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Christy—who didn’t have a judgmental bone in her body—didn’t understand Sharon’s cynicism and was constantly telling her she was being hypersensitive. So, Sharon sent one last dubious glare back toward the ranch and its stuffy Amish gatekeeper then tried to put him out of her mind. There were bigger things happening right now than getting snubbed by a redneck.
* * *
“Make it stop!”she wailed. “Make it stop. Oh, God, please,please,just make it stop.” The pain was beyond mere pain. Andie had expected pain during labor. What she hadn’t expected and no one told her about was the sickness this level of pain brought along for the joyride through hell. She had always had rough periods with lots of related tummy issues, and today, she was finding out that labor pains are just menstrual cramps… on steroids. And mutated. Every wave of pain made her feel either on the verge of vomiting or having a bout of diarrhea or both. Pain was one thing, a hard-enough wall to scale; sickness added in as well felt like an unjust punishment, and Andie felt blindsided by it. Why had no one ever talked about how sick labor made you? To be in this much pain and to have an added layer of nausea and liquid bowels onto it was beyond imagination as far as she was concerned. This all was too horrific to be real.
“I’m here, baby,” Luke crooned close to her ear, a soothing hand brushed her sweaty hair back from her clammy brow. “I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere. I know it sucks. I know. I’m here.”
Andie looked into his grief-ravaged face, seeing the same despair she felt reflected there. He didn’t lie to her. He didn’t tell her things like “it’s going to be okay” or “you’re going to be fine,” and she loved him for that. It was hopeless and miserable and terrible, and he wasn’t ignoring the reality of their situation or distancing himself from it. He was only promising what was in his power to provide—his presence. She didn’t have to face this alone, just like this loss wasn’t hers alone.
There was no comfort to be had today, but for lack of a better term, she was comforted by knowing this. Knowing that this gargantuan wilderness of misery she was lost in, she didn’t have to find her way through it by herself. And though on the surface she knew his pain wasn’t physical, his expression was so raw she knew he suffered as she did. Someday, after this was behind them and she could look back on this day, she’d tell him how much it meant to have him there with her. She’d thank him for braving this storm at her side. Someday. As yet another magnitude of pain and sickness swelled through her like a crashing wave, all Andie’s thoughts vacated and left her mind a staticky blank where only the most basic of thoughts survived. Thoughts that were nothing but random words—breathe, pain, no, and please. Disjointed and scrambled, she felt disconnected from her mind’s center, like her thoughts were not under her control anymore, an astronaut with no gravity to hold her in place and adrift in an endless black void of anguish. Star-bright flashes of pain kept her firmly in the present, when she would’ve loved to drift away into nothingness.
“God,” she panted as another swell of agony crested. “I don’t wanna do this.” Andie turned pleading eyes to Luke. “Not if the baby is gonna die. I don’t wanna go through this if the baby is going to die.” She didn’t know why she was pleading with Luke. There was nothing he could do about any of this. The look he gave her was of a tortured man. If the strength of his will could spare their child or even her the pain, she would’ve been healed on the spot. But he was as powerless to help her as she was to help herself, and the two of them stared into each other’s eyes while that knowledge and despair hung between them.
“I can order an epidural for you.” The soft-spoken offer from her doctor drew both their attention. “The problem is that the epi can sometimes slow labor down. The last thing I’d want to do is drag this out longer for you. But if the pain is too much, we can address that part at least.” Andie wanted to leap at the option of pain relief, but the doctor’s caution about lengthening this whole ordeal gave her pause. Did she want to just bear down and be done with this as fast as possible? As it was, she felt as though she’d been suffering for days instead of the mere three hours it’d been. “Yes, please,” she decided. “It’d be different if the baby was going to be okay. But this feels all wrong to go through this only to lose her. Him. God, I don’t even know yet. We were going to wait to find out and have a gender reveal party after our next ultrasound.” It felt petty to be worried about that now. The party she wouldn’t have. No pink or blue cake where everyone placed bets and chose a side. Not the baby shower, where her tummy was huge and she was surrounded by laughing women playing silly games either. None of that would happen now, and she felt a fresh piercing wound to her soul as she told herself to remember to send out cancelation notices.
