Jennifer Neomie

She thought having a baby would make everything perfect. I knew having a baby could shatter an already cracking relationship.

    She was afraid to tell me. She was afraid that I would pressure her into having an abortion. She kept it from me at first, only telling me when I became suspicious, and then she told me with tears in her eyes.

     She was convinced I would leave her, convinced I’d drag her to the nearest abortion clinic, but I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I didn’t want her to see how scared I was, how angry I was at her and at myself. All I could think about was how a baby would ruin my life.

     I was selfish. I realize that now. I wasn’t concerned about how she felt, about how excited she was to be pregnant, how very much she wanted for and prayed to give birth to a baby girl. How much she wanted to have my child.

     I wasn’t concerned about the tiny fetus that was quickly growing inside of her, that would one day be itching to get out of that womb and join this brutal world. I was only concerned about myself, concerned about how a baby didn’t fit into my current plans and would hurl me into the world of adulthood before I was ready.

     She told me she didn’t want to have an abortion, begged me not to be mad at her if she decided against it. I told her we needed to talk about it, that having a baby now would put us in a financial crisis we may never recover from. She didn’t care. She didn’t see that. All she saw was that a baby would complete and connect us for life, something she always wanted.

     And then the pain came. Sharp pain in her back and pelvis. It started late one night. She called me at work crying. I begged her to go to the hospital, but she refused, she just wanted me to come home and be next to her.

     I took her to the doctor the next day. He gave her a pregnancy test that confirmed what we already knew, confirmed what the three pregnancy tests we had already taken said. She was pregnant. He guessed somewhere between 5 to 8 weeks, but wasn’t sure. He was worried about the pain, said she could be having an ectopic pregnancy. That scared us. As much as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have a baby, I knew I didn’t want anything to be wrong with him/her.

     The doctor ran some test, said he was checking the levels of some hormone and we would have to come back in 48 hours for another test, and then we’d go from there. We left scared, holding each other. Tears ran down her cheek. I promised her it would be okay, although I knew that wasn’t a promise I could keep.

     We never made it to see that doctor. The next day she collapsed in the bathroom. One look at the pain on her face, the blood that had stained her underwear, I knew she was having a miscarriage.
 
     I rushed her to the hospital flying through traffic like I had a dying woman in the car. For all I knew she was dying. I definitely felt the coldness of the Grim Reaper riding with us in that car.

     At the hospital they monitored her, ran a battery of tests, then said she had a spontaneous abortion. She was zoned out, in her own world, didn’t say anything to me for a few days and then yelled at me with hatred and rage, saying that I was probably happy she had a miscarriage, that I never wanted her to have the baby, that I could go and be free now.

     She pushed hard, did her best to push me away from her and out of her life, but I didn’t go anywhere. She was hurting, I knew that. I stayed right there and cried with her, let her take that anger and frustration out on me. Absorbed that like a toxic sponged.

     When she was done screaming and cursing, she cried for two days straight, and then shut herself out from the world for several weeks.

     It took us a couple of months to start healing. We had to take some time apart, then came back together and had a private service for the child we lost. We lit a floating memorial candle and set it down in the Banana River, watching it through blurred vision for as long as we could.

     After a long moment of silence I asked her quietly, if that baby had been born, if it would have been a girl, what would she have named her.

     She whispered to me with tears in her eyes… Jennifer Neomie.
 

Reviews

[Blackbirdsong]

I remember this too and my heart was racing as much during this read as it did before. This really is masterful work :)