A short while later, Dr. McKinnon reappeared at my bedside. He gently placed a hand on my shoulder, and said the words I would never, ever, forget, in a voice that was filled with softness and compassion. “I’m so . . . I’m very sorry to tell you this, but Ella has taken a turn for the worse.” The doctor paused, almost as though he were waiting for something, or someone. Then, he cleared his throat and continued, “We’re going to bring her to you now so you can be with her in the short time that she has left.”
I stared at him, letting the silence fill the room. Panic pulsed into my throat, threatening to suffocate me.
“How long do we have?” I croaked, unsure of where my words had come from. I recognized my own voice as much as I did Eric’s eyes, which seemed to have adopted a foggy glaze.
“Maybe an hour or so,” Dr. McKinnon replied softly, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Shouldn’t you be keeping her in the NICU? You said that was where she needed to be — that you need to support her. . . .” Eric questioned. The doctor shook his head sadly and, from behind him, a nurse appeared, carrying a tiny baby wrapped in a pink blanket and a knit hat. My baby. My Ella.
The nurse handed me our beautiful angel, and my heart went through emotions that were so mixed I somehow felt numb. It was as though I had managed to sleep on every part of my body in the wrong way, and every limb and tip was asleep with pins and needles.
I held our baby girl, and forced my memory to snap the picture that I would hold forever in my mind and heart. No one said a word as tears slid down my cheeks, anointing our baby girl and all of her beauty.
I begged God for help. Begged Him to make her better. To turn Ella into a healthy newborn with glowing pink cheeks and a little smile that took over her face when gas bubbles formed in her tummy.
But my prayers went unanswered.
It happened quickly. Eric was at my side, holding her entire hand with his pinky finger, and all four grandparents were cuddling in.
Ella’s eyes fluttered open, only for a moment, as if she was greeting us, and taking in our faces before moving on.
And then our precious baby girl took one final breath, and she was gone.
6
I walked through the motions of the next three weeks in a semi-comatose fog. My mother appeared at every meal with brown grocery bags filled with whatever homemade soup or stuffed chicken that she had whipped up the night before. Despite her constant efforts, I couldn’t seem to choke down more than three bites per meal, let alone the plateful she continually begged me to eat.
“You’re recovering from major surgery, honey,” my mother said gently. “You need to keep up your strength so that your body can heal.”
I would shake my head, no, and she would crawl into my bed. Tenderly, she raised the soup spoon to my lips, just as she had done so many times when I was a baby. Like a little bird, I opened my mouth to take the tiny bites my mother offered. When I could take no more, I turned my head, still silent, and my mother would stop pushing me. At least until the next meal.
The three times daily Meals on Wheels delivery from my mother was matched by tuna casseroles and lasagnas brought forward by friends and neighbours. Everyone wanted to help, but no one knew how. No one even knew what to say. So, instead, people cooked.
Two days after we lost Ella, Eric shocked us all by announcing he was going back to work. He claimed there were several time-sensitive cases that needed his attention, and he didn’t want to let down his clients.
“But work, Eric? Really, honey?! Work?” Amelia cried, covering her pursed lips with an open hand when she found out the news. She and Brian had come over to see how we were doing, and my mother was serving them tea and the fresh scones she had picked up from a bakery earlier that morning. I was still upstairs in bed, but could hear the group discussing Eric’s work plans through my open bedroom door.
“I know it seems a bit soon, Ma, but I’m not doing any good here. And I just . . . I can’t . . . I can’t be here. It hurts too much.” I could sense the uncomfortable pause all the way upstairs. “And my cases aren’t going to wait for me. I need to get back. There’s nothing I need to stay home for.”
“What about your wife?” Brian asked gently. I could hear the surprise and disappointment in his voice.
“I’ll be here with Nicky at night, and there are lots of people here during the day to help take care of her, including all of you guys. Plus Maggie is flying in tomorrow, so she’ll be able to help too.”
