Page 35 of Unbreakable
I remember how invincible I felt, having my perfect partner and our perfect little nugget under my hands, a heart we made out of our two.
I remember thinking how easy this was, and how lucky I got.
I remember the perfection of the day, and how nothing could get us down. The way she smiled when we sealed our commitment with a kiss. Tiny white flowers in her hair. A smear of chocolate cake on the waist of her dress where I grabbed her after I delicately fed her a piece of our wedding cake. Sitting with my arm around her while Chappy toasted us, reminiscing on the night we met.
I remember stroking her tiny belly as we lay awake in the little guest house her parents put us up in, admiring how her body was changing from the life we created.
I remember everything.
Nothing can prepareyou for it. You know it’s a possibility, but you hope it won’t happen to you.
We flew to Cabo the morning after the wedding, staying at a resort for a couple of days before I had to be back at work. That first night, she complained about her stomach hurting, but she thought it was just the juice she had at dinner. We kept it easy the next day, taking a short walk in the jungle and mostly lounging by the pool or in our room.
We had dinner that night at one of the resort’s restaurants. As we sat, she got a strange expression and excused herself to the bathroom. My phone rang in my pocket, and I almost ignored it since we were on vacation. But it was her name on the screen, and her panicked voice on the other end.
I burst into the women’s room and found her shaking on the toilet, holding a piece of stained toilet paper. “I’m sure it’s okay, baby,” I tried. “Let’s just go back to the room.”
“I don’t think it’s okay, Dyl.”
The next twenty-four hours were a nightmare. She saw a doctor in Cabo, who couldn’t do an ultrasound, but said it was probably nothing. She didn’t have any more bleeding, but she was still having pain.
The horror, the cruel juxtaposition of being in paradise when a worst-case scenario is happening to you. We couldn’t get a flight out until late the next morning.
I held her hand in the cold doctor’s office where we got the bad news. Our baby had no heartbeat, and at some point over the next few days or weeks, her womb would empty.
“It’s no one’s fault. These things happen. Many couples go on to have healthy children.”
I remember watching a single tear flow into her ear as she lay back on the exam table, trying to hold it together while the ultrasound screen gave us the answer we did not want.
I remember the way Jeanine wailed, how it struck me as otherworldly and animalistic.
I remember thinking there couldn’t be a grief deeper than this, and it’s one you mostly have to endure alone.
I remember how foolish I felt for thinking we were invincible, because no one is.
I remember how my back ached from holding her so tight across the console of the car.
“I don’t want another baby,” she sobbed in the car. “I wanted this one.”
She blamed herself, the wedding, flying, the honeymoon, her auditioning while she was pregnant. She said we shouldn’t have had sex. She came up with all sorts of terrible theories as to why everything was her fault.
I listened to every single way she blamed herself and tried to talk her out of it. It wasn’t her fault. It was no one’s fault.
Coach gave me the next week off, and I became my new wife’s nurse. By the middle of the week, she still hadn’t passedthe pregnancy, so she decided to have a procedure to remove the remnants. She couldn’t endure any more torture than she already had.
She was heartbroken.
I was heartbroken.
We had so much hope and joy tied up in that little beating heart, and it had been taken from us, a light snuffed out.
I took to giving her washcloth baths because I couldn’t get her out of bed. I fed her anything she would eat. I spent a fortune on delivery service just to be able to stay by her side.
I was afraid to leave her alone. She hadn’t said anything like she’d hurt herself, but I was afraid she was thinking it. I’d never traveled a road as dark as the one we were on. My bright, scrappy Jeanine had faded into a withering flower.
In the middle of one of those hellish nights, I woke to her crying so hard it shook the bed. I kissed her forehead and snuggled her close to me. “What if it never stops hurting?” she asked.
“I know this pain feels permanent right now, Jeannie. It won’t be, and I don’t know when it’ll stop hurting. But I’ll sit with you in it as long as you need to.”
