by Amy Daws
My dad’s steadfast strength crumbles at those words and he blinks his red eyes several times in response to the tears coming out of them. He nods his head slightly in confirmation.
I look over to my mom who has completely lost it now. What the hell? Even though I had a twelve-hour plane ride to prepare myself for this, I was in no way prepared for the baby to be gone. I just thought someone was sick or there was a complication. Kansas City has a good hospital. I was certain they would be able to fix whatever was wrong.
I drop my purse on the ground and turn from them, walking a few steps away for some air. This can’t be happening. It can’t! How could she lose the baby? Her little boy she’s been praying so hard for? This was their last chance. Their last time. George said they could try one more time for a boy, but if it didn’t happen he was ready to accept that his lot in life was to be surrounded by beautiful women.
My sister is beautiful, too. Cadence is even more stunning in her pregnant form. She was made to have babies. She and her three girls are all blonde, unlike the rest of my brunette family. Like mother, like daughter. Her three little girls were gorgeous, blonde, living, thriving proof of my sister being born to reproduce.
As the image of my three nieces pops into my head, I squat down on the sidewalk and cover my face to conceal the sobs that are now erupting from my mouth.
“Oh my God! My M&Ms! How are they going to handle this?”
My mom squats down beside me and wraps her arms around my back, crying. How is my family going to get through this? How is a tragedy like this possible? It isn’t supposed to be hard for Cadence. I thought I had taken the entire bad juju away from my family with all my fertility issues. No family should have to endure an infertile daughter and a daughter who suffers a pregnancy loss this late into her third trimester.
My dad bends over in front of me offering his hand, “Let’s get in the car ladies, we don’t need all these damn people looking at us right now.” He ushers us to the car and my mom slips into the backseat with me, continuing to hold my arm close to her the whole way to the hospital.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
As I follow my mom and dad through the hospital to the postpartum wing, my mind is numb. They explained to me in the car that the placenta had detached inside of her and they couldn’t get the baby out in time to save him. She was nearly thirty-seven-weeks along and had no signs of bleeding or complications. The doctor informed her and George that in rare cases, there can be something called silent placental abruption where there are no symptoms and things like this just happen sometimes. They had to do an emergency c-section.
The torture of the situation is that at thirty-seven weeks, she was considered full term. Definitely far enough along for him to have survived if they would have delivered early. But I guess everything happened so quickly, they didn’t realize anything was wrong until it was too late and baby George had already passed away inside of her. That part was impossible to think about.
My mom and dad stop outside of a patient’s room. Pinned prominently on the door is a golden, laminated circle. My heart compresses as I glance at other patient’s doors with nothing on them. Did that indicate a halo? Like an angel halo?
The door opens before we get a chance to knock and George comes out. He looks so defeated. I want to reach out and hug him instantly, but my emotions are definitely not in check and I’m afraid if I hug him, I’ll start sobbing on him. He doesn’t need to be comforting me right now. His eyes look up from the floor and he glances at my parents and then to me.
“You made it,” he sighs, looking slightly relieved.
“I did,” I squeak, my chin trembling.
“She’s getting in the shower right now but she told me that she wants you to come in right away, no matter what,” he says, feebly.
“George,” I look at him pleadingly, taking in his appearance. He looks crushed but still the same, big, cuddly George I remember.
“Come here,” he replies, opening his arms to me.
I rush into his arms and my head hits his soft chest as he hugs me tightly, sniffing occasionally. George is like a brother to me. He has the familiar smell of their house on his shirt and I relish in the comfort of his embrace and that particular scent.
For years I had been stopping by their house to play with the girls. Cadence was ten years older than me and started having babies when I was still in school. Their oldest is 14 now, so there were many years when it was just me and their family hanging out. George never seemed to mind me tagging along and we’ve grown very close over the years. We would gang up on Cadence whenever she would go into a tailspin about Lord knows what. George and I made it our personal mission to break her down when she got going on one of her famous fits. She hated it; we loved it. It was our thing. But while we were very close and comfortable with each other, we never had to go through any situation like this.
“She’s been worrying about your flight, so you better get in there and let her know you’re here,” he murmurs into the top of my head.
“Okay,” I look up at him and back at mom and dad for encouragement.
They look at me with sad expectant eyes and I will myself to be strong as I place my hand on the doorknob.
“She won’t let me touch her, Fin,” he announces, before I open the door.
I look back at him, squeezing my brows together in silent question.
“Since the surgery,” he starts, “she won’t let me touch her.”
He looks at me with desperation in his eyes and I nod in response, placing a reassuring hand on his chest. He grabs my hand and holds it tightly against his fluttering heart, “I need her back, Finley,” he whispers, with a pain in his eyes that makes my knees buckle, “I need to hold her.”
I nod again, and with a large sigh, I enter the room. It’s dark, except for one small lamp above the bed that casts a warm glow onto the head of the bed. The bed is a standard hospital bed and there’s a pullout couch along the far wall with rumpled blankets and pillows strewn everywhere.
I hear the lull of the shower in the bathroom and make my way toward the door. I knock loudly, “Cade? It’s me.”
