AustLit

'It lies on the crisp hospital sheet, absolutely grotesque. Dr Arnold tells us it's called a fetus in few. Our son's unformed twin. Most likely joined via the umbilical cord in gestation, now just a jumble of elephantine bone and skin, about the size of an apricot. Three canines — there's no denying they're teeth — protrude in a jagged line across its circumference. When we first saw it after the operation there was a shock of hair pressed to its side, still moist from having Thomas's stomach juices washed away. It looked like the slick of hair and scum drawn from a shower's plughole. I gagged, felt nausea water my mouth. But the hair, the colour of wheat and nearly ten centimetres long, is dry now, almost glossy. It looks like her hair. Like Hannah's. ' (120)