Page 67 of Lost in Love

They’re worried I’m causing too much stress to my unborn child. But how can I even worry about that when my first-born daughter is dying in front of me? How is this fair? It’s not. It never will be!

I scowl at her. “Have you lost a child, Vivian? Do you even know what this is like or are you just here because the hospital says you should be? I don’t want to be your job. I just want to hold her and tell her it’s going to be okay even if it’s not.”

I feel like an asshole when she says, “My two-year-old son to neuroblastoma.”

I don’t say anything. I stare at Mara next to me, her hand in mine.

Vivian rubs my shoulder. “Talk to her. Make her feel comfortable and that she’s not alone.”

How can I do that when there’s only anger inside me?

My heart hurts so badly.I draw in a shaky breath and continue on, knowing I shouldn’t but just this glimpse at her, it’s something. I need this reminder to know what I’m fighting for now. So I read on, regardless of the all-consuming pain pulling me under.

Today’s Sunday.It’s so hot outside. The air conditioners in the hospital are working overdrive and it’s still not enough. They brought in fans to try to cool Mara off. She’s sweating so much. Her breathing has changed. It’s strained, harsh, like at any moment she’s going to choke. There’s a distinct crackle to it that I know is the end. Tomorrow is her seventh birthday, and I fear she won’t make it through the night. They put her on oxygen and she’s no longer responsive to us. Her last words to us when we told her the cancer had spread to her chest?

“That dumb cancer.”

I cry.

Noah stares at the wall like he wants to burn a hole through it. We don’t talk. At all.

I think about Mara’s words. Dumb cancer. She’s right. It’s dumb and something a child should never have to go through. A pain parents shouldn’t know, but here we sit with her, praying for comfort. The child life specialist, Vivian, talks with Oliver and Hazel, though I’m not sure they understand what she meant by any of it. Oliver asks, “When will she die?”

Noah sits beside me, not touching, not talking, but it’s then his body hunches forward, his sobs racking through him. I’ve never seen him so broken.

I hate that question Oliver asks because I don’t want to think about my baby dying while I’m ready to give birth to her sister any day now. Vivian tells the kids that every child has a puzzle, and we’re all pieces to Mara’s puzzle. Once Mara has all the pieces to her puzzle, she will pass on.

I can’t take this pain. My heart is so heavy, so sad, so… I don’t know.

Please do something. Make it stop. Give her more time. Give us more time with her. Please, I’m begging you, God. Don’t take her.

Closing my eyes, I picture her sweet face before the cancer, her long blonde curls, the brightest blue eyes, and her chasing Oliver through our back field. It’s in that vision of her that I see her running wildly through the tall grass and into the sun where my little girl belongs, forever in the brightest light to match her beautiful soul.

Tears flowdown my face to the point where I can’t breathe normally, but I keep reading. It’s torture, but I can’t stop because, for some reason, it makes me feel closer to my precious baby girl. It’s like I’m in that moment again and can picture every single detail from Noah’s breathing, Mara’s shallow strained ones, and the pain inside us knowing we were at the end.

Journal,it’s three in the morning, her birthday. Noah’s holding Mara with a cool rag pressed to her face. The front of his shirt is soaked in her sweat and his tears. I think she might pass any moment now. The beats have slowed, the breaths, few and far between. The doctors came in to check on her and said it will be any time. Any second, her heart is going to stop. We have her on a morphine drip to help with the pain. She opened her eyes and looked at Noah a few minutes ago. She didn’t say anything, but she pulled at the mask. I knew it was helping her, but she was fighting against it. Noah removes it. Crawling into the bed with her, he takes all the blankets off her and he’s holding her in the bed, much like he did when she was born. Her head is on his chest, her tiny body skin and bones, the evidence that this awful disease has taken its toll on her. She’s soaked in sweat, her heart working so hard that it’s as if she’s running a marathon.

But in her daddy’s arms, she’s free of pain and held tight. A sob rolls through Noah’s chest as his hand raises, rubbing over her head as he presses his lips to her forehead. “It’s okay, baby girl. Daddy’s got you.”

So many memories take over. Noah holding her after she was born, how excited he was to have a daughter. Him teaching her to walk, riding on the tractor with him, and kissing scraped knees, and now this.

My final memory of this beautiful little girl will be her dying. Her losing her fight to this awful disease.

Noah wipes tears from his eyes. He’s sobbing now, his body shaking so badly he can barely hold her still. I move from my place beside the bed, to be with him. Noah wraps one of his arms around me, the other holding Mara to his chest.

Silence follows, Mara’s breaths fewer and fewer. I pray. I pray for a miracle or for God to take her. I can’t bear the thought of her suffering any longer. I remember nothing happening the way I thought it would.

I thought we’d have more time.

I look over at Noah, both of us so drenched in tears we can’t form thoughts, let alone say anything to one another. We should have been celebrating her birthday today, and here we are holding her, at the end of her battle. I press my lips to her temple. “You can go, baby girl.” I don’t know why I say that, maybe because I fear she’s holding on for us.

And then comes the last breath, the sigh, and the unbearable silence that follows. Her tiny heart stopped. I look at Noah, but he won’t look at me, his body rigid.

She’s gone.

She completed her puzzle, but mine’s forever missing a piece.

We hold her for an hour. After the pronouncement. After the bath. After everything, and the only thing worse than looking at your daughter dead is seeing the look of agony on your husband’s face and wanting him to comfort you and hold you and tell you everything is going to be fine, but knowing he’s physically incapable of it.

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