Tyler
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Mia, my wife, says as soon as I step through the front door with a panic-stricken tone to her voice, clutching hold of her rounded stomach, tears rolling down her face.
Our Bernese mountain dog, Harley, is unsettled, circling around Mia, whimpering, obviously sensing something is wrong.
Immediately, I’m by her side, my heart going into overdrive. “What’s wrong?”
The second I say this, she doubles over, crying out in pain.
Fuck.
“I…the baby…it hurts…” Her breath is choppy before she cries out with even more pain.
I gather her in my arms just as her legs give way beneath her. I catch her in my arms, cradling her, and that’s when I feel the dampness against her thighs, blood soaking through her jeans. I clench my eyes shut, tears threatening to spill at the essence of her pregnancy on my hands. It’s not until I hear her terrified cries that I snap out of my moment of weakness, forcing the tears away and focusing on my wife.
“Babe, look at me.”
Her glistening, beautiful eyes, filled with heartbreak, lock straight on mine, giving me her full attention, as she trembles.
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
She nods even though her salty tears continue to fall rapidly down her flushed cheeks, her hands protectively gripping her stomach.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I repeat, mostly for my benefit.
As I drive us to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, I already know the outcome. The amount of blood pooling on the passenger seat is a big enough clue.
I get us to the emergency room in record time, and the instant the doctors see her—held in my arms, almost ready to pass out from the agony that whimpers from her lips—not another second is wasted.
Minutes later, we’re in a private room. Mia is lying on the bed with a gown on, attached to an IV, and a blanket covers her from the waist down. While we wait for an OB/GYN to tell us the inevitable, Mia clutches my hand in a death grip, the tears now unstoppable as they continue to rain down her cheeks. Apart from the breathless groans, she’s silent, but I see devastation on her face, in her tear-filled eyes.
This is going to break her.
This is going to break me.
A few more minutes later, a doctor in pink scrubs enters along with an ultrasound machine.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Bailey. I’m Dr. Miller. I understand you’re experiencing heavy bleeding and cramping. How far along are you, Mrs. Bailey?” she asks as she sets up the ultrasound machine.
“I’m at twenty-two weeks,” Mia manages to speak before groaning out in even more pain. “Is…is…my baby…is she…dead?” she says seconds later, her voice breaking with pure grief.
I squeeze her hand in mine, trying to comfort my wife even though my heart just cracked in half at her question alone. Especially when she said she because it was only three weeks ago when we’d found out our baby was a girl.
Our baby girl.
The doctor’s eyes turn down with sadness for a brief second. “I won’t know anything until I get a good look inside your uterus. I realize you’re experiencing a lot of discomfort, but just try to relax for me, if you can.”
Mia gives a timid nod and lets out a shuddering breath as the doctor takes a seat on a wheeled stool and edges closer.
I lift Mia’s hand and press a kiss to her knuckles, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. She just leaves her hand limp in mine, leaning her head back as she clenches her eyes shut, anguish already etched along her pretty face.
“This is going to feel a little cold,” the doctor warns Mia as she squirts lubricant over her stomach. Taking hold of the transducer, she gently glides it against her stomach.
Seconds turn into minutes, and my life flashes before my eyes as we wait for the doctor to tell us what we already know.
After a short while of clicking buttons and moving the transducer over my wife’s stomach, Dr. Miller finally sets it back in its holder and turns to us with sadness set in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I can’t detect a heartbeat.”
In the split second it takes the doctor to say this, the light in Mia’s eyes dim until it completely fades out. Everything that makes Mia the person she is—her happiness, her laughter, her loving heart—is sucked right from her body. I sit here, helpless, my numb heart breaking, as I watch her disappear right in front of me.
Do something.
Do anything.
But I’m powerless to do a thing.
All I can do is witness the brutality of Mia having to give birth to our tiny baby girl and then having to hold her lifeless body in her arms. When Mia says good-bye and watches the doctor take her away, darkness I never thought could exist in my wife hovers over her like an unwelcome black cloud, and I know in an instant that there might not be a way back from this. The nurse encouraged me to say good-bye, too, but I couldn’t seem to move my feet. I just stood, frozen in place, simply watching, my heart breaking.
Instead of crying, like I expect her to do, she turns her head to me, her eyes filled with indescribable hurt. I reach out my hand to comfort her, but my heart shatters at her rejection as she pulls away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Mia?” I ask attentively, a little taken aback by her hostility.
“Just go.”
My head rears back, as if somebody just delivered one heck of a right hook. “Baby, I know it’s hard, but I’m here.”
“Are you? Are you here? Because, while I was forced to give birth to my dead child, something that my every instinct fought against, you just stood by and watched like a deer caught in headlights. You didn’t even hold her. Didn’t even kiss her good-bye. Why?” she demands.
Silence is all that meets her question. The indescribable pain is too much, and the agony of our loss is impossible to put into words.
“Just fucking go.”
I don’t move an inch, the soul-crushing pain keeping me rooted to the spot.
I flinch when she screams at the top of her lungs, “Go!”
A nurse rushes in, concern on her face. “Is everything okay?”
I go to answer, but Mia gets there first. “I want my husband to leave. I don’t want him here.”
Her words feel like shards of glass cutting my insides, and it’s devastating. It’s taking everything I have to keep it together. I know she’s grieving, but in the four years I’ve known her, I’ve never been met by this fury before. I didn’t even know it existed.
“Sir, maybe you should give your wife some space. Today’s been a tough day,” the nurse suggests.
I reluctantly nod. I don’t want to leave her side. The thought of leaving her now kills me, but the last thing I want is to cause her any more stress. She’s been through enough trauma tonight to last a lifetime.
I look back at Mia, but she’s turned away from me, looking off into space. I lean over to kiss her—something I’ve done since our first date, so it’s instinct—but I force myself to stop when she cowers from my touch, looking lost and vulnerable.
“I love you, baby,” I whisper.
I try not to take it personally when she doesn’t say it back, but damn it, I feel like I’m being gutted from the inside out and cut into a million tiny pieces. There has never been a day since our wedding day that she hasn’t told me she loves me. Hell, she said it to me this morning before I left for work, but now…nothing. The time we need each other the most, she’s pushing me away, and it leaves me with an uneasy sensation in the pit of my stomach.
I exit the room with the nurse following behind. I walk over to the wall in front of me and brace my hands against it, trying to take it all in, trying to understand. A gentle hand touches my shoulder, and I turn my head to the nurse.
“In the span of only a few hours, she’s been through one of the most horrific tragedies a woman can possibly experience. She’s mourning, but the anger there isn’t her talking; it’s a mixture of hormones, heartache…exhaustion. Give her the space she needs for tonight. What happened is a lot to process.”
I nod, sucking in my bottom lip to stop my chin from trembling with the sobs that want to tear from my chest, my lungs burning from the pressure.
“Head on home, and get some rest.” She walks off down the corridor.
Ignoring the nurse’s instructions, I turn around and slide myself down the wall, getting ready to spend the night on the hospital floor.
I’ll give my wife some space, but this is as much space as I’m willing to give her.
In the days that follow, she has continued to push me away until, one day, I am alone and broken, drinking my way through a bottle of Jameson.
However, what she doesn’t realize is that I am about to embark on the fight of my life.
I will fight for my wife.
Even if it kills me.