“And what about the memorial service on Thursday?” Amelia asked.
“Of course, I will be there.”
The awkward silence that followed Eric’s answer was obvious even to me, one floor up. I pulled the covers up over my ears and wished they would all just go away.
As I wrapped my arms around myself, I was greeted with new pain as my tender breasts reminded me that my milk had come in. My doctor had told me to get a really good bra and, other than that, I just needed to wait out the unfairness of my body wanting to breastfeed the baby I didn’t have.
Eric came up ten minutes later and got in the shower. When he finished, he barely looked at me as he got dressed in our walk-in closet.
“So you’re going back to work, Eric? Today? Were you planning on telling me?” I asked quietly from our bed when he came near me to get his watch from the bedside table.
“It’s what I need right now, Nic.”
“I see. Okay, then.” I didn’t have the energy to protest or even try to understand how he could just pick life back up so quickly after going through such heartbreaking loss. Or why he wasn’t holding on to me as I drifted, listless, in my complicated veil of grief.
Then Eric kissed me quickly on the cheek and was gone.
When my father picked Maggie up at the airport early the following morning, she came directly over. My mother let them in, and Maggie walked straight upstairs and crawled into bed with me.
“Oh, Nicky. I’m so, so sorry.” My sister crawled right under the covers and hugged me in a way that only a sister can. She said nothing more, but continued hugging me as I sobbed into her shoulder, letting the tears flow. I could smell the familiar scent of her hand cream and, for a moment, it took me back to a happy place from long ago.
“Can I get you anything? Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Maggie asked. “Mom said you haven’t eaten today yet.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want anything. I wanted nothing but Ella.
“Have you been sleeping?”
I shook my head again. I dozed on and off throughout the day and night, but hadn’t had a solid stretch of sleep since I had returned home from Mount Sinai.
“How did this happen, Maggie? Why did it happen?” Fresh tears slid down my face, hot and burning as they formed trails on my cheeks. Maggie pulled me back into her hug.
“Shhh shhh . . . Nicky. I don’t know, big sister, I really don’t. It’s not fair. It’s really so very unfair.”
“You didn’t even get to meet her!”
“I know, Nicky. I’m so sorry. I wish I would have come home earlier. I had no idea that you’d go into labour so early.”
“You couldn’t have known that. Or what was going to happen. I just wish you could have held her. I wish she could have met her Aunt Maggie!”
“I hold her in my heart. And I feel like I know her.” Maggie’s eyes lined with tears. She grabbed the box of tissues from my bedside table.
“Well, I feel like I’m in a nightmare.” I sobbed into the tissue she handed me. I hiccupped, then coughed, my breaths struggling to keep up with my sobs. Slight twinges deep within my C-section incision burned, and I silently thanked my mother for ensuring I routinely took the heavy cocktail of meds that masked the majority of my post-surgery pain. “I just can’t believe this is happening. I need to wake up from this awful dream, Mags. Please, please help me wake up! Help me feel better.”
“Shhh, Nicky,” Maggie soothed, stroking my hair as she held me like a baby. “I wish I could do that for you. I really do.”
“I miss Ella so much and I can’t make the pain stop. I need it to go away. I can’t take how much it hurts. Please. Make it stop.”
“I know, Nic. I know. Let it all out. Let it all go.” My sister clung to me even tighter. Hugged me harder, until the sobs that emerged from somewhere deep within me shook my body in a way that almost scared me. I could feel drool lacing its way out the sides of my mouth, down my chin and onto my sister’s shirt, but I didn’t care. I wept until my choked sobs turned into a howl-like sound coming from my throat. I wept and sobbed into my sister’s chest until, finally, I had no more tears to give, and I fell asleep in her arms.
The memorial service was small and quick. Only our parents, Maggie, Eric and I attended. Eric’s brothers and their wives wanted to come, but I couldn’t face anyone other than the small group. I knew they would understand. And if they didn’t, I didn’t care.
