So Kiss Me Goodbye

"Lilly push."

"Hell no!" I exclaimed to the doctor despite all the pain.

"Lilly she said push." My mom echoed with a calm demeanor, holding my hand.

"And I said hell no!" I yelled. "I am not pushing till Will gets here."

I never considered myself a determined stubborn person but now, with only my mother here, I didn’t have the energy to push a human being out of me without him here.

"I am not going to push without Will here." I said calmly between breaths before falling back into the pain of the even worse contractions.

Somewhere a few halls away Will was frantically running through wards with everyone behind him, calling out Lilly's name.

After five agonizing minutes or racing through the hallways, they almost passed Madi and Shelby pacing in the waiting room

Shelby reached out and grabbed Will, dragging him next to her.

"What going on? How's Lilly? Has she had the baby? Where is she?" Will asked a mile a minute.

Shelby began filling him in as she pulled him toward her screams. "Lilly is refusing to push till you get here and it's putting the baby into distress so get your ass in there!"

I looked up to see, by some miracle, Will rushing up and replacing my mom's spot next to me holding my hand and wiping the sweat from my forehead.

"Lilly you have to push." He told me softly.

I shook my head, the tears falling as I whimpered, "I can't do it Will, I just can't do it."

He turned my head toward him and nodded. "Yes you can Lilly. I can't do it for you only you can, but I'm right here for you. Now Lilly, push."

Through the tears and the mind numbing pain I did what he said and pushed.

It didn’t make the agony of childbirth hurt any less but I sucked up the pain and kept pushing.

One thing that certainly didn’t help was Will doing Lamaze breathing with me, which, coming from him almost put me in hysterics if it weren't for the contractions drowning out any smiles with blinding pain.

Will continued coaching me, along with the nurse and my mom, as he took a quick glance down, looking back up at me with a grin.

"I can see the head, he's got lots of blonde hair."

Something of a hysterical tired giggle escaped me as I fell backward.

"I just can't do it anymore." I cried, sweat and tears pouring down my face.

Regardless Will kissed my temple and squeezed my hand.

"You're doing beautifully Lilly. You're almost there." He urged me.

"Just one more big push." The doctor said with the same urgency.

I took one last deep breath and pushed hard, feeling the blood rush to my face and pumping in my ears.

It felt like I was being ripped in half slowly and painfully as I knew I couldn’t do this for much longer.

For a second it felt like I was in gym class again running way beyond my limit where I'm heaving for breath and trying to not pass out.

My vision began getting black and patchy and as I thought I was just going to pass out a soft cry broke through the air.

I stopped cold, looking up at Will whose eyes were also brimming with tears.

A lot of things happened at once.

My baby, after his first small cry, had gone silent as the doctors frantically worked to clear his airways and keep his little heart beating.

While Will left my side to check on him, I got that same shaky feeling I got before where I felt myself falling over the edge, feeling my lungs collapsing and the energy draining from my limbs through the rest of me.

With all the chaos over my son no one realized at first what was happening to me until the heartbeat monitor started slowing its beeps.

The doctor taking care of me became frantic, her words blending into themselves as I found it harder and harder to keep my eyes open.

Will, who had first been fearing for the baby, rushed to my side, torn between me and our son, his gaze wandering between both of us from my bedside.

"Lilly, Lilly stay with me." He pleaded, fear growing in his eyes.

"Is he alright?" I asked in a foggy voice that wasn’t mine.

"I, uh, I'm not sure, they're doing all they can. Lilly, stay awake please, I need you here with me." Will said, his voice edged with tears and fears.

I nodded weakly, sinking into my pillow.

The doctors had split up, letting the nurses rush my baby away into the unknown abyss of the hallway while they panicked over me, using medical terms in level but rushed voices.

They worked below the sheets as I continued to fade, no longer feeling the pain, or anything else for that matter.

Will found my hand, squeezing it tightly as he blinked away the tears while the doctors continued on.

What seemed like an eternity from when the baby was born to the critical moment was actually about five of the longest minutes of my life.

But the length of my life was in question as even the doctors started to panic, the tears now evident in his eyes, a few of them falling down his cheeks.

He was speaking to me but even his words couldn’t make it through the underwater word I had fallen into where I felt like I was floating farther and farther from everyone.

As things reached beyond critical, my vision blurred and faded and I truly believed I was going to die.