Having Your Jelly Baby

21: Marley

A/N: Shorter chapter ahead, but I felt like this is where this one had to end. Also, a quick warning to those of you who don't like distressing chapters/scenes. 

21: Marley

I was pretty certain that I had passed out from pain. Either that, or I was delirious from it, mumbling to myself how “there was blood; there was just so much blood, please could someone grab me a tampon for the blood…”

‘Nova,’ Drew’s voice tugged me awake and out of my bewildered, semi-conscious state. He was leaning over me, knelt on the floor by my head, his own frame blocking out the bright yellow light that had been turned on at some point, or perhaps it had always been on.

I was lying on the floor, wondering how much time had passed since my phone call to Drew, whether it had been five minutes or fifteen, or even longer than that.

‘Did you hurt your back when you fell?’ Drew asked me urgently, his hand shaking my shoulder gently as my heavy eyelids began to fall closed again.

‘I fell?’ I inquired, sitting up slowly. ‘There’s no pain, there’s only…’ I stopped, horrified and wincing as I became aware of a contraction, my hand flitting to my abdomen where Drew’s eyes moved too.

‘We need to get you to the hospital,’ he mumbled, mostly to himself, immediately hooking an arm under my legs and the other beneath my arms, cradling me as if I was the baby.

Mortified, I was well aware that the amount of blood had seeped through my underwear and leggings completely. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, realizing that it had stained his cream carpet, too. The smell made me want to retch.

‘It’s fine, it can be cleaned,’ he said, hoisting me up a little so I was more secure in his arms. ‘Could you link your arms around my neck?’

I nodded numbly, obliging. From there, Drew essentially ran to his car with me, the elevator mercifully on our floor, so as soon as he pressed the button, it opened and we could rush down.

He delicately put me in the passenger seat, murmuring softly to me that it was okay, that he was here, that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to Marley, or to me. I could hardly comprehend what was happening because of how suddenly it was all occurring. Even sitting beside Drew didn’t make me feel as if I was grounded or on earth: it felt as if I was watching all of this happen to somebody else.

Even though I was wincing and flinching every time I felt a shoot of pain, making Drew glance from the road to me worriedly, there was numbness in my heart and mind. The drive seemed to take forever, and Drew was the anxious, panicking one now, whereas I sat unblinkingly in the passenger seat, a dull worrying screaming at the very corner of my mind but which I easily ignored.

When we arrived at the Emergency Room, the doctor saw us immediately, as soon as they saw I was pregnant and potentially about to give birth, wheeling me up to the maternity ward while organizing various tests and a scan.

My waters broke halfway up there. It caused Drew to swear and me to muffle a groan into the palm of my hand. We both knew what was happening, and only prayed that there was some way to stop it. My heart sank, because deep down, I knew what this meant.

Things were going on in a rush that I couldn’t fully understand, the doctor telling me something about “ruptured membranes…no amniotic fluid…cervical weakness…”

I was helped onto a hospital bed, my legs shaky as I stood up. Drew didn’t let go of my hand once, gnawing on his bottom lip so anxiously that I wondered if he had drawn blood yet.

‘What’s going on?’ I heard myself say loudly.

The doctor had been talking but none of it had been going in at all, pursing her lips and repeating what she had just said.

‘We’re going to have to deliver your baby, Nova, there’s no way we can stop your labour without risk of infection of you or of the fetus. I’m very sorry, but the baby isn’t viable. I’m required to tell you that her chances of survival outside of the womb are very slim, and that she most likely won’t live for more than a few hours,’ she said dolefully, her hand resting on the hospital bed as though it was as close as she would or could ever come to me, knowing the news she had just delivered.

‘What do you mean?’ I protested, stunned by the cold, distant way the doctor was talking in spite of what she was saying. ‘Are you telling me that you’ve given up on my baby?’

The doctor shook her head and shot Drew a beseeching look. ‘You have to understand that all we can do right now is deliver the fetus. I understand how difficult it must be…’

I zoned out, shaking my head profusely and refusing to hear anymore.

Jelly was going to be fine, I told myself. She was going to be all right, and she would live out her life: she was going to grow into a proper baby, before becoming a waddling toddler that walked shakily to me with her arms outstretched as she took her first steps, calling for her mother excitedly.

I was meant to – I was going to – watch her on her first day of school, making friends or even a cheeky little four year old boyfriend. She would – she was meant to – grow up and fall in love and maybe have her heart broken. She was meant to grow old too, the way I was going to, before I kicked the bucket first.

But her lease of life had been shredded away from her, torn apart and scattered. It had been thrown to the wind, like pages of a story that wasn’t meant to be written: which was never meant to be read.

*

I sobbed all the way through the labour, and Drew was there the whole time too, his own eyes wet with tears he refused to let fall.

Marley Turner was born, and two hours and fourteen minutes later, she died.

‘Would you like to hold her?’ A gentle voiced nurse said, looking weary and tired and sorry, as if she was the one responsible, like she was the one held to blame for the fact my baby had died before she had lived.

It struck me that I was about to cradle a corpse.

I nodded dazedly as the nurse held her out to me. She was tiny, hardly big enough to cradle in my two hands, but she was there; she was real. She had had a heartbeat until a few minutes ago, even though she barely had lungs to breathe.

Seeing her tiny, scarcely formed features made me let out a cry that half sounded like a scream, and half like my heart was so broken it was trying to come out through my ragged, uncontrollable breathing because being inside was just too painful. Tears streamed down my face that I tried to hold in.

It was my fault. It was all my fault.

‘I – I love you,’ I managed to choke out after several shuddering, all consuming gasps.

And I realized that truth in what I was saying. I knew her, although I would never know her, and I loved her.

I wanted to shake her miniscule form, as if it would make her heart restart and magically turn her into a full term, breathing and healthy baby.

‘Please just take her,’ I whimpered to Drew, who had angrily been wiping his tears away with the back of his sleeve. ‘Just take her.’

‘I c-can’t,’ Drew choked out, stammering. Regardless, he stepped forward and decided to hold her, closing his eyes after looking at her for a solid minute in silence, as though he was permanently trying to ingrain the way she looked into his mind and memory.

I wondered if as he closed his eyes, he had seen all of the things that could have been, too.