Somehow, they got me calm enough to move ahead with the treatment that would force my body to go into labor. The staff told us it could take days for the delivery to start. Meanwhile, we could go home and wait for my body to respond to the medication.
Everything hurt. It was as if the pain in my heart engulfed my entire being, causing it to be one sore pile of bone and tissue, walking around—bone and tissue with a dead baby inside of it.
It took less than twenty-four hours for the medication they gave me to kick in, and Ace and I returned to the hospital to have him.
A stillbirth.
I thought I hurt before, but it wasn’t until the moment of AJ’s birth that some small piece of me had managed to hold out hope. A faith that maybe the doctors were wrong, and my little guy’s heart was still beating.
Yet, after he was born, and the nurses wrapped him up in a blanket and handed him to me, I knew they were right. Outwardly, he looked like he could’ve been asleep. But as I held him, he was motionless.
Too still.
No up and down movement of his chest to indicate breathing.
No flickering of his eyelids.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to him before kissing his forehead. I knew this was my fault. If I had listened to Ace and quit my job sooner, maybe I wouldn’t have fallen, and AJ would still be alive.
I concluded that my fall at work had to be responsible for what happened to him.
When I passed our son over to Ace to hold, I burst into tears. It was my fault. I was responsible for the pained expression on his face as he held his dead son.
I turned over in the bed and wept like I never had before.
A few weeks later…
There was a knock on the door. “Ace, someone’s at the door,” I called out from my fetal position in our bed.
I didn’t feel like I had the strength to get up and answer it. I hadn’t had the energy to do much aside from lying in bed and stare at the wall with the TV on.
I’d tried to go back to work a week earlier, and that turned into a disaster.
“Ace,” I yelled again, then remembered he wasn’t home. And whoever was on the other end of the door wasn’t getting the message.
I sat up and slowly stood. I took my time getting to the door even though our apartment was tiny. Physically, I was better, though not fully healed. It was mentally that continued to wear on me and slow me down.
“Mr. Joel,” I said as I pulled the door open.
Ace’s father hated to be called Mr. Townsend for some reason and insisted on everyone calling him by his first name. Even his sons. Yet, I never felt comfortable calling someone much older than me by their first name.
Joel’s lips tightened. “Is my son home?” he asked without any type of greeting.
“No.” I bit my tongue to keep from adding ‘sir.” The man hated those types of formalities. “He’s at work but should be home in a few hours.” Ace had taken on extra hours to make up for my loss of pay. And the additional medical bills.
“And what are you doing at home?”
I swallowed, not liking the bite in his voice. Joel hadn’t ever been overly friendly with me. I always got the sense that he disliked me. Or at least, he didn’t think I was good enough for his son.
Probably because I was from the other side of the bridge. That’s what I concluded, at least.
Ace’s mother, on the other hand, had always been loving and kind to me. Up until the day she died.
“I was resting,” I lied. I couldn’t rest. Every time I closed my eyes, I either saw Ace Junior in that hospital blanket, or I would experience phantom kicks in my belly. Only to discover, when I opened my eyes, that they weren’t real.
It was like reliving over and over, every morning, that my son died.
Joel snorted and took a step back.
