Don't Go

She laughed as I chased after her in our backyard. The small blue bouncy ball was clutched in her hands. She stopped and pulled the ball up to her chest as she looked at me from the other side of the small tree.

“No, yeh can’t ‘ave it, Daddy!” she yelled while laughing.

As soon as she looked over to her mother, Mason, I wrapped my hands around her stomach and pulled her off the ground. She held onto the ball tighter as I brought her over my head and spun around.

“Oliver stop,” Mason yelled from where she sat on the patio. I stopped the spinning and looked over her to see why. “Yeh gonna make ‘er sick. Then she’s gonna puke on yeh. And if she does that, I might ‘ave to laugh.”

I looked up at the beautiful little girl I was holding and she squealed as I brought her down to the ground. “Go sit by yeh mum. She ‘as yeh food, we can finish playin’ catch when you’re done.”

As I woke up from the dream, I smiled. I couldn’t wait for Mason to finally have our baby. She was only a little over two months and had seven more to go, but we were beyond excited.

“Oh,” she whimpered as she slept next to me in bed. She must be dreaming, or from what it sounds like, a nightmare.

“Mason,” I whispered, sitting up a little bit to shake her awake. She groaned and rolled over.

“What is it, Oli?” she asked then inhaled loudly. “Oh my, ouch that hurts.”

I reached over to the bedside table and pulled the cord to turn the light on. “What’s wrong? What hurts? Do yeh want to go to the hospital?”

She gasped again and reached under the covers to place her hand on her stomach. I threw my blankets off and turned so I was on my knees and facing her. Then I saw it. The bright red blood that was staining our white sheets.

No. This couldn’t be what I thought it was. We had just seen the doctor the day before and they baby was fine, everything was perfect. This couldn’t be happening. Not to us, we were so happy to finally be having a baby.

“Oli, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, sounding breathless. Then she started to cry. I was close to tears as well, and seeing her cry made me want to even more. But I had to be strong for us, for her.

I pulled her across the bed so that she was sitting on my lap. I wrapped my arms around her and rested my head on her shoulder and she looked up at me. When she opened her mouth to say something I cut her off, I didn’t want her apologizing to me again.

“No,” I said sternly. “Do not say that you’re sorry. Yeh did nothing wrong. Yeh were perfect, something else went wrong. I’m going to go call the hospital and see what they want us to do, okay? Are yeh going to be fine while I go do that?”

She opened her mouth to answer but all that came out was another round of sobs and as she pulled her pillow into her lap to cry into she nodded her head.

I grabbed my phone off the table and left the room. I turned on the kitchen light on as I walked in and sat down at the table. The number to the hospital was already in my phone and I hit the send button when I finally found it.

“Jessop Wing Hospital, how can I help you?” the receptionist asked..

“’ello. I think my wife just ‘ad a miscarriage. Can I speak to a doctor?” I asked.

“Yes, please wait while I direct your call,” I heard something beep then some music started to play.

I waited for a couple minutes, listening to the same boring turn play over and over again, before someone finally picked up again. “Hello?”

“Yes, I believe that my wife had a miscarriage. She just went to the doctor yesterday and everythin’ was fine. But she’s bleedin’ bad and is havin’ some pains in her stomach.”

“Well, Mr…”

“Sykes,” I answered.

“Mr. Sykes. What I want yeh to do is to clean your wife up, and bring her into the emergency room ‘ere at the maternity ward. Tell ‘er not to take anything other than Tylenol for the pain if she absolutely needs it. We’ll do some tests when yeh get ‘ere to see what is going on. I will alert the receptionist that you’re coming in and she will bring you right back to me.”

“Thank yeh so much,” I said and hung up.

Mason was still sitting on the bed when I walked back into the bedroom. I walked over to the dresser and pulled out clean clothes for her to change into. I took them into the bathroom and sat them down on the counter.

“Come on, baby doll. We’re takin’ yeh into the emergency room. They’re gonna see what went wrong. They said yeh could take some pain meds to get rid of the cramps. Do yeh want me to get yeh some while you go change?”

She got up from the bed and looked at me and shook her head. I walked over to the bed and pulled everything off and rolled it up into the comforter. Seeing it was only making everything seem more real.

I put the blankets in the laundry room and came back into the bedroom to get dressed as Mason continued to clean herself up and put new clothes on. I pulled some pants on over my boxers and got a shirt that was sitting on top of the others in a basket of clothes that still needed to be put away.

When Mason walked out of the bathroom she slipped on some shoes and walked out of the room. I followed and pulled on my jacket and grabbed the keys off of the hook. She got into the car without saying anything and we drove to the hospital in silence as well.

I didn’t know what to say to her that wouldn’t just make things worse. She kept wiping her eyes when she thought that I wasn’t looking, she didn’t want me to see her cry. I didn’t want her to see me cry.

Once we go to the hospital I parked the car and we walked next to each other into the building. I told the girl sitting behind the desk who we were and she called a boy up from the back to take us where we needed to go.

There was someone waiting for us in the room he took us. He immediately introduced himself as Dr. Rives and told me that he was the person that I had spoken to on the phone. Then, he took Mason away to do some tests.

Then I knew that I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I sat down on the bed that Mason just vacated and put my head in my hands and let it out. I cried.

They were gone for a while but when I finally heard the doorknob twist I wiped my face clean with my shirt and looked up. Dr. Rives was alone, and he looked upset.

“Mr. Sykes, I’m sorry, but your wife did indeed lose the baby. It was due to an infection that spread to the fetus. I’m terribly sorry.”