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The words ‘not viable’ rang around and around in my head until I thought they’d drive me crazy.
The twenty-minute car ride might have taken an hour or ten seconds for as much as I processed the journey.
The lunch I’d had with Jen could have taken place ten years ago and breakfast with my two favorite men might have been two weeks earlier.
Time was irrelevant.
Time was a void.
I managed to keep it together until I got into the elevator and made my way to the penthouse.
The second I did, I heard Jake’s happy laugh and it triggered me. I had no idea why, but the relief that he was okay, that hewasviable, hit me at the same time as the sorrow that I’d never hearthisbaby’s joyous laughter, that I’d never hear him or her cry, that I’d never go through the myriad things a mother did in a day.
A single day.
I wouldn’t have any of that if I had a termination.
I crumpled in on myself. Leaning back against the wall, I pressed into it, sliding down until I was sitting on the floor, my face buried in my hands.
That was where Lena found me.
She curved her arms around me, pulled me close, and hugged me.
I needed that.
I needed that so badly.
No judgment, no questions, just affection. Just care.
God, I missed my mom at that moment. Lena’s arms were comforting, but nothing was like her hug.
She tried though. She rocked me like I was Jake’s age, and I needed that too.
My tears were loaded with my pain, and the raw sounds that flooded the room sounded like an animal’s. I didn’t even know I was capable of making that noise.
I’d lost babies before, but this one… I’d been so cautious about not getting excited until the end of the first trimester.
Until things were supposed to be safer.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Lena soothed me, but I heard the tears in her voice.
She didn’t know what was wrong with me, but maybe she didn’t have toknowtoknow.
“Not viable,” I gasped out on a sob, turning my face into her throat and hugging her back.
“I’m sorry, Aoife. I’m so sorry.”
And she was.
And she got it.
Like someone who’d gone through this too.
Maybe not the exact same specifics, but someone who’d been handed these shitty cards and had had to deal with them.
As sorry as I was for her, I felt like I was in a safe space with someone who understood.
With someone who’d been there, who had a uterus and had dealt with childbirth, and who didn’t have a penis and who could make decisions about my body for me.
Right then, that mattered.
More than she could ever know.
