AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’d wriggle inside of me, and I’d think it was the most magical thing. I had that time with her, I’m thankful for that.
I named her Waverley. They barely even caught it as they whipped her from the surgeon’s arms and wheeled her from the room. I shouted it. I screamed it over their chatter. I needed them to know it despite the chaos.
It didn’t mean a thing to a single one of them.
I’ll be here until she isn’t. What I am after that, I don’t know. But this feeling, the empty, lonely feeling gnawing at my gut all over again, I can’t bear that feeling anymore.
I’m sorry I failed her, Lance.
Truly.
Scarlet.
Lance,
I’m scared. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more alone, like I don’t even have myself.
Every day seems like survival, and each time I climb into the hospital bed, I win. But there’s no prize, there’s no happiness, or light, or excitement to wake up to tomorrow.
We have a daughter. Her name is Waverley Sullivan. I planned to add a middle name when she arrived, but I couldn’t think of anything after everything that happened, and I had to have her registered.
She doesn’t have your dark hair, and I don’t know if she has my eyes because they’re taped closed. She’s so small and fragile, sometimes I pray she’ll sleep a little longer, just so that I don’t have to watch the skin move over her tiny bones when she’s awake.
They told me to prepare to lose her, and I did. When they took her from me, I mourned her. I told myself it was happening again, that life does this and there’s no way of saving her and to let her go.
She was going to leave me, too.
But she didn’t.
She’s here. An innocent little life squeezing my finger in her strong fist, asking me to give her something I can’t.
Because what happens when she does eventually leave me?
I don’t think I feel what I’m supposed to be feeling as a mother, and it terrifies me. Even when I try, it feels like I’m doing it wrong.
Nothing is how it should be, but I can’t find it in myself to fix it.
I don’t even know if it can be fixed.
Not when I’m the one who’s broken.
Scarlet.
Lance,
We’re home. I didn’t write for over a month because I didn’t really have anything to say. Anything I did say would be selfishly about me, how I feel, how I’m broken. Not the little girl who has been fighting and fighting to be here, to stay here.
It’s not gone unnoticed.
Her tiny heart sings to me.
Begs the cold parts of me to warm.
I can barely look at her.
There’s been these moments where I almost think it’s stupid, and I’m on the cusp of telling Nina how it is—how it feels inside. Anything to make her understand. But then I look at her and Ellis together and how she is with Waverley, and I know it’s just me, and she’d never get it.
Like tonight, she came to our room and bathed Waverley. She kept asking me to do things, getting the towel and washing Waverley’s neck. But I didn’t want to do those things.
