One lamp lit the bedroom. I lay on my back with my knees up and he lay to the side of me with a hand on my belly, an arm under his wavy brunette locks and his attentive eyes on my lips as they spoke the written word from the book I grasped.
This and many other activities became our spiritual rituals. Day to day. Just to get by. Just to not feel like we were losing grasp on the life and lives we had. We would lay in bed, I would read. I would lay in the tub, he would read. I’d lay on the table, he’d sit next to me, the doctor would read. Hope and love is all we had as glue to bind us together for as far as we could tell the rest of the world around us was falling apart. Laying and reading, laying and reading.
Under his fingers the undulating and rippling of things to come responded to the vibrations of the words I spoke which sounded something akin to:......baby is starting to store minerals iron, calcium and phosphorus. This will aid in bone development. Your baby may be sticking out her tongue to test her environment....And each night we would learn new and seemingly pointless facts of growth and development from within. At times, I wondered if we even really cared about the daily readings or if it was just something to get us through a moment in time. A habit to get us to the end.
Under the water my pasty yellow skin soaked in the warmth of temporary relief. Belly, breasts and knees like islands in the too small tub. “Whenever you feel your body begin to surge, actively think “release” and “let go” of tension. There is a time for experiencing that uterine wave......” I’d listen and he’d read. Affirming to me me that this was all going to be fine. We would survive this and live. I never cared much for the words. I hate them now. His soothing voice echoing in the confines of the room healed my perpetual heart wounds. After he’d read he’d kneel by the tub and cautiously put his hand on my tight, unnatural body attempting to provide comfort where I would never find it. My ribs protruded, my pelvis and cheek bones were merely curtain rods for skin. His strong hands did not provide physical comfort in the fluorescently lit bathroom but his presence was more than enough for me to not fall to pieces. He knew all this.
“412. That is your liver enzyme count, Melody. That’s toxic. You have to go back to the hospital. Also your potassium has dropped again. We just don’t know what’s going on. We think a referral to Darmouth is in order.” Every word a midwife or a doctor spoke was simply a story. It had to be. I couldn’t associate the words with my life, my body. The story I was watching was tragic but not mine, no. I had to dissociate. Day to day. Just to get by. Go to the hospital for three days, get well enough to get home, lay in bed and read, lay in the tub and be read to, go back to the hospital four days later. This is what got us through it all.
Just to build a baby.
This nearly sent me over the edge into tears more than once. Though I know what it was like from the outside, and from what you've told me the way your wrote this really brings across the kind of gray wash that things became as we kept clinging to normalcy. Well done Melody! I can't wait to read more!
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