My mother choked back a sob as the minister read from Ecclesiastes, “There is a time for everything, And a season for every activity under heaven: A time to be born and a time to die . . .”
Surprisingly, no tears fell from my eyes. I felt numb, like I was watching the service from afar instead of attending. I reached for Eric, who was sitting beside me, still and quiet. His hand felt like cold stone. I squeezed it, but was given nothing back. He stared straight ahead, never glancing at me or acknowledging that I was even there.
When the service was over, we all returned to our house and my mother took over hostess duties. She put on a pot of coffee and pulled out freshly baked banana bread. I wondered when she had found the time to bake.
“It was a lovely service,” Amelia said awkwardly, breaking the silence. “Didn’t you think so, Eric?”
He shrugged, then nodded yes, before grabbing himself a beer from the fridge and sitting at the kitchen table, staring only at its surface. I could feel his pain. I sensed it in everything he was doing. Or wasn’t doing, as the case might be. I was desperate to hold him. To console him. But he wouldn’t let me in. I was being barricaded by his grief and I struggled to understand the best way to knock down his wall of sorrow.
My mother asked what I would like to drink and put a plate of warmed banana bread in front of me. I shook my head, telling her I wanted nothing. The banana bread sat before me, untouched. Eventually it got cold.
“I think I’ll go upstairs for a rest,” I told the group, unsure of what else to say or do. “Stay for as long as you’d like.”
“Want me to come with you?” Maggie asked, standing from the kitchen chair she was sitting on.
“No. Thanks, Mags. I’ll be okay on my own.”
I slowly walked the stairs and climbed into bed, still fully clothed in my black pant suit. Tears, and then sobs, finally greeted me, and I bit into my pillow, not sure if I wanted to let them out or force them to stop.
I heard movement in our hall, and was certain that Eric was coming to check on me. To take me into his arms and tell me everything was going to be okay. I strained to listen and heard him enter the office. He shut the door and it sounded like his muffled voice was on a conference call.
Anger snapped through me as I sat straight up, mascara clumping my eyelashes together and leaving stains on the white pillow case I had been hugging. I got off the bed too quickly, causing pain to snake through the site of my incision, and I burst through the door to our office.
“Seriously, Eric? Seriously?! You’re doing work? Today? Ten minutes after we said goodbye to Ella? Are you seriously that cold?”
“Tim? I’m going to have to call you back.” Eric clicked his BlackBerry off and turned to face me, his eyes pierced and angered, yet lined in devastation and sorrow. “Nic, you knew I was on a work call. You can’t come in here like that, yelling at me. . . .”
I cut him off. “We just had the memorial service. For our daughter. How could you? How could you even think about work?”
“The Stevens case is going to trial tomorrow and I had to talk to Tim about some last-minute details. I can’t help it if the world isn’t stopping for us.”
“Let someone else at your firm deal with your fucking case. I don’t give a shit about it, and neither should you, Eric.”
“Nicky, please, you need to calm down. Our family is right downstairs. . . .”
I knew he was right, but I didn’t care. I was beyond furious. He had pushed me too far, and newly formed anger coursed through my veins like pulsing blood. I no longer cared — about anything or anyone.
I stared him straight in the eye, and heard the silence of our families sitting downstairs, uncomfortable to be with each other and unsure of what to do or say. “Maybe we should go?” I overheard Amelia say quietly. Then, a moment later, the soft click of our front door being pulled shut.
“Are you happy? Now our family is gone and they think we’re crazy.”
“You are crazy, Eric! You don’t even want to deal with what’s going on. You just want to pick up where you left off and pretend that nothing happened. We had a daughter. She died.”
“You think I don’t know that, Nicky? You think I don’t know that?”
“Well, you sure as hell aren’t acting like it.”
