Beam Me Up

“It’s okay,” Niall soothed, rubbing comforting circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

I tried to let his words sink in, to process them as real, but I knew the statements were empty. There was no way anything was alright. The bleeding and spotting, the cramping… it wasn’t normal.

The longer we had to wait for the doctor, the more butterflies accumulated in my stomach.

“Alayna,” Niall broke through my panicked thoughts, “stop it. You’re ripping your lip apart.”

I hadn’t even realized I was picking at the tender skin of my mouth with my teeth until he pointed it out. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Just nervous.”

“I know,” he replied calmly. “But I’m telling you: I think you’re overreacting.”

He was just trying to be sweet, to talk me out of the dark place I was burrowing myself into, but he had no idea what he was talking about. He wasn’t the one in my situation. But even still, I hoped that he was right, even though my heart knew otherwise.

An ungodly amount of time later, my OB/GYN, Dr. Kim, walked into the room. A wide smile lit up her face, her almond-shaped eyes crinkling at the corners. Her hair was shiny and perfectly tamed, not a flyaway in sight. She looked the exact opposite of how I felt on the inside.

“Okay, Alayna,” she greeted as she sat down in a black rolling chair, crossing her legs as she faced us. “What seems to be the problem?”

As I listed off my symptoms, her smile seemed to get faker and faker, almost to the point where I was afraid her face would crack if she tried any harder to keep her happy disposition.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she told me, but she didn’t turn to make any eye contact with me.

After putting the freezing gel on my lower stomach and starting up the ultrasound machine, she angled her body so that she could move the wand around and spot any problems that might be there

The silence was long and tense. My palms started to sweat, but Niall kept holding on tightly from his seat next to my head, occasionally running a hand through my light blonde hair.

Just when I thought my heart was going to give out, Dr. Kim let out a long sigh. “Alayna…there’s no heartbeat.”

Niall instinctively tightened his grip as I started to hyperventilate. “What does that mean?” I breathed, not sure what else I was supposed to say.

But I knew. I knew what that meant. Suddenly, every time that I ever wished that I had never gotten pregnant, that Niall and I hadn’t made such a careless mistake, that the baby could just disappear…it all seemed to be at fault.

“I’m sorry, Alayna. The baby didn’t make it. You’re going to have to deliver a stillborn.”

* * *

I pulled the blanket up further around my chin as a single tear escaped the corner of my eye. The pictures flashed on the television in front of me, but I had no idea what program was playing.

“Alayna,” Niall whispered in his thick brogue, settling on the arm of the couch next to my head, “come on. Please try to eat something.”

He reached out to pat my head affectionately, but I shied away from the touch. “I’m fine,” I mumbled.

“No, you’re not.” He let out a sad sigh. “Alayna, I know you’re hurting. I am, too. But we have to go on with our lives. And letting yourself starve to death on this couch isn’t going to make anything better.”

Although his voice was soft, I still took what he said as an attack. “Don’t lie to me! It’s pretty obvious to me that you don’t care at all. You picked right back up with your life without missing a beat. But let me tell you, Niall, it’s not that easy for me. I have to live with the blood of a child on my hands every day. And you don’t even seem to care at all.”

“That’s not-” He let out a breath and got up. “Alright. Fine. Think whatever you want. I’m going out with the guys tonight. I’ll be home later.”

I didn’t respond as he turned his back to me and closed the door behind him loudly.

* * *

A few months passed, and I was able to get up in the morning and go about my daily business, but the guilt and feeling of hopelessness still plagued me. How was I supposed to get over losing a child? Granted, I knew that I never actually met the baby, since I was only about five months into my pregnancy, but I still felt empty, knowing that I wasn’t able to support the life.

And God knew how much of it was caused by my psychological, premature, ignorant hatred toward the baby for having the nerve to exist.

I regretted everything.

Niall was getting frustrated with me. I knew it. But no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t return to the happy-go-lucky Alayna that he’d fallen for.

A couple of times, he tried to drag me to therapy, but at the last minute, he looked into my eyes and saw all the contempt I’d have for him if he forced me to go. And eventually, he stopped trying.

“Hey,” he greeted after he came home from the recording studio with the band, kissing me gently on the lips. “How are you?”

