The One That Got Away

A pain like none she’d ever known before. It felt like a knife tearing through her belly. Not that a knife had ever torn through her belly but this was how she imagined it would feel. Panicking Monique braced herself as a contraction ripped through her. No, no, no! She was only 4 months along! It was to soon, to early for this sh*t. There was a sudden gush of wetness between her legs, her water breaking. ‘Why was this happening?’ she thought guiltily of the jumping jacks she’d been practicing, trying to get back to her pre-pregnancy fitness. Turning to Oliver, she shook her husband awake.

“Oliver, Oliver! Wake up!”

Startling Oliver sat up, “What’s wrong? Monique?”

Monique took a deep breath, trying to compose herself from the contraction, looking up at her husband with tears in her eyes Monique answered, “Oliver, it’s the baby. We need to go to the hospital. Now.”
Oliver nodded, rolling out of bed and hurrying over to Monique’s side to help her out of bed. “Oliver go get the car started, I have to change.”

He nodded, pulling on his jeans, and rushing out their bedroom door.
Breathing through another contraction Monique changed out of her wet pyjama pants into a clean and dry pair of sweats. Oliver burst through the door then, helping Monique out of the house and into the Jeep. Rushing off to the hospital, Monique let the tears fall.

They burst into the hospital with Oliver yelling for a doctor, supporting Monique. A nurse rushed forward quickly asking what was wrong, Oliver rushed through the details and they rushed Monique to the maternity ward.A doctor they didn’t know came into the room. “OK Monique, we’re going to take a look at you and see what’s going on here.” He said.

 Monique nodded, “My…father, Dr. Jean-Baptiste? He’s a consulting physician here. Could you call him?” she asked meekly.

 The doctor shared a look with the nurse in the room. “Monique right now, the biggest thing is getting you though this. Now you’re bleeding quite a lot which I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. I can have you father paged but we need to go in and see what’s happening now.”

“Yeah of course,” Monique said before another contraction ripped through her and she bent over double. There was an immediate dizzying flurry of activity in the room and Monique lost track of things for a while. When she came to, she was in the midst of a new contraction and she let out a sigh when she felt her and Oliver’s child leave her body. Holding her breath Monique waited for the cry. When there was nothing but quiet she desperately looked toward her husband, who was avoiding looking at her. The doctor looked up from the blanket that held her and Oliver’s child.

“Monique? Oliver? I’m very sorry, but you had a miscarriage. You’re son is a stillborn.” Oliver released Monique’s hand, rubbing a hand over his face, wiping away the tears threatening to fall.

Monique lay in a daze, Oliver had walked out of the hospital room. The doctor was cleaning her up and the nurses had stayed, trying to comfort her. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“Not your fault.” “You will get though this.” “There are support groups, we can refer them to you.” “It will get better.”

She was young, and her body bounced back pretty fast. By the next day she was cleared to leave the hospital, stomach as flat as she had been wishing for in the last four months. Her father had not come to see her. Her husband hadn’t said anything to her. When they got home Oliver got out of the Jeep bolting for the house, without saying a word.

“Oliver, can we please talk? This silence isn’t helping any.” Oliver looked up from the bottle in his hand. He was clearly drunk already. Hitting his wife with a glare Oliver stood up.

 “You want to talk? You want to talk about our dead son Monique? What is there to say; you got what you wanted. Now you can go be head cheerleader or whatever.”

Monique gasped at the comment, “I’ll give you five seconds to take that back Oliver…” she said surprised that she wasn’t bent over double with the pain it caused.

Oliver snorted “What do you think I am Momo? Your child? Oh no right, you lost our child; doesn’t mean you get to treat me like one.” Monique backed away from her husband, trying to hold back tears.

“Oliver I-“

“Why did I even marry you? Talk about damned fool ideas. You never wanted this; any of it! Well…it’s over now. You’re free. Happy now?”

Monique let the tears fall, hurrying out of the room. The screaming in her head getting louder, the baby cries. Oliver’s insults. Everything. She couldn’t do this anymore, she couldn’t. Monique walked into the bathroom and stripped to nothing feeling filthy. She turned the water to as hot as it would go and stood under it, letting it beat at her; her own personal vilifier. She didn’t even care if her hair got wet. Oliver was right, this was all her fault.