Page 13 of Forever Christmas
Tearsspring to my eyes as lightning bolts of pain trickle up my abdomen. I’m already doing everything wrong! How in the world am I supposed to get a healthy baby here?
My body bends over as I shuffle to the sofa and lie down. I breathe slowly in and out, assessing. What hurts? Is there anything wet down below? I picture blood and I’m horrified to actually feel it, wet and sticky.
I leap up, forgettingto be careful, and race to the bathroom. I remember Jenny calling me, hysterical, from a hotel room in Tennessee after she tracked down Chance. She was bleeding and sure she’d lost the baby.
Except Phoenix got here fine. I was the one to calm her down, assure her that a little blood was fairly common.
I jerk down my jeans in the bathroom, expecting to see an ocean of red.
But there’s nothing.Absolutely nothing.
I imagined it.
I pull my pants back up and sit on the edge of the tub. This is terrible. My heart beats too fast and my stomach is a block of stone. How will I ever make it through nine months of this? How does anyone face a new pregnancy after the ultimate failure?
My baby had been damaged beyond repair. The doctors wouldn’t even give him a chance, refusing the heart surgeryhe needed to survive. He lived and died in a hospital. I only held him when they took the breathing tubes away.
I don’t move, my fingers gripping the edge of the tub, just trying to breathe. A lot of time passes, but it’s only me at home. Nothing will pull me out of this spiral. I have to do it myself.
At last my chest loosens a little and I can take a breath deep enough to calm my anxiety.My back aches from my position, so I stand and head to the living room.
The old comfy armchair beckons. The arms are shredded and I’ve thrown hand towels over them. But it’s broken in just right, and I sink into it like I’m collapsing into an embrace.
When I was in Houston with Tina a month ago, we retrieved the remains of her baby so that they could be cremated. Her old friend Stella walkedthe path of the cemetery with us. She ran a pregnancy loss group that Tina belonged to years ago, back when Peanut was born prematurely and lived only three hours.
Stella said that a new pregnancy after a loss is called a rainbow baby, the beauty after the storm. “You’ve survived the tempest,” Stella said. “Now let yourself believe you will see the colors arcing across your sky.”
I stare atthe ceiling, willing myself to find hope. It seems terribly far away. I search my heart and head for that small comforting light and simply can’t find it. I had a grip on it so recently, sitting in the office with Gavin, learning he had some sperm.
Certainly I felt it when I learned I would be an adjunct.
And then again, when Jenny ran out of her apartment with the pregnancy stick, telling mewhat I had not even guessed could be true.
But now with a single twinge of pain, it had fled.
The images of Finn hang on the wall opposite me. The incubators were thick clear plastic with the blue circles where you could place your hands inside. A gray mask covered his eyes, and a tube snaked into his mouth, taped down on both cheeks. So little skin even showed. He was all wires and plasticwrap and blinking lights.
I try to imagine going through all that again, and I can’t summon the strength. My head collapses on the broad arm of the chair. This is too much for anybody.
I need Tina. She will understand how I feel. Of course, her pregnancy problem has a name. Incompetent cervix. So easy to take action for. A little wire around her cervix keeps the baby from sliding out too early.But does she feel safe? Is she able to nurture that little light of hope?
My hand reaches out to the coffee table for my phone. Tina is already five months pregnant, almost precisely the point when her Peanut was born too early. We don’t usually talk about these things, but I need to. I need her.
I have a feeling she needs me.
I text her a quick note, just about the wedding. If she’s busy,I don’t want to drop some big stress bomb on her in the middle of something important.
She writes back quickly, noncommittal about the decorations. She really doesn’t care much about the aesthetics of her wedding, only the people and place. So I dive in.
I just hallucinated the feeling of blood, like I lost the baby. I don’t how to stop it.
Her response is swift.
Coming over.
I wait in thechair, afraid to move, angry I lifted the weight, upset I’d felt the nonexistent blood. My body is betraying me, making things worse.
I’ve only known about the baby for a week. Would it get better? Or worse?
