Chapter 40 #2
The room shrinks around me. My body is full of agony.
It has made a choice for me, one that I’m no longer able to fight.
The voices of nurses move around me like ghosts.
All I can feel is the unbearable tightening inside of me.
It’s my body trying to bring life into the world, but my heart knows life is not what’s coming.
Theo holds my hand as if I might disappear if he lets go.
“You’re nearly ready to push, Elizabeth,” the doctor says gently. I shake my head. He’s wrong. I’m not ready to push. I don’t want to. I know that as soon as I do, the world will shatter, and my heart will break.
“I can’t do it,” I sob.
“Come on, baby, you can. I’m here with you. You can do it.” Theo’s face is pale; his cheeks wet with tears shed. With fear.
“I can’t, Theo. I can’t do it. We’re going to lose her.” My words come out between sobs. He is resting his head on mine, and I can’t bear to look at him. His face is covered in grief.
“Baby, if you don’t, I’m going to lose both of you, and I can’t lose you again, Elizabeth,” he whispers into my ear.
“Just one push, Elizabeth.” There is nothing just about this, I think.
I want to scream at them all. There is nothing simple about what is happening right now.
But I can’t fight my body anymore, and as I push, I feel my heart tear in two.
Searing pain shoots through the lower half of my body as my sobs shake the bed.
And then…
Silence.
The air is thick.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
I can’t breathe.
Not even my own cries can fill the quiet, open air.
My fingers grip the sheets beneath me.
The doctor moves my baby away quickly. His face changes, barely, but I see it. There is no missing the change in his expression. There’s still no sound from my baby. The silence breaks me a little more with every second that passes.
“No,” my voice is barely there. “No, no, please…” my voice grows stronger, louder. A heartbeat passes, maybe two. A lifetime. My baby is surrounded by people she doesn’t know, strange faces that aren’t my own, voices she won’t recognise.
The doctor comes over to me where I’m lying, exhausted and broken. Theo is sitting next to me, his head looking heavy, as the doctor apologises. And with that one word, “sorry,” I know. Theo drops his head, and I hear a sharp gasp come from him, still holding on to my hand.
A midwife has wrapped Nellie up in a white blanket and is carrying her small body over to me. I watch with eagle eyes, unable to pull them away. Gently she is placed on my chest. I go still, my heart feeling pain that I am unable to explain.
I can’t speak.
Tears roll silently down my cheek. I move my trembling hands up to cradle my baby’s head. I hold her, kiss her, stroke her full head of hair, and will her to start crying. I beg and I pray. Theo places his spare hand on my baby’s back with his head resting on my shoulder.
She is so small, so still.
Cold.
Her tiny fingers curled into a small fist.
I press my lips to my daughter’s head and whisper, “I’m so sorry. I wanted you so much. I love you.”
Theo is crying next to me, raw and broken with grief for his partner and for his baby. The pain in my face, he wishes he could take away.
“I wish I could fix this,” he whispers.
He feels useless; I know he does.
The midwife offers to take Nellie, and I refuse, shaking my head furiously. I hold my daughter until the sky turns dark outside. As the world continues spinning and time continues to pass.
I’m not ready to let go.
Not yet.
I don’t know how long I hold her. Minutes. Maybe hours. Time has unravelled, collapsed into a space between one heartbeat and the next. The midwife comes back and gently, with damp eyes, places her hand on my leg.
“Whenever you’re ready, Elizabeth.” She says it so gently. Like her words will cut me. I am already cut into pieces, though.
I will never be ready. Will never be in the right headspace for my baby to be taken from me, but my arms have gone numb, my body is trembling with exhaustion.
Nellie’s weight, as light as a feather, is now unbearable.
I kiss her head one last time and nod my head.
The midwife moves closer and softly lifts Nellie out of my arms.
It feels like a piece of me is being torn away. My soul being dragged away in the midwife’s arms. I watch as she carries my little white bundle out of the room.
And then I hear it.
A scream I have never heard before rises from somewhere. It takes me a moment to realise that the scream is coming from me.
Raw. Shaking. Endless.
A sound so guttural it sounds like it is coming from a wounded animal.
Theo flinches before pulling me hard, holding me close to him.
His entire body locks around me. I grip his shirt, my fingers twisting the material away from him, pulling him closer.
My scream releasing between sobs. I turn my face into his chest and let my grief devour me.
He wraps a hand around my head, trying desperately to steady me.
“I know, baby, I know.” He doesn’t know, though. He doesn’t know what to do for me. He can’t know how I’m feeling right now. I am broken. The only thing he knows for certain is that I will never be the same person again. I am no longer the girl he met at the coffee shop.
“I was supposed to protect her. She trusted me. She was mine.” Theo sits holding me as tight as he can, not speaking… just staying. “I don’t want them to take her far. Tell James, Theo. Tell him she can’t just be put somewhere cold.” Theo does as I tell him and leaves to find James.
I don’t know if I can ever carry on. My heart has broken into shattered pieces. Pieces that will never be put together in the same way.
I will never recover.
The sun will never rise again.