A Summer to Remember (World's Apart)

We rushed her into the delivery room. Paintings of fruit bowls and other random objects were plastered in the long white hallway leading her room. By now I was all scrubbed up in that weird green color that you always see on doctor shows that you flip past trying to find the game that’s on. Racing through I couldn’t think of what I wanted. If I got a baby boy he would be a little mini me growing up. His blue eyes reflecting his mothers as he speeds through the house running outside to go play sports with his neighborhood friends. Or would I want a little baby girl that is a miniature version of Natalie, who I would shelter from the world and teach her about it the same time, spoiling her with as many gifts as I could give her. I would be wrapped around her little pink nail polished finger. She’d smile and laugh like her mother does, and dance around the living room in a pink too-too. I smiled at the thought of finally having everything perfect.

I was lost in my thoughts when a nurse shook me back into the room. “Mr. Kane, we are going to have to perform a Cesarean birth on Ms. Vaughn. We keep losing the baby’s heart beat and don’t want to add any more risks during the birth. I’m sure you already know the risks of her giving birth now.” I nodded my head; I knew that there was a chance that the baby wouldn’t make it. It’s barely a baby, when it would come out it would barely be alive. But I was going to be there for her. But because they hadn’t used the epidural yet I wasn’t allowed to be in the room when the baby would be taken out, so I was forced to wait outside. But they said it wasn’t going to take that long. The short little red head nurse led me out of the room where I would wait, “Everything’s going to be fine.” She said with a smile, “Do you really believe it’s going to be fine?” I asked her in complete seriousness. Her smile faded as she walked back through the big double doors. I started to rip off all of the scrubs they had given me earlier. Why can’t things like this actually turn out okay like they do in movies and on television shows. I screamed in my head. I took the hat thing off my head and let my curls go back to their normal positions. Then I slid down the wall and started to cry. I cried like I had never cried before, and the tears just kept flowing down my face.

I couldn’t believe this. Natalie was in surgery and I was outside crying like a little girl. What if something happened to her? What if she didn’t make it through but the baby did? Then, I would have to raise the baby all alone, and that was Tyler’s baby, would I really be able to do that? Especially if the baby looked exactly like him, but if the baby looked like Natalie growing up then I wouldn’t be able to live anymore. That was the only girl in the world that I grew up with. She was my best friend, and my girl friend. I wanted to marry her, and live a long and happy life with her. What if that didn’t happen? As usual, that short amount of time they told me it would be felt longer and longer as the questions kept popping up in my head. Then the doors swung open and the redhead came back and slowly walked over to me, and sat down next to me. She had removed her hat and her gloves and placed a gentle had on my knee. She looked at me but I kept looking down, I really didn’t want to meet her eyes when she told me that the baby died.

“I’m sorry, we did all we could but we lost the baby’s heart beat and the baby died in the operating room. Natalie is in recovery right now and is awake, we just told her the news and she’s been asking for you. Again, I’m very sorry.” I kept the tears in; I couldn’t let this random stranger see me cry. So I stood up and walked into the room. I saw her laying there in bed with a box of Kleenex by her side. I went over to her and gripped her tightly as she cried on my shoulder. “Patrick, I lost the baby.” She continued to mumble words of, “it’s my fault,” I couldn’t help but cry too. We sat there in that little hospital room and cried together. That baby had our lives focused in around it, and all we could do was cry about it.