“Please,” Andie pleaded, “anything. Anything you can do to make this all stop.” Before the last words left her lips, another doctor appeared from where Dr. Green apparently asked him to wait for her signal, because he was at her bedside as fast as a magic trick.
“I’m Dr. Ross.” His voice was soothing, and he had kind dark eyes. “I’m going to administer the epidural for you today. Are you okay with that?” At her shaky nod, he launched into the lengthy legal mumbo jumbo they were required to do, but at least he did it efficiently and got it over with. Then he was instructing her to roll to her side and sit up on the side of the bed.
“You’re doing great, hun. Just hold still for me now,” he ordered in his calm tone. When Luke braced his feet and wrapped his arms around her shoulders to help the doctor position her just so, Andie felt a fresh tear to her soul. Women told stories of epidurals that ended with the birth of a beautiful baby. She lifted her stinging eyes to see Luke’s grief-ravaged expression and wondered if he was thinking the same as her. He was doing a traditional dad in the delivery room thing, only neither of them were leaving this room as new parents. The unfairness of it all broke something inside her. The part of her where magic and the belief in mythical things still lingered… that secret hidden place where the last of her innocence lay sheltered and protected from the outside world—that part of her felt as though it was being slaughtered. Brutally. After today, Andie would never believe in magic again. She felt a cold swab along her spine then a quick, sharp sting. Then, nothing.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from an afternoon spent crying. “Thank you.” The sudden absence of pain was like a black hole, and Andie didn’t just sink into it; she flung herself there. Oblivion was her only escape, and though she was still conscious, she centered her entire being on the nothingness she felt and locked the rest of the world away.
“Andie?” Her exile was short-lived. Dr. Green was at her bedside far sooner than expected. “I’m going to take another look to see how you’re progressing.”
She rolled from her side to her back and stared blankly up at the ceiling while fingers gently prodded and probed between her legs. Try as she might to block it, Andie again felt the biting contrast of how this moment clashed so grotesquely with how she envisioned it. She felt her consciousness retreat even further within that dark void. Andie did not want to feel this. She didn’t want to feel anything. Like an addict jonesing for a high, she craved for her mind to be in the same blank nothingness her body was in. Retreat was her only option now. The battle was lost, and there was nothing left to live for.
“Things are looking good,” Dr. Green told her over the sheet tented by her knees. “Let’s try an experimental push just to see.” Andie felt panicky at the instruction. She looked into the doctor’s compassionate expression and only wanted to run. She wanted to leap from this awful cold table, demolish the bare white room, and flee this torturous place forever.
“No.” Once she started shaking her head, she couldn’t stop. And now that she’d spoken, she couldn’t stop that either. Or the panic that came rushing through like flood waters breaking through a damn. “No. No, I don’t want to. Please. Please, don’t make me.” When the doctor’s expression didn’t alter, therefore offering no reprieve, she tried pleading with Luke. Not realizing it must’ve felt like dumping burning coals on his head. “Luke? Luke, I don’t want to. If I do, it’s really over. Our baby will really be gone. Oh, God, please, Luke. Please, make it stop. Make it all stop. God, our baby.”
Shoulders heaving with the sobs he held back, Luke placed one warm palm on her forehead, and he spoke in a voice just as grief-ravaged as her own. “Baby, I’m sorry. God, Andie, I’m so fucking sorry. But you’ve gotta do it. You have to get through this, okay? Don’t—” His voice broke and his chest heaved for a moment before he soldiered on. “Don’t think about the baby right now. We need to think about you. Just get through this part, and then we’ll face what comes next. Together. Whatever comes next, we’ll face it together, okay?” But her head was still shaking its furious denial, and her limbs were quaking so hard the sheets looked like there was a windstorm teeming beneath them. “Come on, sweetheart, you gotta do this. I know it hurts. Goddamn, I know it feels like the world is ending right now. But I promise you, it’s not.” He pressed his trembling lips to the back of the hand he still held and spoke against her flesh. “We’re going to get through this. You’re going to get through this, I promise. But you have to listen to the doctor now. You have to push. It’s time.”
