“Premature.”
“Complications.”
“NICU.”
I never heard him cry.
They rushed him away before I could see his face. I reached out instinctively, but my arms met nothing but air.
They told me to rest. They told me he was being monitored. They told me to be patient.
Two days later, a doctor stood at the foot of my bed. His hands were folded like he was holding something delicate.
“I’m very sorry,” he said softly. “We did everything we could.”
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t collapse.
I stared at the wall behind him and tried to understand how a heartbeat could simply… stop. How something that had lived inside me could vanish before I ever held him.
The world didn’t explode. It just went quiet.
That’s when the nurse sat down beside me.
She had gentle eyes and a calm voice that didn’t rush through pain. She handed me tissues before I realized tears were falling.
“You’re stronger than you think,” she said. “This isn’t the end of your story.”
I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t imagine any future that wasn’t empty.
I left the hospital with no baby in my arms and a body that still felt like it should be holding one. At home, the tiny clothes folded in drawers became unbearable. I packed them away without unfolding them.
I stopped going to school. I picked up shifts wherever I could—diners, cleaning houses, answering phones. I moved through life carefully, like it might shatter again if I stepped too hard.
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