Page 185 of Not Another Yesterday
“I’ll give you some time,” the nurse says softly. “Just press the call button when you’re ready.” She leaves quietly, shutting the door behind her.
I retake my seat beside Cat, cradling our baby in one arm and holding Cat’s hand with the other.
“I’m holding our son, baby,” I say, my voice strange in the quiet. “He’s already beautiful.”
My vision blurs. Tears rise and spill over. I don’t stop them. I don’t even try. I just let myselffeel.
I look down at the baby, studying every inch of him. His delicate mouth. The slope of his nose. The closed lids over eyes I’ll never get to see open. Cat’s hazel? My green? Or maybe something else entirely? A color that belongs only to him?
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry for everything.”
The words come in waves.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t excited about you at first. I was scared. So fucking scared I wouldn’t know how to love you right.”
But I did. Ido. I realize it as I say the words—I’ve loved him for weeks.
Every timewe heard his heartbeat at the doctor’s office. Every time I saw the ultrasound pinned to the fridge. Every time my hands rested on Cat’s belly and felt him move underneath.
I loved him more than I knew.
And now it’s all been pulled out from under me, leaving nothing but this aching, hollow quiet.
“I wanted to be so good to you. And to her,” I whisper, my throat burning. “But I wasted so much time worrying, being afraid… I didn’t enjoy any of it. And now I’ll never get the chance to.”
A sob shudders out of me, raw and broken. I hold on to Cat and to him—our son—as the grief pours out.
When the tears slow, I stare down at his face again, memorizing it. Trying to make sense of this moment. Trying to give it something—him—meaning.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to name you,” I murmur, blinking past the blur. “We never really talked about names. But you feel like… like you deserve one.”
I study him again, wondering if I can see any of myself in him. Or maybe he’s all Cat. Maybe he’s both of us, all tangled up in this small, silent life.
And then it comes to me.
“You deserve a name that means something. Something real. You were here. You mattered.”
My throat tightens as I speak his name aloud for the first—and maybe only—time.
“What do you think of Ronan?” I whisper.
I gaze down at him, letting the words settle around us. It feels… heavy. And right. Like something inside me shifts.
Gently, I move to place him in Cat’s arms. His little body, light and still, nestled against hers. Safe. Sound. She should get to hold him.She should’ve heldhim first.
I step back, just a little, and pull out my phone. I take a picture—Cat, asleep, her face soft in the morning light, with our beautiful boy resting next to her.
I don’t know if she’ll want to see it. Maybe not now. Maybe not ever.
But I’ll have it. A piece of this memory. Of him. Ofus.
Forever.
***
I held my son for close to an hour before I called the nurse, reluctantly turned him over to her, and watched her take him away from me. I needed to focus on the now, on the living, breathing love of my life. I didn’t want to risk her waking up to him in my arms. She’ll need to be eased into our loss.
Exhaustion gnaws at me as I sit with Cat. I have been awake for twenty-seven hours now, with the exception of that hour or so when Cat and I went to bed at three in the morning. But I can’t find any rest, only closing my eyes here and there to stop them from burning. They feel raw and dry and swollen, partially from the lack of sleep, partially from the tears I’ve shed this morning.
