The thing I remembered most about that day was the rage in his eyes before his fist came down and shattered my cheekbone. I’d crumpled like a rag doll, but he didn’t stop his quest to break me. He kicked me in the back and in the ribs over and over again, as he told me I was worthless and the worst mistake of his life. His heavy boots with the steal toe drove each point home. I cried, pleading with him to stop, my arms wrapped around my pregnant belly. I tried to pull myself up, shaking and crying and begging him. He stomped on my wrist, the sickening crunch and the blinding pain had made me blackout.
I didn’t speak as the memories washed over me, stealing my breath and filling my lungs with pain—almost like drowning, but without thewater.
I still heard his voice in my head, and relived it in mynightmares.
Rubbing at my right wrist—the same wrist that Richie had broken, I looked down at the faint scars from where the doctors had drilled pins to set it. Sometimes, it would ache and throb, reminding me about the past I couldn’t seem toescape.
“I thought we would die that night. Miraculously, we didn’t. He left after breaking my wrist, likely to go to the bar or one of his druggie friend’shouses.”
“The pain was so severe that I faded in and out of consciousness. I hurteverywhere, my eye was swollen shut and my wrist was dangling at an odd angle, throbbing every time I tried to move. I knew it was broken, but the worst part was my stomach. It felt like the muscles were ripping. I knew something was wrong with the baby.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded foreign and far away, like I really wasdrowning.
“Sobbing, I’d dragged myself across the floor, to my phone on the coffee table. I dialed home, trying to fight the darkness. My relationship with my mother was still wrought with tension, and I never made social calls—but she was who I called in that moment. I begged her to come to me before passing outagain.”
After the phone call, my mother showed up at the apartment with my little brother. I came to, seeing their tear streaked faces as they crouched before me. Between the two of them, they were able to get me into the car and drive me to the hospital. From there, they had to transfer me by helicopter to Mount Sinai in Toronto, as the Parry Sound hospital wasn’t equipped to handle babies born before 35 weeks. There wasn’t time to talk to the police or to press charges; not when my body felt like it was going to snap in half, and not when the hospital staff was more concerned with saving my son’s life and getting metreated.”
I stopped talking again, letting the memory of my son’s birth envelop me. Aiden Miller was born at 31 weeks. He weighed 3 ½ pounds, less than a bag of sugar, and was only sixteen inches long. He was hooked up to heart rate monitors and a CPAP machine that helped him breathe. He had been born with fluid on the lungs, likely due to swallowing so much amniotic fluid when I was inlabor.
“The doctors did their best to patch me up; I’d escaped with a broken wrist and cheekbone, and three of my ribs were badly bruised. I hurt everywhere, but the worst pain I felt came from my heart. I’d nearly lost my son, and he was still in critical condition. He was so tiny, sohelpless.”
“Where was your family during all ofthis?”
“They were watching over me, keeping a vigil in the waiting room. Any time I left the NICU—which wasn’t very often and only to use the washroom—they’d be there, ready to force me to eat and take a break. Braden had even called Brock. He’d been competing in some rodeo in Alberta, but he flew backimmediately.”
When he came in to meet his nephew, he had vibrated with anger at the sight of usboth.
“My family didn’t know exactly what happened to me, but they had a sneaking suspicion that it was Richie’s fault. After all, we’d grown up with an abusive father. We knew what it looked like, what it feltlike.”
“You sound ashamed,” Dr. Rootham assessed, the corners of her lips drawn downward in a slightfrown.
I nodded. I remember being unable to meet any of their eyes. I was so ashamed that I’d ended up with someoneso muchlike the devil we’d grown up with, so ashamed that I had put my own child in danger because I’d been too afraid to leave when I should have. I felt weak andstupid.
“I felt like my mother, and while I loved my mother…I also hated her for staying with him, for keeping that monster in our home for so long. If he hadn’t died, there was no way of telling if she ever would have left. Then I did the unspeakable…I’d let the monster remain in my child’s life too, until it was almost too late…until he had almost died. I failed to protect mybaby.”
There was no greater shame than that, and the guilt of it nearly consumed me to this veryday.
“I remember laying my head against his incubator, my shoulders shaking as I cried. The movement was excruciating for my ribs, but I didn’t care. I deserved the pain. Then I metChristina.”
“Christina?” Dr. Rootham asked, her pen gliding across the page as she jotted the namedown.
“Over the eight weeks that Aiden was in the NICU, Christina was our primary day nurse. She was the nurse to first place Aiden in my arms, a few days after his birth. She was forever patient and gentle, and she didn’t let me stew in grief or guilt. That woman is the reason why I went into nursing,” I explained, smiling at the thought of the friendly nurse who saw me through one of the darkest times of mylife.
“It sounds like she helped you,” Dr. Rootham noted, her eyes fixated onme.
“She did,” I nodded. “She wanted me to talk to the hospital psychiatrist. My patient file had been referred to Dr. Kennedy as the nurse on the maternity ward thought I was at risk because of the trauma, my age, and the fact that my son was born nine weeks early. She was also the one to set me up with a room in the Ronald McDonald House for five weeks, since I lived over two hours away and wouldn’t be able to drive myself to the hospital once they dischargedme.”
“You’ve spoken before about your hesitance to seek psychiatric help,” Dr. Rootham pointed out. “Why were you so againstit?”
“I was a mess,” I added, shaking my head. “Given the emotional traumas I’d been through, the fact that I’d just given birth and my hormones were completely messed up,andthe fact that my older brother was sitting in jail—I was a complete mess. But I hadn’t been able to talk to Dr. Kennedy about it. I was afraid that more people would get hurt with mywords.”
Dr. Rootham furrowed her brow in confusion. I knew I was shoving a lot at her, and I gave her an apologetic smile. In our previous sessions, I hadn’t mentioned Brock’s stint in jail. I mostly discussed my grief over Mom dying, and how my antidepressants were making mefeel.
“After seeing me and Aiden, Brock went straight to the apartment. Richie was there, and he beat the ever living hell out of him. He inflicted as much pain on Richie, as Richie had on me—broke a few of his ribs, his wrist, and went one further by breaking his jaw. It was a crime of passion, I guess. Brock was sick of watching people hurt me, hurtus.He’d always been tough, but he was never violent. He went to jail because of me. He spent two years locked behind bars, and when he came out…he wasdifferent.”
“How so?” Dr. Rootham askedgently.
“He stayed away,” I replied, my heart aching. I still felt like it was my fault, and I worried that he blamed me. “For years, he kept his distance. He took a job far away from home, and he’d send us money and occasionally talk to us on the phone…but he didn’t come back to Parry Sound until Mom wasdying.”
“But, you said he was planning on staying now,” Dr. Rootham pointed out with a smallsmile.