“No, it’s not!”Andie hadn’t known a scream was in her until it burst out at his words. “It’snottime! It’s not! This isn’t supposed to happen for four months.” Her wails could probably be heard in space, but Andie didn’t care. Here was yet another infamous maternal moment defiled. She was supposed to be standing in a doorway, gloriously and hugely pregnant, whispering with a smile to him that “it was time,” a secret smile on her lips, because finally their baby was ready to greet the world. “It’s not right. It’s not right. None of this is right. No, no, I can’t push. Don’t you see?” She swung her desperation back toward the doctor, who hadn’t movedor tried to silence her. The woman just gazed up at her with her compassion and serenity, and Andie wanted to kick her right in her cool, kind face. “If I start pushing now, it’ll be over. They baby will come, and then there’s no more hope left. There’ll be nothing left.”
With her eyes locked on the doctor, Andie felt Luke’s head drop to the pillow next to hers. His massive shoulders shook the whole bed as grief overtook him. Andie felt his sorrow crest over her like a giant wave, and it drug her under with him. She closed her eyes, turned her face into his soft, silky hair, and wept with him over the loss of their child.
“Andie.” His hoarse, guttural whisper into her pillow was hardly audible, but she felt his words like he was speaking to her soul.“Please, honey. There’s no other way. Just please, God, I don’t know how to help you.”
Something shifted a little inside her heart. Fear and sorrow for her child shifted just enough to register Luke’s pain and fear. It was a shock to see that, unlike her, who only worried for their child, Luke was worried for them both. Here at least was something she could do; she could ease part ofhisburden. Andie gave a tiny nod and whispered a feathery “Okay.” Then she eyed the doctor like she was facing her executioner. And so it began.
The ever-patient doctor never faltered. Her steady, quiet voice never rang with impatience. Andie pushed and wept and pushed again, her mind torturing her with the contrasts of how this was supposed to go compared to her horrific reality. With a slippery wriggle, Andie felt the baby slide free of her body, and the double-edged sword of joy and sorrow felt as if it cleaved her in two.
She’d just given birth.
Her baby would not survive.
The anguish tore a long, low howl of misery from the depths of her soul, and Andie didn’t know ifshewanted to survive this.
With solemn, reverent efficiency, Dr. Green cut the cord and bundled the impossibly tiny infant, carrying it to the counter against the wall. Wracking sobs jerked her chest in and out, and Andie had the abstract thought that sorrow was her life force now. Without the sobs forcing air in and out of her lungs, she was sure her body would just curl up and die.
Andie and Luke watched as the doctor and nurse stood shoulder-to-shoulder over their newborn. She felt new tension grow. She wanted to demand to know what was happening. Why were they just standing there? Why hadn’t they given her the baby yet? Was their baby still alive? Terror of either answer to that last question kept Andie’s mouth tightly closed. If her baby was still alive, she wanted to hold her or him while she could. But, if there truly was no hope, could she stand watching her child slowly die in her arms? Could she survive doing nothing as her baby gasped for air with lungs too underdeveloped to provide it? She didn’t know, and the indecision held her as frozen and immobile as the doctor and nurse. Then, in the bare space between the two bodies, Andie saw one impossibly tiny arm flail, and she began to shout.
“The baby’s alive!” Andie tried to push up from the bed, but Luke, who saw what she did, tried to restrain her nonetheless. “Luke, the baby’s alive. Did you see? Did you—”
“Shh, you can’t get up.” Luke’s voice was unrecognizable. “The epidural, Andie, you can’t walk; your legs won’t work.” But his attention was torn. He kept a restraining hand on her shoulder while also looking back to where the medical staff had closed ranks. Their baby was now completely out of view. Andie was becoming frantic. Neither the doctor or nurse would respond to her continued cries that her baby was alive. They wouldn’t even turn to face her, so she knew her baby had to be struggling, and she was infuriated that they could watch so impassively and let her child die in such a cold and clinical way.
“Please! Give her to me! Give me my baby. Don’t let her die like that! Please don’t… don’t let her die all alone. Let me… let me hold her!” But when the doctor turned around, the expression on her face told Andie she’d spoken up too late. It was done.
