Chapter 4
Ikept the ultrasound picture tucked inside my notebook, between pages of notes I wasn’t really paying attention to. Every now and then, I’d open it just to look at Xander again. Just to remind myself that I did have something to live for in this cruel world. Seeing it made me smile.
I talked to my baby every day after that. It was probably a little creepy, but I needed someone to talk to. So I talked to Xander. When I woke up. When I walked to class. When I laid down at night.
You good?
I’m here.
I got you.
And for a while, that was enough. But a few days later, something shifted.
I woke up that morning with a heaviness in my body I couldn’t explain.
Not the same tired I had been feeling. This was deeper.
Like my body was working harder than it should have been just to move.
I sat up slowly, my hand already finding my stomach out of habit.
Resting there. Although Dr. Aniston confirmed that it was normal, I couldn’t feel Xander move, yet I prayed to feel him kick.
It would make me feel better. It would be a sign.
Something that would tell me everything was still okay. But there was nothing. Just stillness.
My chest tightened slightly. I swallowed it down. “It’s fine,” I whispered.
Because it had to be. I had just seen Xander three weeks ago.
I just heard him. Everything was good. Dr. Aniston said so.
I forced myself through the day. I got dressed and went to class.
I sat through lectures and took notes the best I could.
But I wasn’t really there. My body kept pulling my attention back.
Back to the quiet. Back to that same place inside me that didn’t feel as full as it had a few days ago because I felt off.
By the time I made it back to my dorm, I felt it again.
That dull ache that I used to feel before I confirmed Xander’s existence.
I froze for a second.
Standing in the middle of the room.
My hand moved to my stomach instantly.
I did something I hadn’t done in a while. I bowed on both knees and prayed the way my granny and daddy taught me.
“Dear Lord, I know that I probably am the last person who should be asking you for anything. I know who you are. I grew up in your presence. I know that the righteous availeth much, and I have not been righteous. I had premarital sex, I am lying to my parents about being pregnant, and I lied about why I couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I know that the person I’m becoming is different from the Chanel you know God.
But please Heavenly Father, please… I am begging you, please show me grace anyway.
Your Word says that where two or more are gathered in your name, there you are with us.
God, my baby boy, Xander, and I are here asking you, petitioning you to spare us.
Please protect him and me through this pregnancy.
Guide us to you. Keep us from all hurt, harm, and danger.
Please dispatch legions of Angels to protect us.
Please give me the strength to tell my family.
I don’t want to be dishonest, but I believe if they know, they will force me to terminate this pregnancy, and I know this perfect gift comes from you, Lord.
God, please let me have my baby. Let me love him, care for him, and nurture him.
Thank you for giving him to me to mend my broken heart.
Please continue to watch and protect us. ”
I stood up from my prayer and remembered what my dad always said. Faith without works does nothing. I had to put my faith to the test.
I began busying myself with tasks in my dorm. “It’s nothing,” I said out loud this time.
Like if I said it with enough confidence, it would become true.
“Your body’s just adjusting.”
That made sense. It had to. I began folding clothes and doing my biology homework. The ache faded after a while. Just like before. And I held onto that. Clung to it and used it as proof that everything was okay.
I sat on my bed slowly, pulling my legs up, my hand resting over my stomach again.
Gentler this time.
Careful.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I’m just overthinking.”
I closed my eyes.
Let myself breathe.
Let myself settle back into that fragile sense of safety I had been holding onto since the clinic.
Because I needed it.
I needed something to believe in.
Something that wouldn’t be taken from me.
I heard Janessa coming in from a long night of partying, but she was polite enough to keep the lights out and at least try not to make much noise.
Just as I was getting into a deep sleep, I felt a tearing pain that pulled through my body so hard it knocked the breath out of me.
“Ah—” I gasped, gripping the bedpost behind me.
Another sharp pain hit stronger and sharper than the last. I cried out this time, loud, unable to hold it in. I clutched my stomach. “No, no, no, no—” I shook my head frantically. “No, no, no—”
I didn’t even realize I was crying until I tasted the hot tears. The tears were flowing down my face fast and uncontrollably. I knew at that moment that Xander was not okay. Janessa turned the lights on and rushed over toward me.
“Chanel, are you okay?” she shrieked.
I looked down. And everything in me dropped. There was blood.
Too much.
Way too much.
This was not the spotting that the new mommy books warned about and call normal. This was wrong. This was everything I had been trying not to see.
“No!” I screamed this time. My voice cracked through the small bathroom, echoing off the walls.
“No, no, no, no—please—please—”
Another cramp ripped through me, stealing my breath, forcing a broken cry out of my chest.
I pressed both hands against my stomach like I could hold him in.
Like I could stop it.
“Stay!” I begged, my voice shaking violently. “Please stay—”
My body didn’t listen. It kept pushing. Kept taking. Kept pulling something out of me I wasn’t ready to lose.