Eric threw his BlackBerry across the room, leaving a chipped divot where it bounced off the painted wall. “Fuck,” he grunted, his frustration reaching a new height. He crossed the room and picked up his BlackBerry to inspect it. Made sure it was still working. “I’m getting out of here for a while, Nicky. I can’t deal with you, or this, right now. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Fine. Whatever, Eric.” My husband squeezed past me and exited the room. He didn’t bother to look back to see that my legs had buckled under the weight of my grief and that I was curled up, sobbing, in a ball on the floor.
7
Somewhere over the next few weeks, our marriage also died. We tried to fix it, of course, but we were at a complete loss on how to make our marriage work after experiencing such unequivocal tragedy.
The social worker assigned to us by Mount Sinai referred us to a local therapist who specialized in working with parents who experienced the death of an infant. But it seemed that even she couldn’t do anything, or even suggest something, to help us repair our relationship.
She recommended that we also join a local grievance group that helped parents who had lost a baby. I had hoped there was truth in the old adage that misery loves company. It doesn’t. At least not for Eric, who wanted to shut the world out and never speak of Ella again.
“Would anyone else like to say anything? Tell us how they are feeling?” Shannon, the group leader, asked towards the end of the first — and last — meeting Eric and I attended together. Shannon glanced at Eric, who had been the only one in the room to not say anything during the hour we had been at the meeting. Eric remained silent and looked down at his feet, shrugging his shoulders and looking defeated.
“You didn’t even say anything. Not one word!” I said to him after the meeting on our car ride home. It had started snowing, which Eric was completely disregarding as he drove too quickly through the dusted streets. My mind was taken back to the last time I had been in a car with Eric when he was driving too quickly. I clung to the memory.
“I told you that I didn’t want to go. You forced me into it. Remember? You said that it would be good for us. Well, it wasn’t. I hated it. Every minute of it.” Eric’s words were quiet. Bitter.
“Fine, then. Don’t go anymore. I’ll go by myself.”
Eric never joined me again at the grievance group meetings, and even missed our next session with our therapist, Dr. Covert. Eric messaged me on my BlackBerry ten minutes into our appointment, saying that something had come up at work and he wouldn’t be able to make it on time. He didn’t even apologize.
Upon seeing the frustrated tears welling in my eyes, Dr. Covert handed me a tissue, saying simply, “Well, Nicky, hopefully Eric will be able to come next time. For now, this gives us a chance to talk about you. What you’re going through.”
I shrugged. Blew my nose. I wanted to be with Dr. Covert — I was desperate for her to find a way to make me feel better — but I needed Eric to be there, with me. “I miss Ella, of course. Like crazy. But I miss Eric too. He just feels gone to me, Dr. Covert. It’s like his soul died with her and all I have left is this empty shell that looks like him.”
“I hear that a lot when I work with grieving parents. Men often deal with death differently than women. Innately, many men feel that they are the stereotypical strong protectors who should not freely show their emotions. This is one of the reasons there seems to be a struggle between mothers and fathers after a child dies. Wives are looking to their husbands for support and understanding, but many times, their husbands can’t — or won’t — show the same sympathy.”
“But it’s like he doesn’t even care that she’s gone!”
“We know that isn’t true, Nicky. Eric is just showing his grief in a different way,” Dr. Covert answered gently. “In most cases that I have seen, and Eric seems to be included in this, men act instead of dwell on the situation. They put their feelings into actions and experience grief physically, not emotionally. Instead of talking about their feelings, they focus more on completing specific tasks.”
“Like going back to work?”
“Yes, like going back to work.”
“But what about me? What about what I need? What about the fact that I need him? My husband.”
“That’s what we’re working on, Nicky. You have to remember that this will take time.”
But Eric’s non-stop work ethic in response to what we had been through never seemed to change. And it clashed horrifically against my need to constantly talk of Ella and the few moments we had with her. Eventually, our brutal fights at home entered into the territory of how much we could even say her name out loud.
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