My name is Lana. I want to tell you my story from when I found out at the age of 17 that I was pregnant. I have a son named Caleb and he is the cutest little baby in the world.
Caleb´s father, whose name I´d rather forget, had left me the day I first told him I was pregnant. I loved him very much so after that, I promised myself that I would never fall in love again. When my father and stepmother found out – the school called, since they were too blind to notice themselves – they threw me out of the house on the spot.
I was all alone. In school I had only had one friend, but since the day she found out, she started looking at me, the way other people did, with hate. I had to live on the street the next many months. It was cold. I stayed on the corner of a very empty street. I had been wondering for a long time who the young man that lived further down the street. He was actually quite handsome with his long brown hair and blue eyes. He was a homeless too, but the most beautiful and least dirty of all homeless people, I´d seen. Since I was too scared to even talk to the most "geeky" guy at the school where I used to go, I was too scared to talk to this one, too. Though, he was obviously also curious of who I was, because he came over to me one day when it didn´t rain. He was actually sweet. He talked in a perfect British accent. Danny was his name, Danny Jones. We started talking more and more and soon after he invited me to live with him in his "house". His house was built of two trashcans and a piece of cardboardon top. It was genius when it rained but when winter came it was cold. Danny told me he hadn´t had a real Christmas in many years. When I used to dance around the Christmas tree holding hand with my mother and father, I couldn´t imagine how other people didn´t celebrate Christmas, but living on the street, everything was different.
The house was decorated with the most beautiful Christmas lights hanging on the trees down the long avenue leading to the house. Through the windows I saw the decorated Christmas tree standing exactly where it used to stand. Danny and I spend Christmas evening together, just like it was any other night. It was cold and the snow covered the streets completely all over London. We only had the few blankets that I had brought from home as the only thing. Danny always succeeded to always make me laugh even when everything seemed to go wrong. He always said or did something stupid, most of the times it wasn´t even on purpose. Let´s just say Danny wasn´t always the cleverest person in the room.
I told Danny immediately about my "situation" and he accepted it. People started starring at us as they walked by, when I started to get bigger. I guess they would be thinking how irresponsible we were for bringing a child up on the street. Since Danny and I was always together, there was no way that they could be thinking anything else than Danny was the father. I felt bad that people looked that way at Danny when they walked by, judging him. He shouldn´t be the one that they judged. I was the irresponsible 17 year old teenage girl who got knocked up by her high school boyfriend who was after clearly nothing else than sex.
Danny was the most caring person that I´d ever met. As I was nearing my 7th month, he wouldn´t even let me go around alone. One day, where I´d convinced that I would be okay, walking down to the store to buy some food for us, the terrible thing happened.
I was walking in my own thoughts and didn´t really look up to see if I walked into anything. As I reached the crosswalk, I only looked at the people in front of me´s feet. As they started walking, I started walking. They started walking fast across the busy street but since I had the big baby belly, I couldn´t keep up. I heard the screeching of a car hitting the brakes coming closer and I looked up just in time to see the bright red car. I held my arms tight around my belly protecting it when I realized that I wouldn´t get away in time. The doctors told me later that, that was what actually had saved my baby. I closed my eyes tightly but felt nothing.
It didn´t seem like it had 3 days since the accident, when I woke up. I opened my eyes looking straight up into the light of the lamp that hung above my bed. There was no one in the room. I immediately sensed that something wasn´t as it was before, I just couldn´t put my finger on it. That´s when I felt it. The feeling of emptiness sneaked in on me and by instinct my hands flew to my stomach. It was flat. I panicked and started feeling confused and worried. What had happened? I tried to stand up, I wanted to go find a doctor that might explain to me what had happened, and felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I removed the shirt a little and saw that the stitches that I had gotten when they had removed my baby had gone up. I screamed. A nurse came in then just to check on me I guess, but was slightly shocked – it was obvious – when she saw that I was standing up. She ran over to me and told me – no, rather ordered me - to get back into bed. I ignored the pain as I kept asking where my baby was, but she never answered before she ran off to get a doctor. The blood was soaking the hospital gown that I was wearing. I had always hated blood and I felt dizzy when the smell hit my nose.
I got stitched up again and the doctors finally told me where my baby was. They were worried that he might have been dying when they heard the heartbeat slow down. They agreed that the best thing to do was to make a Caesarian section. They had brought him to the world already that same night while I was in a mild coma. They told me that I could go see him, my baby boy, when I was ready. The nurse helped me into a wheelchair since they refused to let me walk the next few days. She wheeled my down the hall and into an elevator. "Your boyfriend is already there," she told me as the elevator doors opened. I was confused for a moment until we arrived at the NICU. Danny was sitting by a little respirator and held my little baby boy´s tiny hand. I smiled at him as he looked up at me. He carefully put down the baby´s hand and ran over and hugged me. "Thank God, you´re okay," he said and hugged me tighter. I giggled and looked over his shoulder at the baby. He was so little. Danny let go of me and wheeled me over to the respirator. On the journal that hung above the machine it said that he weighed 3 pounds and was 16 inches long. The doctor said that luckily for the little guy, he was not less developed than a normal baby born at 28th week. I looked down at him. His skin was still wrinkled and red. He a little black hair on his head and out of his mouth was the tube that was feeding him. His little fingers grabbed around mine but they were only big enough to cover end of the finger.