I shrugged. “How was recording?”

“Good,” he replied, his eyes lighting up. “I get to sing more on the new album, so I’m really excited to hear how this one comes out.”

“That’s great,” I congratulated him.

The silence that followed was becoming a very common occurrence. But that time, Niall spoke up, completely breaking the ritual that we’d settled into. “I’m going to play a gig tonight at the café down the street. Do you think you’d come? I really want you to hear it.”

I turned and smiled at him. I had to learn to be happy, to smile again. If not for me, then for him. “Okay, sure,” I agreed.

“Awesome.” He grinned at me. “I mean, I’m just going to be singing a cover, but…”

I waited for him to finish his thought, but the tail end never came.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he rushed before running out the door, his guitar smacking against the doorframe as he hurried as quickly as he could to get away from me.

* * *

I pushed open the door to enter the little café, just narrowly avoiding hitting a girl with glasses who was standing in the corner. I apologized quickly and found a bare spot along the back wall.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of people that were there, since Niall was a big shot singer, a part of One Direction, but I was. It was almost impossible to breathe through the tiny spaces that existed between each body.

Soon, Niall climbed up onto a stool and smiled at the crowd, flashing his braces-covered teeth. “Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming out tonight. I’ll let the real band come back on in a second, I promise.”

A wave of laughter rippled through the room as Niall straightened out his seating position, angling his guitar so it settled more properly on his lap. And then he started to strum, a couple of simple chords.

I didn’t recognize the song, and I was so focused on struggling to identify it that I almost missed when he started to sing.

There's a whole n'other conversation going on
In a parallel universe
Where nothing breaks and nothing hurts
There's a waltz playing frozen in time
Blades of grass on tiny bare feet
I look at you and you're looking at me

Could you beam me up
Give me a minute
I don't know what I'd say in it
I’d probably just stare,
Happy just to be there, holding your face
Beam me up
Let me be lighter
I’m tired of being a fighter
I think a minute’s enough
Just beam me up.

The tears started in my eyes when I realized what he was singing about. I felt like my chest was going to collapse in on itself and like I wanted to run up onto the stage and collapse into his arms all at once. Finally, he had proven to me that he really did care about what happened to us, that he understood what I was going through. There was no doubt in my mind that he was singing about our lost baby.

A couple of people turned to stare at me when they heard my sniffling, but I couldn’t be bothered to give them an explanation or even an apologetic glance.

The second the moving song was over, I darted over to the stage, right into his arms. He startled, shocked that I had initiated contact and that I had somehow managed to weave myself through the massive crowd at such a rapid pace.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into his shirt. I was aware that everyone could see us, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to care. “I’m so sorry that I was too busy wallowing in my own pain to see yours. I’ll get better. I can get through this.”

“We’ll get through it together,” he promised, kissing the top of my head and rubbing my back.

Once the commotion died down and the band booked for the night took the small stage again, Niall and I walked out of the café hand in hand, on our way back to our flat.

The sun was just starting to go down on the horizon, the streetlights flickering to life around us, the sky alight with pinks and purples and reds.

Just as we reached a more open area of the city, a blackbird swooped down from the sky, narrowly avoiding Niall’s head.

“Bloody thing,” he muttered under his breath, fluffing out his blonde hair, trying to make sure that nothing had fallen into it.

As if the thing hadn’t realized Niall didn’t like it, he landed right in front of us, his head cocked to one side. I opened my mouth to shoo it away, and it looked up at me with incredibly creepy, wide blue eyes.

My breath caught as I realized the color was almost exactly like Niall’s eyes. And maybe I was insane as I squatted down to get a closer look at the bird, but it certainly didn’t feel like it.

I reached my hand out to the bird and watched as it waddled toward me. Once it was within touching distance, I leaned a little bit and touched the top of its head.

“What are you doing?” Niall questioned in a panicked voice. He was really not a fan of birds.

“Shhh,” I insisted, feeling the soft down feathers.

The bird looked me straight in the eye again before nodding subtly, cooing softly, and flying off into the sunset, growing ever-smaller as it approached the sun. All too soon, it vanished altogether.

“She was saying goodbye,” I breathed, feeling closure for the first time in months.