Lightning Bolt

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

ONE OF THE HARDEST THINGS IN LIFE

IS HAVING WORDS IN YOUR

HEART THAT YOU CANT UTTER

My eyelids slowly opened. My eyes hurt from the sudden bright light, taking them a moment to readjust.

The first thing I noticed was how empty I felt, how completely hollow I was. My hand instinctively went to my stomach. It felt sore, bruised and it wasn't hard anymore. It was still ballooned slightly but it was soft now, jellified. Nothing was left. My beautiful baby had gone.

I closed my eyes as the tears came and took me over.

In the distance I heard a wailing sound like a tortured animal caught in a hunters trap and I soon realised it was coming from within me.

All of a sudden I was being lifted, strong arms encircled my body. I swayed back and forth and I knew it was Matt. I heard his cries. I felt his tears roll onto me and soak my hospital gown. I was limp. I couldn't comfort him. All my fight had left me and I had nothing left.

This pain I was feeling, the pain Matt was suffocating in was my entire fault. I had been far too late. I should have realised that night or even the day before.

I had let my own baby die!

I heard the same tortured howl again, then voices I didn't recognise. I felt a sharp quick pain in my arm and then finally the comfort of darkness washed back over me where my mind couldn't work.

**********

The next day the doctor who had been assigned to me on my arrival came to see us.

Matt and I hadn't really spoken since I had come back round. Neither of us knew what to say. I was numb, we both were, and we were deeply in shock.

The doctor stood at the end of my bed with pity in his eyes as he began to explain what had happened. He told us I had gone into early labour which probably had started a couple of days previous to me losing our baby. He didn't know the exact cause. There were many possibilities from weak cervix's to the placenta failing and detaching from the uterus or simply good old Mother Nature. 

As time went on through that fateful night of labour which somehow I had managed to sleep through, I lost a lot of blood and with the fall from the top of the flight of stairs it had caused my womb to rupture, therefore resulting in an emergency hysterectomy. 

Sophie had got stuck in my pelvic bone and being the duration I was the chances of survival were near minimal. He explained if she had been a week or two later they would have helped save her life.

Those last words cut into me more than anything. I felt sick to my core.

One to two weeks!

Such a short amount of time and they would have helped her, she still might be with us.

Anger bubbled up inside me. I wanted to scream at them. Tell them they should have tried. She needed help! But I shut it away, locking it deep inside me.

How could I blame them when the fault lay at my door? 

I should have known it would be my body that would fail her. I should have told someone about my early bleeding. I should have gone straight to the hospital when I had started feeling pains in my back. I should have taken extra care. If I had Sophie would still have been here.

I hated myself.

I laid there staring up at the doctor unmoving, emotionless, watching as his thin lips moved behind his beard. He suggested we seek counselling over losing our baby and because I was so young to have a hysterectomy.