Chapter 1 #2
She had half a mind to drive her ass back to the hospital to check on her man, but in this grief-filled moment, he wasn’t her man at all.
He was a mourning father, and Charlie was the last thing on his mind.
She had to find comfort in that space, in this unknown, in this hurting, because it was a space that would exist for a while.
Perhaps forever, because unlike losing any other person in a lifetime, the aching behind losing a child would prolong eternally.
It was something she couldn’t relate to yet.
The baby in her belly was still a thought.
She wasn’t even out of her first trimester yet.
There was no face attached to the flutters in her stomach, no notions of unconditional love, no attachment to an upbringing she had worked hard to provide, no memories of sleepless nights, no nothing.
Just a man who had planted a seed that she hadn’t even wrapped her mind around yet.
Just nausea. Just fear. Nah, Charlie couldn’t fathom motherhood at all.
She hadn’t walked that walk, but it was coming, and her child’s father was going through a darkness that left no room for the light she was growing inside her.
How could he balance the two? Was it even possible?
Balance requires a distribution of equal weight.
An equilibrium between life and death, between Lauren and Charlie.
She was outmatched. She would lose. There was that island again.
The loneliness and impending abandonment she faced felt inevitable, but still, she walked into the bedroom she shared with Demitrius Sky and crawled under the covers, hoping sleep would find her. It didn’t. Grief located her instead.
Lauren Sky didn’t understand. It was like they were speaking a foreign language around her.
She was concentrating as hard as she could, trying to follow the conversation.
They wanted to move him to the morgue. Her son.
Her precious little baby was headed for the morgue.
He was just at football practice. How does one go from football practice to the morgue?
She was almost numb. The only thing that told her she still had feeling in her body was the pressure from Demi squeezing her hand.
He was squeezing it so hard that it hurt, that the blood had stopped flowing.
He was squeezing her in disbelief. He was squeezing her desperately like he was screaming for help without uttering a word.
They were united in solidarity for the first time in years—over death.
She didn’t know if he was holding her up or if she was keeping him on his feet, but together they absorbed this devastating blow.
There was something being said about grief counseling. An Autopsy. An investigation of the home.
“For what?” Demi asked, interrupting the social worker. His tone was aggravated and short. “What the fuck is there to investigate?”
“We need to know the circumstances and the state of the home to ensure that the cause of death was indeed self-inflicted. We need to see where it happened.”
“It wasn’t self-inflicted. DJ might have held the blade, but everything that led to him feeling like he had to do this, none of that shit was his to carry,” he said.
“My boy.” Demi could barely choke out the words.
The blood flow returned to Lo’s hand when he released it and walked away to conceal his emotions.
“Can I be with him?” Lauren asked.
“There are things we must do to the body,” the doctor said.
“DJ. He’s not a body. He’s my son. He’s my baby. Please don’t talk about him like he’s not a person anymore. I just need to see him.”
Lauren was fully prepared to press these doctors.
She would bend this man’s fingers back until he called mercy if that’s what it took.
If they thought they were going to keep her from her child, she would have her attorneys on the line so fast that their heads would spin.
They wanted to keep her in her grieving mother bag because if she got in her boss bitch bag, there would be hell to pay.
She saw the doctor debating in his mind.
To follow protocol or to tap into humanity and allow this mother another moment with her child.
Lauren was grateful when the man said, “You can sit with him until the morgue comes for him. After that, we legally must process things on our end.”
Lauren nodded. She didn’t even attempt to find Demi.
She wanted these moments alone with the child she had birthed.
She had brought him into this world, and now she had the heavy burden of returning him to the earth.
It was the most unnatural thing she had ever felt.
She hadn’t been given enough time. He was supposed to bury her, not the other way around.
The fact that she hadn’t seen this coming made it impossible to process.
Oh, how she wished she could rewind the clock.
All she needed was a few hours. If she hadn’t invited Nyair over, she would have been more alert, more aware of DJ, and more attentive to his needs.
They probably would have been watching a movie together or catching up on his favorite show, The Walking Dead.
If only she had been tuned in. God, one moment of selfishness, of feeding her irresponsible urges, of wanting to be carefree and throw caution to the wind and call a man to the crib, had resulted in this.
Catastrophe. One moment where her motherhood had slipped had come with a consequence she couldn’t roll back.
How? Why? She had seen Demi put himself first so many times over the years to no detriment.
The world just continued to spin. DJ lived to see another day and Lauren picked up the slack whenever she could.
Who was there to pick up her slack? She had one night where she had given away her focus just a little, and now her son was dead.
How was this fair? How was she supposed to reconcile this without rage?
How could she go on day to day without wanting to die right behind her son?
She followed the doctor to the back. Her feet were heavy, her stomach churned, and her eyes blurred as the energy that was death pulled her near.
It was sickening. Her motherly instincts had always triggered her body whenever she was near her son.
Often, she could feel his spirit when she was miles away.
When she would be at work, and he would be at school, she could feel if something went wrong in his day.
If she was away on vacation, her gut would churn with worry, and she would call home only to discover some illness or issue that had suddenly plagued him.
A mother was just connected to her child, but as she walked down these halls, she felt disconnected.
Their connection had dissipated into the air when he had breathed his last breath.
There was no feeling that could compare to this.
Not her divorce. Not the loss of her grandmother years ago.
Not the miscarriages she had suffered in the past. This was irreparable.
Lauren would never bounce back from this.
Her world was forever changed, and the light within her eternally dimmed.
As soon as she saw the white sheet that covered his body, she stifled a cry. Dewy emotion clung to her lashes as she took her place by his side, rolling down the sheet to expose his face. He had already lost his color. His ashen, lifeless face tore her right in two.
She couldn’t speak. The apologies and I love you’s that she wanted to scream were overpowered by a hopelessness that she couldn’t beat. All she could do was lay over her child and weep.