BREAKING WATERS (Part 2)
*Dearest Reader, this is the continuation to a previous story. Click here to read the first part before proceeding**
“Babes, the baby is not moving.”
At those words, I froze. I peeked back into the car at Debby. I had stepped out to stuff the placenta into a nylon bag and placed it in the booth.
“What do you mean she’s not breathing?” I asked, looking at Debby’s confused face.
“Doctor, she’s not crying or moving,” I said, facing the phone as she handed the baby to me. I placed my ear next to her nose and then her chest.
“Doctor?” I said, half asking, half pleading
Silence.
“Can you feel a pulse?” she finally responds.
I paused, not because of the answer but because of what it would do to Debby. I looked up at my wife, and she could tell from my face.
She burst into tears.
“Mr. Daniels, listen to me carefully. I need you to…” the doctor’s words seemed to fade out as I got lightheaded from the insanity of the night. A seemingly never-ending turn of calamities. It felt like a thousand-ton weight pressed on my chest.
“Did you hear me, Mr. Daniel?”
“Yes, doctor. I did,” I responded, even though I didn’t hear a thing.
At her instruction, I placed the baby on the backseat and blew air into her mouth. Then I gently pressed on the chest at intervals.
“Give me my baby!”
I ignored Debby and continued performing CPR on my child, careful not to press too hard. With every pressure I placed on the child, my eyes filled with water, and the only words I could utter were, “God, Please.”
“Give me my baby!!”
I once again ignored Debby’s plea. I forced myself to listen only to the doctor’s voice while wondering if the ambulance would ever arrive.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my bloody hands as two drops of tears dropped on the baby’s motionless body. Then, I blew air into her mouth again, wishing I could give her all my oxygen.
“Give me my baby, Daniel.”
“God, Please,” I whispered as the doctor remained quiet, and the only sound in the car was the muffled splatter of the subsiding rain.
I looked around the backseat and realized that the entire car had to go now. Not just because the leather seats were eternally damaged from all the blood and body fluid. It had to go because it would always stand as a reminder.
“Give me my baby!” Debby yelled with her last strength, and I handed the child to her and slowly stepped out into the rain. I heard her let out a big wail of pain, and I broke down.
I crashed to the floor. The only thing holding me up was the car tyre behind me.
She let out another wail from inside the car.
I let out my wail from inside the rain.
Then she let out a wail too.
No, not Debby.
Not the doctor,
…the baby.
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