"He´s really beautiful," Danny told me after a while. I looked up at him to see him flashing a smile at me. I smiled back. I couldn´t help but worry about son day and night for the next many days. The doctors said that he was getting better and better every day. But they also said it would take months before I would be able to bring him home. I refused to take him back to the streets that were beyond discussion.
I had been sitting by the respirator holding my son´s hand every day for the first month. Danny would come too now and then, just to check on us. "There´s something I have to tell you," Danny told me one day he was visiting. We both had our hands through the holes in the side, holding Caleb´s little hand. "I have something to tell you too," I said and smiled at me. "You know I told you about that audition, right?" I nodded. Danny had seen in the paper – someone had thrown it away – that a band was auditioning to find the last member. I had never seen Danny play yet but I had heard him sing. He sang me to sleep when I cried Christmas Eve. He was indeed so sweet. "Well, I plan to attend to it," he told me with a nervous smile. "That´s great," I told him and hugged him. "You had something to say too?" he pointed out with a smile. "Oh, yeah, I found a name for him," I said and motioned toward Caleb. "What is it?" he asked excitedly. If things stayed like they were now, I was sure Caleb would grow up to think that Danny was his father. I wouldn´t mind that. "Caleb," I said and smiled at him.
A week later, Danny was called in for the audition. I wanted to go with him but Danny said that I should stay with Caleb. So I did. I was much too excited to sit still on the chair. Danny had an amazing voice and I was sure he would be the one they picked.
The hours went by slow and I must have looked at the clock 15 times or so the first hour. I was so nervous. 3 hours and 44 minutes later, the door opened. I looked up quickly and hoped that it would be Danny, though it wasn´t. It was the nurse who came in and checked that everything was as it should be. I sighed and looked at the clock again. "Waiting for Danny, are we?" she asked with a smile. Since she was the one who came and checked on Caleb every day, we could not help but getting to know each other. A few days and she knew what my relationship with Danny was and she also knew about that audition. "Oh, audition day," she said and looked at the clock. "When did he leave?" she asked and sat down on a chair beside me. She was done checking on Caleb. "3 hours ago. How is Caleb doing?" I asked and turned to my son again. "He´s getting better and better," she said and smiled. "He might be out of here by a few months," she continued but I knew, she couldn´t promise anything, she was a nurse. I sighed. I still hadn´t found a way to get a house. I still wasn´t 18 yet so I couldn´t get my children´s savings. I didn´t even have money enough to get sated myself, never mind a newborn. I knew I wouldn´t be able to take proper care of Caleb as things were now. "Oh, right, not the most comforting news," she mumbled and laid her hand on my shoulder.
I was startled. I had been sitting in my own thoughts, just starring out of the window when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned quickly to see Danny standing there. He looked worried. "Is everything okay?" he asked and looked into my eyes. I smiled and hugged him. He had been away for the whole day. The sun was already setting. The sky that was blue with a few white clouds on it was now red and beautiful.
"How did it go?" I asked when we had gotten back to the hospital after getting something to eat. "They wanted to see me again," he said with a big smile across his lips. I smiled too. It was the first time that I´d seen him smile this much. "Congrats," I said and hugged him again. We pulled back after a while and just looked into each other's eyes.
It was amazing how things suddenly turned for the better. After Danny´s second audition, the band wanted him as their lead singer and guitarist. I finally got to hear him play guitar. The money that he made he spends on a big flat with a lot of expensive things in it. Caleb was doing much better. I got to hold him for the first time and the doctors told me that I should try and breastfeed him if I wanted. He was still quite small being 6 months old.
One day Danny asked me over for dinner, even though he did so every night, this seemed different. I didn´t have any formal clothes to wear other than my old faded blue jeans and my too large t-shirt that Danny had given me when I grew too big to my old one.¨
I rang on the doorbell and the door was opened almost immediately. "Hey you," he said enthusiastically and hugged me. "Can´t breathe," I laughed. He put me down immediately and looked into my eyes. I stopped laughing when he started leaning closer. I didn´t think as I leaned closer too. He kissed me sweetly. I kissed him back and enjoyed the moment. He pulled back after a while and smiled at me. I smiled at him too.
He led me into the living room where he pulled out a chair for me at the dining table. Everything looked so romantic. The table was covered with a white dew, on it was there was set up for two and in the middle was a candle light blowing silently and beautiful. I forgot everything as I stared into the little flame. Danny walked in then with a bottle of champagne. "Champagne?" he asked formally. I smiled at him trying not to laugh. "Yes, thank you," I answered trying to play along. He filled my glass and then his too. "Cheers," he said and raised his glass. I raised mine too and smiled at him before taking a sip.
The formality disappeared quickly, and we spend the night just having a lot of fun. We watched a movie and ate chips and drank coke – things that I hadn´t done in a really long time, things that I had just thought of as normal before living half a year on the street.
I have been thinking a lot of times about my family. Did they ever think of me sometime? Did they ever wonder if I still lived? I have been trying to push away the thought and just think of my life as it is.
I live with Danny who now has the title of being my boyfriend and my 2 year old son Caleb who is doing great. I got the message that he could come home the day after the date where Danny asked me to move in with me. We were both ecstatic about the news.