Dear Momma

Did I ever want to marry Illinois? No. He had commitment issues. He had authority issues. He had family issues. He didn't know how to love. He didn't know how to listen. He was scared of his feelings. He didn't know how to cope. He couldn't see a good opportunity if it hit him in the face. And now none of that is my problem. I no longer have to worry about being pregnant and working my ass off somewhere I don't even like with the knowledge that my boyfriend, rather, my fianc é is at home playing video games or out playing golf when he should be playing house. Meanwhile, he is the one that put the relationship on the fast track. It wasn't my idea for us to move in together. And I didn't ask myself to marry him. Then he decided he didn't want something that serious anymore. He is entitled but his timing couldn't have been worse. I had just lost two babies, twins, weeks before and it was the Tuesday of my second week back at work. It wasn't like I had wanted things to get 'that serious.' But there we were, in a very scary serious place. And he had the ability to leave. Since it was my body that made everything 'that serious,' that meant leaving me.

With the first baby, I was at work. It was a Monday morning in October, a few weeks after my 28th birthday. I went to the bathroom and noticed that there was blood everywhere. I called my OB/GYN. She told me to get the emergency room STAT. I obliged. There was no need. I wasn't seen by a doctor until seven hours later. I called my mom, my dad and my sister while rushing to the hospital to see if someone could meet me there (my brother was upstate at school). No one was available. And then I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Eventually, my mom called me back and she rushed over.

Finally I was put in one of the few single rooms connected to the emergency room. My legs were in stirrups and there was a steady flow of various medical professionals exiting and entering the room. An administrative type came in to get my pedigree, a phlebotomist attached an IV and make an extra port, the on staff doctor checked me to assure that I was stable, and eventually an ob/gyn visited to check on the pregnancy.

An hour or so later, I was wheeled up to the maternity ward for a sonogram. That was where the already scary, untenable position I was in reached new levels of horror. I am strapped into a bed in a dark room. I am barely covered. I am shivering. I am scared. My legs are in stirrups. My belly is bare. The doctor comes in and rubs K-Y jelly on my stomach. Then he inserts the device into me and moves it around. I am sore because more hands and tools than I care to recall have already been up there checking for irregularities. The doctor won't make eye contact with me while he looks at the screen above me to my right. The screen facing me is off. I start to cry. Why is my screen turned off? I ask the doctor to turn it on. He is looking at his so intently. I want to see what he sees. I need to know what is going on. He ignores me. My cries get louder. I implore him to turn my TV on. He tells me my TV is broken. I call him a liar. Does he not understand how much I need to see. He stares at his screen with wonder. What is he looking at? What does he see? What is going on? He tells me I am pregnant with twins. I am happy and shocked and I exhale and a tear rolls out of my eye. What a beautiful miracle. Then he tells me that one has no heartbeat and he is not sure about the other one but he is not optimistic. Is this what they call bedside manner these days?

I am inconsolable.

I get out of the bed and ask for my clothes and put them back on in the hallway because I don't want to be in the cold, dark room with the broken TV and the bad news. I get dressed while medical professionals rush by me. They don't see me and I don't see them. I am in my own world; my own nightmare. They don't notice me until I try to leave the area. They say I need to be wheeled down the way I was taken up. I don't know why the need to obey protocol now. My body has stopped doing what it is supposed to do. What would being wheeled downstairs in a wheelchair protect. The damage is done. It's too late. My heart is broken but that is not a health risk. I have already lost a baby. Can I go find my mother? No one is coming for me and all I want is to see my mother and get out of the hospital. I ask if I can leave on my own. They tell me I cannot and call again for someone to wheel me down.

Could anything be worse than being in the semi-darkness after getting dressed in front of various medical professionals rushing back and forth past me seemingly not seeing me after being teased and tortured by the doctor after spending almost 12 hours in the hospital after getting the most awful news imaginable knowing my mother is downstairs and doesn't know any of this and I need to see her. I have been working so hard. Doesn't that mean anything? I don't deserve this. I have been working so hard. I spent the summer working until after 11:00pm most nights. I spent the summer working until after 11:00pm most nights on crutches after my knee injury. I spent the summer working until after 11:00pm most nights knowing my boyfriend was watching television all day. I spent the summer working until after 11:00pm most nights missing my boyfriend and my friends and my family. I have spent my pregnancy being so tired. I have spent my pregnancy wishing things could have been different. I have spent my pregnancy wishing my boyfriend would help me. I have spent my pregnancy wishing the pressure to make money and carry this child/children didn't rest completely on me.

I don't understand.

Finally I am picked up from the maternity ward I am and wheeled back down to the emergency room. There I must wait more - this time to be formally discharged. I must be seen by another doctor and fill out more paperwork. I am on a bed with wheels among other beds with wheels in shock crying feeling the loss of twins, an honor I wasn't even aware I had been entrusted with until that moment. I am feeling the loss of a baby that I had only known about for two months. How did two months change my life so much? Should I have hope that the second one might live? Should I give up? The doctor told me not to keep my hopes up. But how can I just give up? I want it so badly. I have never wanted anything so much. I cry. I am in shock and I cry.

Suddenly I see the double doors barrel open. A small, determined figure makes her way through the crowded ER, eyes darting left and right, looking. Her eyes lock on to mine. She sees me from across the room. It is my mother. Her brown eyes send me a beacon of strength because I know she understands. She is the first person I have seen here all day who understands and acknowledges the horror of the situation. And all it takes is for her to look at me. Her eyes say everything I need to hear. As she gets closer my cries get louder. I don't want to say what I have to say. I don't know if I can say what I have to say. She comes over to me and sits on my bed and I look at her and I cry, "I lost it." She starts to cry too. I still need to get discharged. We can't leave yet. All I want is to leave the emergency room and the hospital with my mom and turn back the clock. I want to go back to her house with her and be a kid again so she can tell me that everything is going to be alright. So I will actually believe her. But she can't. And I can't. This will never go away. These memories will haunt me forever. And whenever I think of this day I will cry. And I will think of it often, if not every day. People tell me things happen for a reason. I look for the silver lining. There isn't one. I bemoan my own body for failing to do the one thing it was made to do. I have to decide that this was a dress rehearsal. Now I know what I want. And I will know it when I see it. This guy wasn't for me. His kids weren't for me. My babies and my Mr. Right are out there somewhere waiting for me. All I have to do is find them.

Thank you for rescuing me that day. Happy 60th Birthday.