Page 115 of A Moment for Us
“Nope.”
“Okay, I just reviewed the videos from your ultrasound.” Her voice takes a different tone, and she moves closer to take my hand in hers. “I am so sorry to tell you this, but one of the twins doesn’t have a heartbeat.”
I shake my head, staring at her. “What?”
Her eyes turn soft. “I’m sorry, but we can’t find a heartbeat and there’s no movement.”
She’s wrong. She’s wrong and she’s lying. I start to shake and my chest aches. “No! No. That’s not possible. They were fine.”
Dr. Locke clears her throat. “This happens sometimes, usually much earlier in the pregnancy, but it does happen. I’m so sorry, but I personally reviewed it from several angles, and there is no heartbeat on the girl.”
My daughter. My little girl with the blonde hair and Josh’s eyes . . . gone.
I lost her.
Tears fill my vision, and I start to tremble. “I don’t understand. I’m not bleeding. I did everything right. Maybe it’s wrong. Maybe the machine just didn’t see it. She’s in there, and she’s alive.”
“I know this is hard, and you didn’t do anything wrong. Things sometimes look great and then suddenly they’re not. I really wish that it was different news I was telling you, but it’s not.”
I can’t stop shaking my head as the tears fall. “But I felt the baby kick. I felt it move. It was fine. You’re wrong. Please, you have to check again. We have a plan, and we’re going to have a little girl and a boy. We have names and a nursery.”
The doctor shifts the ultrasound machine closer and pulls up the recording Sara took. She moves the mouse around as my tears fall relentlessly. This isn’t possible. I can’t lose her. I can’t do this. How do I go through the rest of my pregnancy like this?
Dr. Locke opens the screen. “See that?”
There’s a steady flutter. “Yes.”
“That’s baby A, which is the boy. His heartbeat is regular, and you can see him moving around.” She moves the screen to a different image. “This is baby B, which was the girl. There’s nothing here.”
My eyes are riveted on the monitor, watching, waiting, and searching for anything. A tiny blip or a flinch, but there is nothing. No kick. No heartbeat. Nothing.
The tears fall, and I clutch my arms around my stomach, wanting to protect myself and the babies—baby in there. God, I lost one.
How did I do this? How could I lose one of them?
“Delia,” Dr. Locke says with compassion. “You didn’t do anything wrong. There are a hundred reasons this could have happened, and sometimes, there’s just no explaining it. I am so sorry.”
The sound that escapes my chest is painful to my own ears. I lost a baby. I lost one of our babies. I don’t know how to feel, what to feel. One of the two is gone, and I feel lost and broken.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admit.
She takes my hand. “I know, I want to send you to the hospital for some bloodwork and monitoring. My biggest concern is a possible infection. I’d like to get you started on some antibiotics as a precaution.”
I know she’s speaking, but it’s little more than white noise against the pain. All I can do is imagine the little girl we dreamed of and how that will never be.
“Delia?” Dr. Locke calls my name.
“I’m not even bleeding,” I say again.
“You won’t bleed. The fetal demise will stay in since you’re not experiencing labor. It’s the best course for baby A. We want to keep you and him as healthy as we can.”
I try to hold on to the fact that I still have one. “Will he be okay?”
“There is nothing on the ultrasound that suggests he is in trouble, but you’re going to be high risk, and we’re going to monitor things very, very closely. If I see anything that concerns me, we’ll come up with a plan. Do you need to call anyone?”
Josh.
His face flashes before me, and I can’t breathe. I will never be able to tell him this. All the progress we’ve made and it’s all going to fall apart here. He will inevitably blame himself when he is the last person who is at fault. He’ll focus on how he wasn’t here when, even if he were, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