“Chanel?!” Janessa’s voice cut through everything.
Distant.
Panicked.
“Chanel, what the hell is going on? Talk to me.”
I couldn't answer Janessa. Another wave hit.
Harder.
I screamed.
I couldn’t help it.
It ripped out of me.
“Chanel!” she shouted.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I sobbed.
I stood up and squatted to help with positioning. My body shook violently.
But she didn’t leave.
I heard Janessa calling 911.
“No!” I grabbed her arm weakly. “Don’t call anybody, please…please don’t call my parents—”
Her face shifted with confusion and fear.
“Why can’t your parents help you? Chanel, what the fuck?”
Another wave tore through me. Stronger than any sensation I ever felt before.
I screamed loud and raw. And then something inside me dropped.
A feeling I can’t explain, but I knew Xander was gone.
I went numb. I could hear Janessa mumbling something about a fetus being on our floor.
Her pre-med training was kicking in. I felt a cold compress on my head, but I couldn’t feel anything after that. I lost consciousness.
I remember being put on a gurney and Janessa telling them she was my sister and I was of legal age to consent for myself.
I recall the ambulance weaving in and out of cars as Janessa held my hand and brushed her hand over my hair. She was talking to me, but I couldn’t make out the words she was saying. Because there was nothing left in me to say.
At the hospital, everything blurred.
Voices.
Lights.
Hands.
Questions I couldn’t answer. They laid me back. Put the machine on me again.
That same machine that had once given me hope.
The emergency room’s doctor’s face changed.
His disposition was soft.
Too soft.
And I knew. I knew from that moment that I felt the pressure in the room.
“I’m sorry…”
“No.” I shook my head immediately. “No, check again…check again, please—”
“We did Ms. Davis.”
“No!” I cried. “No, you didn’t, he was fine. Xander was fine. I just saw him.” My voice broke into violent and uncontrolled sobs.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am.”
The room blurred through my tears.
I couldn’t see.
Couldn’t think.
Couldn’t accept it.
“There’s no heartbeat.”
The words didn’t settle. They just echoed off the hospital walls, and the only thing I could think to do was talk to X.
“Can I have a pen and paper?”
The doctor obliged and had a nurse get me into a stationary position and raise my bed to a writing position.
Dear X,
I don’t even know how to start this.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to say your name first and begin with pleasantries or say what happened, or tell you the part that’s going to break you before I even get the words out right.
So I’m just going to write.
Because if I don’t, I think all of this is going to sit in me and tear me apart the same way everything else has. There was a life inside me. I don’t even know if that’s the right way to say it.
Because “was” feels too final, and I’m not ready for anything about this to feel finished.
But he was here, X.
My baby was real. He wasn’t something I imagined to make myself feel better after you were gone. Not just something to fill the space you left in me. He was ours.
I saw him. I saw his body on that screen as if he had always been here like he had been waiting on me to finally notice him.
And I heard him. I heard his heart. It was fast, strong, and steady. Like it knew something I didn’t. I believed it was going to make it here. I used to lie in bed and talk to him.
Telling him I was there. Telling him I had him. Telling him he didn’t have to worry about nothing because I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.
I said that like it meant something. Like I had that kind of power. Like loving him was enough to keep him here. I named him. His name was Xander.
I don’t even know if you would’ve liked it, but it felt like you. It felt like a strong name. And I thought that maybe this was the one thing that wouldn’t be taken from me.
Maybe this was the part of you I got to keep. Something nobody else could touch. Something nobody could lie about or take credit for or pull away from me.
Just mine.
Maybe eventually ours.
But I can’t lie, I don’t know that I wanted your lies to taint him.
But I was wrong. I was so wrong. I lost him, X.
And I don’t even know how to explain it in a way that makes sense.
One minute, I was talking to him, holding my stomach, telling him I was right there.
And the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, begging and crying.
I was trying to hold onto something my body had already decided to let go of. I kept telling him to stay. I kept telling him I had him. But my voice didn’t reach him. My hands couldn’t hold him. And my body refused to keep him.
All I could think about was how I never told you. How you didn’t even know he existed?
How there was something good in this world with your name on it, and now we’re both never going to meet him, we’re never going to hear him.
We’ll never know what we made. And I don’t know how to carry that.
I don’t know how to sit with the fact that something lived inside me, and I couldn’t keep it alive.
I don’t know how to pray after this, after I begged God to spare him.
I don’t know how to believe anything I asked for was ever going to stay.
All I know is he was here, and I loved him. And now, there’s nothing left of him but this space inside me that won’t fill back up.
Not with time.
Not with anything.
I just feel empty, just like the day that you left me.
- Channy
I put down the pen, knowing I would never send the letter, but realizing the only thing inside me that still knew how to live went silent.