Work Text:
In all actuality, there isn’t a price too high that you would not have paid to get out of that day. The mere thought of the gore involved, the raw emotion…not to mention all the doctors and nurses.
The idea of it churned in your stomach from the moment she received a positive test.
It was her idea, of course. A baby. An idea that surely went along with the image you two portrayed of a New Jersey power couple ready to start their lives in their forever home.
Oh sweet, simple Simone. Of course she wanted a baby, you told yourself.
Money certainly wasn’t an object at the time, so along you went to every appointment, every poke and prick and blood draw.
Simone shyly told the nurses that you’re squeamish around blood, when actually it didn’t much bother you anymore besides bring an odd, unwelcome feeling to your bones at the sight of it.
So the big day came of course. Baby had to get here somehow.
No amount of therapy or mental preparation or hypnosis classes could have prepared you for the sight of the screaming, bloody being they handed over the curtain towards you.
Nothing could have prepared you for an instantaneous transport to your seventeen-year-old self watching as a similar sized creature was held up, never once taking a breath of air.
Your body racked with sobs upon the sight of him. Samuel. Simone picked the name for its meaning: God has heard. A cruel nod to a higher power ever hearing any prayers that spilled from your own lips.
You were fine with a biblical name. Maybe it would give him some strength in this forsaken world.
Your Sammy. You didn’t think you’d take to him as much as you did, but you were there. There to comfort him in the middle of the night, his tiny fist wrapped around one of your fingers. The pure picture of innocence.
It changed you. You never saw yourself as a mother. I mean, sure, you had a great example growing up, but the idea of you having children with…
It simply wasn’t in the cards. And the irony of the phrase wasn’t lost on you.
Sammy knew. You aren’t sure how it slipped past you, but Sammy knew. He knew all along. Probably from a very early age, you pondered.
He knew every time you were being kept behind bars in your own mind. He knew every time she was at the forefront.
And it all came too late, of course. Now that your love is gone. Now that Sammy’s gone. Now that there’s nothing holding you to the earth any longer.
Of course it’s now that you’re left alone with your truest self. Nothing to hide behind. No other you to handle the dirty work.
As Shauna hits the gas after a light turns green, you stare out the window. It’s all you can do not to imagine a different world with a different ending.
A different baby, maybe a little girl this time. You would have carried. If she asked you to. Your little girl would be brave, like her moms.
She would be the best parts of Van and nothing like you because that’s exactly how you planned it. She’d grow up knowing every word to all the classic movies.
Your hands wring together in your lap remembering the feeling of the world’s softest skin against them while little cheeks puffed in and out with sleepy breaths.
Your eyes begin to drift close. When was the last time you slept more than a couple hours at a time? Actually got a full night of sleep?
The thought was cute, and you almost smirk at yourself. How funny to think you’d be able to sleep peacefully ever again.
Not after this loss.