“Finley?” she croaks.
“Yeah, can I come in?”
“Yes!” I hear her gushing air out in between quiet sobs, trying to compose herself.
She pokes her head out from the shower curtain. Her dirty-blonde hair is stuck down to the sides of her face and her eyes are red and blotchy.
“Were you crying in there?” I ask, with a trembling chin.
“Yes!” she sobs hard, her meager resolve shedding before my eyes. “The shower is the worst, Finley! I was doing okay until I stood under this water. I can’t stop thinking about him!” she wails, loudly, as her shoulders hunch over, violently shaking with her cries.
She looks so broken that without thought, I push the curtain back and hug her hard. Her naked, wet body soaks me along with the spray of the water. I don’t care that my sister’s naked right now. I don’t care that I’m fully dressed. She is shattering apart in front of me and I need to hold her as much as she needs me to hold her.
“Finley!” she cries, putting her hands up in refusal at my entry into her shower.
I press her arms down to her sides and clamp my arms around the tops of hers in a tight embrace.
I feel her chest heaving against my forced clinch. After a moment, when her breathing slows, she cries out loudly, “I can’t stop seeing his perfect face in my head! He is so beautiful, Finley!”
I release one of my hands from the tight grip I had forced behind her back and rub it down the back of her wet head, blinking against the spraying shower stream bolting onto my face. I don’t want to move her, so I just breathe through the stream as best I can.
“He has brown hair Fin, like yours, and George’s!” she continues, shuddering in my embrace, “I don’t understand, Fin. I don’t understand! I just want to close my eyes and go to sleep and have him still be alive and wiggling inside of me agai
n. I’m so close to when things were okay. It was just a few days ago, Fin. A few days ago, things were fine! It’s right there! I can almost touch it!” she cries into my shoulder.
She slinks out of my embrace and slowly lowers herself to the ground, hugging her legs and rocking back and forth. “My body, Finley. My body! It’s like it’s still pregnant. I swear I can still feel him moving in me,” she looks up at me, disbelievingly.
I turn and slide down the wall beside her, wiping the water out of my eyes and pushing my wet hair from my face.
“I have this big belly still, and these painful breasts with milk coming in, and this painful incision, Fin. But I have nothing to show for it. Nothing!” She shrieks, crying into her kneecaps and tipping herself back, sitting on the shower floor, leaning on the concrete wall next to me. “My body is mangled to nothing and I don’t even have a baby to kiss it all better.”
Finally, I feel compelled to respond, “You do have something to show for it, Cadence. You had a baby, a beautiful baby boy. He didn’t live,” my voice cracks. “But you birthed him. He is yours. Forever and always, he is yours.”
“Finley!” she looks at me, still sobbing. “I didn’t know I could ever hurt this much.”
“Me neither, Cadence. Me neither,” I reply, shaking my head and staring forward at the water circling the drain. “I wish I could just fix this, Cade. I wish I could turn back time for you and make this not happen. I wish I could have been there when you needed me. I wish there was something, anything, I could do now,” I say, squinting up into the shower spray coming down near us, willing myself to shut up because I know I’m rambling.
She looks at me with wide, puppy-dog eyes, “You’re here. That’s enough, Fin. You’re what I needed,” she says, and then nods encouragingly at me.
My heart breaks, looking at her tearstained face, her wet hair and her tiny frame grasping onto her legs like her life depends on it. She looks so young and destroyed. So different from the sister I grew up with. Cadence is so much older than me and has been helping me through all my melodramatic crap for the majority of my life. It’s rare that I’m ever a shoulder for her to cry on. She always had her life together. George and Cade were high school sweethearts and married young. She had her oldest daughter, Megan, at only 21 years old. It was that easy for Cadence. She wanted to be a mother and she became one. It seemed like that’s how the majority of Cadence’s life played out. I was always the screwed up little sister who didn’t do things the normal and traditional way.
She was a huge buffer between me, Mom, and Dad when they were upset with Brody and me for not wanting to get married. She was the fixer in our family and was always able to help Mom and Dad understand me. They knew Cadence and I were close, so if Cadence told them I was okay, they took her word for it and tried not to meddle as much.
The girl chewing on her knuckle right now as water rolls off her skin, is not the sister I grew up with. Cadence has just endured one of the most tragic things a person can imagine, and here she is, telling me that I was all she needed right now. Despite her meager appearance, she is still managing to make me feel stronger than I ever believed I could be.
“I love you, Cadence. I madly and truly love you.” I wrap my long arms around her bawled up form, and continue crying with her for a while until George’s voice breaks our bubble.
“Uhhh, hello?” George says, tentatively, from the cracked door.
“George?” Cadence replies.
“What happened to Finley?” he questions, coming into the bathroom.
“She’s in the shower with me.”
“Oh, God! Crap! I’m sorry, I’ll leave!” he says, rushing quickly out the door.
