, those sounds weren't enough to gain any attention from her and, so, everything truly was quiet around her. And, she wanted that. She wanted silence for the moment and gain some peace of mind and lack of motion. She kept watch of the sun continuing to set itself behind the buildings from afar and the transitioning of the sky from the reds to black. She wanted that as well. The end of the reds. She was sick of the color. Sick of the color and the sounds. She wanted silence and the end of the reds. And, she wanted to stay and live in it. Then, the door opened and her husband arrived. He had a look as blank as hers when their eyes met and he wanted the silence just as much as she did. He closed the door behind himself and walked towards his wife.

---------------------

Mrs. Talpela erased the whiteboard and began preparing new math problems for her next class. The after-lunch class. Her stomach growled as she finished the last problem and she gulped down spit in hopes to satiate it.