August.
My focus becomes incredibly clear. My hands move toward my breasts and cup them. They’re large, tender, and unusually sore. The beat of my heart begins to race uncontrollably, the room spinning in circles.
The bile rises, my stomach churning, and without notice, the acid runs up into my throat and onto the floor with a large gurgle.
“Milly! Are you okay?”
In a state of shock, I know what my head refuses to compute. The signs are all there, and I’m a fool to think he can’t find his way back to me.
And this time, he played the ultimate game.
Created the nightmare now inside of me.
I wish often, just like now, that my memory will fade, disappear into the still of the night. If I can take away Mama’s disease, I gladly will and feel it myself, for I don’t want to remember. Not the moment when my life changes forever. And not the moment when I begin to despise the man who consumes me whole.
“The baby’s heart rate is high. We need to take you to the O.R. now.”
Mama and Phoebe clutch both hands, worriedly. Around me, there’s chaos. Beeping monitors and people hustling. The nurse was young, didn’t look a day older than me. What would she know? She did not look like she had been through this, and I didn’t like the way she had a gleam of panic in her eyes.
I caught a fleeting stiffening of Mama’s face. Her hand was gripping mine, her knuckles almost stark white. I wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but I’d be lying. I didn’t know if everything would be okay. This could be the beginning or the end.
“But she’s only thirty-five weeks, surely that can’t be safe for the baby.”
A man, attractive with two cute dimples nestled into his ebony skin, placed a needle into my wrist, stabbing me and wrapping some tape to secure it. For someone who stabbed people for a living, it would have been polite to ask me if needles freaked me out.
“It’s safe enough. We have no choice as the baby appears distressed. You’re in the best hands. Now, do we have the father here?”
Phoebe jumped quickly. “No, she has me. I’ll be the dad.”
The nurse said nothing, and with some additional help, she wheeled me to the door and told us only one could enter the operating room.
“I want my mama,” I cried, openly.
“I’m here, Milly, right here.”
With her hand grasping mine, I sobbed, “Mama, I’m scared.”
She hushed me, kissing my forehead. “You’re a brave girl. This baby is going to be loved so much. I promise you, you’ll change forever and feel nothing like the love for this baby.”
Nodding my head, I laid back, and stared at the ceiling while the surgeon began. The voices that surrounded me were muffled. I was too focused on this tugging of my body, and after what seemed like forever, a sound echoed loudly in the room—wails from a baby.
“Congratulations, it’s a girl!”
Everyone in the room cheered. Mama grinned so big but with clouded eyes. She began to laugh, a joyous laughter that I hadn’t heard in such a long time.
“She’s beautiful.”
The nurse, smiling wide, brought her over to me, the baby’s face making contact against my own.
She stopped crying, squinting her eyes and blinded by the light. It was all surreal, the elation in the room and the overjoyed miracle of birth. But I was exhausted, waiting for this moment of love to wash over me like everyone said it would. There was something that stirred, an unknown emotion, but all I could see was his face.
All I see is him.
“I’m so proud of you, honey. I told you, you’ll fall in love from the moment you see her.”
I smiled, forced. “You’re right, Mama, that’s exactly how I feel.”
That moment remains crystal clear. The moment that every woman dreams about, just not me. I never wanted babies. I never wanted to have a family and pass on Mama’s disease. No one, and I mean no one, understands the pain of watching their mother suffer as much as I have. Each time, each memory loss fuels my sadness and throws me deeper into depression.