“She’s not naked, George. It’s fine!” Cadence calls back to him. “But she might need some dry clothes.” She half smiles at me, wiping my hair back from the side of my face the way only an older sister could.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I help Cadence out of the shower and dry her off. I catch a glimpse of us in the mirror and cringe at the horror of how we both look. I’m fully clothed and completely soaked, with makeup running down my face; Cadence looks pale and wobbly as I use a towel to dry her hair for her.
George knocks again, “I have Finley’s suitcase, am I okay to come in?”
“Yes,” we reply, in unison.
George opens the door and takes in the sight of his wife wrapped in a towel and me in my soaking wet clothes.
“Are you guys okay?” he asks, looking sadly between the two of us.
Cadence looks at me with a small affectionate smile and then walks over to George and lays her head on his chest, prompting him to wrap his big arms around her. He closes his eyes and I swear I can see the pain and grief in him float off his body and into the steamy shower air.
I smile at the beauty of them, with tears in my eyes. George looks up to me with wide eyes and mouths a silent, “Thank you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I plan to stay at Cadence and George’s house for the next couple weeks. Mom and Dad understand completely and are grateful I’m there to help her and be with the girls.
The grief comes in waves for Cadence. One minute she looks good and strong, staying busy and moving a lot to help speed up the healing from her surgery. Then the next minute, she gets a far off look in her eyes and tells us she needs some air. Every time she puts her shoes on to go for a walk, I ask if I can come, and she always says no. It breaks my heart because I just know she’s out there crying by herself, and yet, I can’t force myself on her.
George is home with all of us, too. He’s working a lot on his laptop, so I offer to take the girls to school and pick them up every day. Whenever I look at him, though, he almost always has his eyes on Cadence. From what I can tell, he’s doing a lot more Cadence-watching than actual work.
My M&Ms each deal with the loss in their own way. Maya is five and seems to understand it but isn’t overly emotional about it. However, she keeps going up to Cadence’s tummy and rubbing it. Watching Cadence’s reaction to that is like a cruel and unusual punishment, but I can’t help but smile at the beauty of Maya’s innocence around the whole situation.
McKinley is nine and seems to be pondering where baby George ended up, which sparks lots of interesting explanations of heaven, like who goes to heaven, and how you get there. I end up answering a lot of those questions because McKinley has attached herself to my hip the whole time during my stay. I can tell that of all the girls, she’s missed me the most and is making up for lost time.
Megan took Baby George’s passing the hardest. At fourteen years old, she’s emotional, so having hormones raging in her body with puberty striking, is of no help. I think she feels some guilt, too, because prior to losing Baby George, she complained about her sisters a lot. Since Baby George has passed, I notice her actively seeking out her sisters to play with them. She even tolerates more of the kid toys and games the younger ones enjoy. A big change from her typical iPod and iPhone solitary confinement she always lived in before. I’m thankful because I know Cadence is noticing. When I see her watching them, I see that old, memorable light in her eyes I thought was gone forever.
There’s extra work around the house, too, because we’re all helping prepare for the memorial service that Cadence and George are having for Baby George. They opted to have him cremated, which I know couldn’t have been an easy decision. Cadence opened up to me about it one night and said she just couldn’t imagine his tiny, perfect body buried in the ground, an arm’s reach away from holding him.
We’ve been home for three days now and I’m helping Cadence look online for special music to play at the ceremony in a couple days. We all hear a knock on their front door. Cadence and George live on a small acreage, so they don’t get many knocking visitors. Most people that come here know them well enough to just walk in.
A moment later, George walks back into the living room followed by Brody. My heart drops at the sight of him. I’d be lying if I didn’t th
ink about driving into the city to see him half a dozen times or more. But I always stopped myself because now wasn’t the time for my relationship bullshit. Cadence, the M&Ms, and George need me here and that is a rarity. They’ve been helping me for years, so it is all I can do to return the favor.
Seeing Brody standing there in his faded blue jeans and loose flannel shirt sends familiar flutters in my lower belly. He looks as good as always. My heart silently breaks at the idea that he isn’t as affected by our break up as I am.
“Hey, Cade,” Brody says, striding into the living room to Cadence who’s sitting on the couch next to me.
Cadence stands up slowly, cautious of her c-section incision and gives him a long hug. I can smell the familiar scent of Brody. Clean, fresh, perfect.
“I wish I knew what to say,” he says, pulling away and sweeping his hand through his now shorter curly brown hair.
“Yeah,” Cadence replies, with a sad look. “Nice of you to stop by,” she says, looking a bit emotional again.
“I, uh…I brought gifts for the girls, but they don’t have to open them now if they’re in bed,” he says, awkwardly, holding three pink gift bags in his hand. “I meant to get here earlier, before they went to sleep.”
“Of course they can open them now, I’m sure they aren’t asleep yet. They’d love to see you,” she says, looking to George.
George leaves the living room to go bring the girls downstairs. We had just put them to bed a few minutes before Brody’s arrival. Nighttime procedure was a mess every night. The girls were always getting into trouble for playing in each other’s rooms and not sleeping.
“Hey, Brody,” I say, pulling at the strings of my hoodie, awkwardly.
“Hi, Finley,” he replies, barely looking at me. Damn him.
