The Last Prayer: Part 3

This is a fictional piece based on my experiences.  I hope you enjoy.  

*trigger warning* child loss, infertility, miscarriage

 

Part 1

Part 2

Slowly the world solidified around her.  Movement and words began to run in sync.  It was done.

Ava was alive, but the baby was gone.  As she sat breathing in this new reality, the on-duty nurse came in and handed her a prescription and told her it was time to go.  

 

Ava tried to stand, but everything blurred.  She asked for a few more minutes to rest, the nurse looked her over and replied, "You have to be gone by shift change, which is in 20 minutes."

Nineteen minutes later, Dave helped Ava up and they slowly made their way back home.  Home to no baby.  Home to the same emptiness of infertility, but now with the added black hole of loss.

The next several days were a blur of pain medication and broken naps.  Sleeping, waking in pain, medicating, sleeping.  Again and again the cycle repeated.

Finally, on the fourth day, Ava's parents brought Lily back home.  At five years old, she didn't understand what had happened.  She didn't know she had had a sibling briefly in this world.  Lily only knew that she prayed for one every night, not how much that prayer pierced her mother's heart.

to be continued...

The Last Prayer: Part 2

This is a fictional piece based on my experiences.  I hope you enjoy.  

*trigger warning* child loss, infertility, miscarriage

 

Part 1

If time had been slowing down, with the entry of Dr. K, everything now moved at double speed.  Like a general commanding her troops, the hospital suddenly whirled into motion.  

Within moments, Ava was being wheeled up to ultrasound.  There, the technician confirmed the worst case scenario; ruptured ectopic.  Dr. K hovered over the technician, instructing her to call down to the operating room, we were on our way.  As the technician said the words, "ectopic pregnancy", Dr. K bellowed from behind her, "RUPTURED ECTOPIC!"  

This lioness would save Ava's life.

Soon Ava found herself back with Dave in the exam room.  Ava's mother had arrived, and both were close by her side as four nurses struggled to find a vein that hadn't collapsed for an iv.  Ava lost track of the number of times she was poked and prodded, as the needles found no vein strong enough to bear their burden.  Finally, in desperation, a neonatal needle was placed and the race to surgery began.

As Ava was wheeled from the room, she turned with one last look at Dave and said, "Sheesh, I guess my body will do anything to adopt."  Dave managed a small chuckle through his fear as his wife was wheeled out of sight.

In the operating room, Ava was helped onto the operating table.  The nurses tried to talk her through what was going to happen next, but all Ava could focus on was the eminent pain relief of being put under.  As they told her she was going under, the last thing she remembered was their laughter as she said, "About f***ing time."  

to be continued...

The Last Prayer: Part 1

This is a fictional piece based on my experiences.  I hope you enjoy.  

*trigger warning* child loss, infertility, miscarriage

"Please, God", she thought.  It was all she could do to form those words, all she could think through the blood and tears.

What had been one blissful day of joy soon became a nightmare.  Ava wove in and out of coherence as she sat under the fluorescent lights of the emergency room.  Across the room, she saw what she thought must be grandparents, holding a coughing toddler.  A school-aged boy threw up in the next row.

Still, they didn't call her name.  She'd told the nurse she was bleeding, that she was pregnant.  She told her the pain stabbed her with every breath.

Still, she waited. 

One hour stretched to two.  Finally, in desperation, she sent Dave away, asking him to find her doctor.  He left her alone in the emergency room in search of her doctor's office across the complex.  "Please come, she's bleeding.  She's in a lot of pain.  They won't see us."

A nurse pulled Ava into an evaluation room, asked her where her pain was.  "Nine." She said calmly, barely conscious of her surroundings. "I was at a six when I brought my leg a few years ago.  This is worse."

The nurse eyed her skeptically, surely a "9" would be screaming, and sent her back to wait in the lobby again.

Dave returned.  Ava's doctor was in surgery, but the office would let her know the situation.

An hour later, things began to blur together.  Conversations became more difficult for Ava to understand.

Finally, after three hours, a nurse ushered her in to an exam room letting Ava know, "the on call doctor has five patients in front of you, then he'll be in to see you."

Ava lay back, in too much pain to do more than close her eyes against the waves of it.

As the nurse left her room, she heard Dr. K come screaming down the hall, "WHERE IS SHE?!"

In that moment, Ava had her first hope someone would save her.

to be continued....