“Mom, no, no, please tell me this isn’t happening, please,” I wail hysterically. My mom opens her arms, and I collapse into them, letting her take my full weight as the life that Trent and I made together leaves me.
After collapsing on my mom, everything became a painful blur, and I don’t remember much. I heard the doctor say words like miscarriage, weeks ago, scans, tests, therapy. But I couldn’t answer a single question, couldn’t accept what they were saying. I just lay, curled in a ball on a hospital trolley, clutching my empty stomach and ignoring the world around me, trying to understand what was happening, how could life be so cruel. They say lightning doesn’t strike twice, so how did this happen? Trent was gone. My baby was gone. So why was I still here? What was the point of me living if it meant doing it alone?
I didn’t need therapy, I didn’t need pills, I needed Trent. I needed my baby. The baby I was sure was a boy who would grow to be every bit the image of his dad. Who would play with trucks and jump in the mud and ride horses with his daddy on the farm we planned to build. But now that is all a lost dream, and I am now forced into a living nightmare where they no longer exist.
A wave of pain slices through me, and I curl up even tighter, shedding silent tears into the sleeve of Trent’s sweatshirt as my body works against me and takes away the last connection I had to him.
My baby was gone. I’ll never get to hold them, never get to kiss their cheek, never get to feel their heartbeat against my chest, hear their giggle, or feel their tiny finger wrapped around mine.
It was just me now. But I think all three of us died that day, but for some reason, I’m the one still breathing.
Chapter Eleven
Tori
4 months later
I couldn’t tell you the last time I laughed, the last time I truly felt something other than this agonizing pain that’s present as soon as I wake and follows me into the nights where I may sleep for a few hours if I am lucky.
My mind is a constant loop of questions and anxious thoughts. What if this, what if that? What if Trent hadn’t deployed? What if I had never gotten pregnant? What if my baby had survived? What if my brother, Harry, had never joined the military? Then maybe I’d have never met Trent, and I’d have been saved fromthis heartache. There is a version of myself that wishes I had never known him, and I hate myself for thinking that, but it’s true. If I was really wishing for something, it would be that I could wake up and have this all be a terrible nightmare.
I know my parents and my friends are worried about me; they stop by daily and try to force me to eat and to step outside. I tried going back to work, but after one hour in the office, I felt like my chest was going to cave in. I haven’t stepped back there since, and it’s been nearly two months.
Harry, Noah, and the others had to return to Afghanistan just a few days after Trent’s funeral. Harry called to say he would be home soon, but I’ve lost track of the days. Soon could mean today, it could mean next month. Who knows? They had no time to grieve, no time to process or maybe they had. Maybe it’s just me who can’t move on and function, but maybe I had more to process because I’m not only grieving him, but I’m also grieving the version of myself I thought I’d be at this point in my life, the version that died right along with him and our baby. I’m scared I’ll never get to be that version of myself. The wife, the mother, the homemaker, but maybe this was who I was destined to become. Alone.
The only light relief I get from my own thoughts is when I take the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed. It’s exhausting living inside your own head, waking up, and every day feeling the same with no end in sight. How long is too long to mourn? They say there are stages to grief, but I am unsure what stage I’m in, because it feels like it’s just a cluster of emotions. Anger, sadness, fear, acceptance, and denial all wrapped up together, and I don’t know how much longer I can do it.
I just want it all to go away, even if it were just for a day. I want to wake up without the heaviness in my chest, for my muscles to feel supple and not tense, for the ache in my heart to fade,and for my mind to be quiet. I seem to have forgotten what true peace feels like.
I pick up Trent’s last letter to read again. The letter every soldier has to write in case they don’t make it back home, just to torture myself again.
My heart splinters all over again every time I reread the words and stroke the pads of my fingers over the space where his fingers touched, and the ink of his pen left his final words for me. I reach for the box of sleeping pills from the coffee table and lift them toward the light, to try and count the shadows of pills through the orange plastic as I wonder how many it would take. How many would it take to make it all go away? How many would I need to consume to be able to get some rest long enough to reset and wake up as the old me and not this version I no longer know? I feel like a stranger in my own body, and I need it to stop.
I sit up, pop the lid, and pour the tablets out onto the blanket I have been rotting under for days, and reach for my glass of water. I place the first pill on my tongue, giving it a second for the powdery taste to hit my taste buds, and then take a sip of water and swallow it down. Then, I take a second and repeat, but instead of stopping at two like I usually do, I keep going.
I stare motionless at the TV showing reruns ofFriends,my go-to comfort show, but even that has stopped working. I repeat the motion: one pill on the tongue, sip, swallow, repeat. When I’m done, I lie back slowly, staring at the ceiling until my eyelids grow heavy and my body begins to feel weightless. It’s the most at peace I have felt in months. There are no thoughts, no noise, no pain, no sadness, just darkness and silence.
Chapter Twelve
Tori
I’m awoken by the sound of a machine beeping. I try to move my body, but it feels heavy, and my head feels foggy. I blink and scan the white room. I try to sit, but something tugs at my hand, and I panic. I glance down to see wires coming out of the back of my hand that lead up to a bag of fluid that hangs above me, and it takes me a second to realize where I am.
“Thank God you’re awake.” My head moves slowly round to see my twin, Harry, sitting beside the bed, dark circles under his eyes, and a deep worry line pitted in the center of his forehead. He rubs a hand over his buzz cut hair and exhales, letting his head fall into his hands.
“Harry, what…” is all I manage; my mouth and throat feel like they have swallowed cotton balls.
He lifts his head, reaching for a cup of water and brings it to my lips, cradling the back of my head with his free hand and letting me take small sips. The ice-cold water brings brief relief. He places the cup back on the table that hangs over the foot of my bed, and he takes my hand that isn’t connected to the IV.
“Why, Tori? Why did you do that?” I stare into his blue eyes that are identical to mine and try to search for the answer. I don’t know why because I don’t know what I did.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice sounding groggy, my throat sore.
He clears his throat and squeezes my hand a little firmer.
“You… you took an overdose.”
My eyes widen and lock with Harry’s, bile burns my throat and I fight to keep it down. He’s lying. I try and process what he’s saying. I wouldn’t, I didn’t, did I?
