He talked to my stomach every single night.
He helped us paint her room pale yellow.
He spent three weeks picking out a stuffed rabbit, because “every little sister needs somebody to sleep with.”
Then, at thirty-five weeks, the delivery went wrong.
I started bleeding.
The room filled with people, and none of them were talking to me anymore.
The last thing I remember is my husband Grant squeezing my hand, and behind him my mother pulling Eli backward out of the doorway with both arms around him.
They operated for three hours.
I got eleven units of blood.
They took my uterus.
Which meant I would never have another child.
I woke up at 12:40 in the morning, and Grant was sitting beside the bed with his eyes swollen almost shut.
I said, “Where is she.”
And they told me our daughter hadn’t made it.
I screamed until there was nothing left in me.
