Ouroboros.
Warning...this story is about a miscarriage. Some content may be distressing. Please do not read if you are of a sensitive disposition. Thank you!
If you were to ask me I could still tell you the exact moment that I knew it was the beginning of the end for us. As much as I prayed that it wasn't going to happen, when those words passed your lips regarding your dislike of children irrespective of your knowing how much I wanted us to have a baby of our own I just knew that it was going to be an issue we were never going to overcome. I loved you more than you could ever know, and walking away from you was the hardest decision that I have ever had to make - sometimes I think if it hadn't been for our little complication maybe I could have stayed with you for a little while longer and pushed away the desire for a child that had radiated through my being since the moment that we met -but life happened... it found a way and any attempts I made to try and allow you to see what a good father you would be by pushing you to spend time with Lex and Tim on the Island you fought against valiantly right until the end of our time there...until it was too late for us and for my beloved unborn baby.
I found out that I was pregnant a week before we set off on our journey to Jurassic Park, as I sat in our trailers cramped bathroom after a long day digging; the plastic stick clasped in my shaking fingers confirming in my heart what two week's worth of nausea had already told me. You'd been so worried about me that day, concern etched on your features as you watched me battle queasiness, tiredness and a heaving stomach to continue our work until you couldn't bear to watch or worry anymore, sending me to the trailer to get some rest. You didn't know that I had thought I may be pregnant for at least a week by that point, nor that I had bought a test when I last ventured off the dig site to go and get some supplies, and I hadn't had the nerve to tell you about it because I'd tried to sound you out about our trying for a baby before only to be met by negativity and concern regarding your lack of paternal instinct. Instead I kept my worries to myself, wanting to know for sure as to whether I was carrying our unborn child inside of me before broaching a topic with you which had so often threatened to split us apart.
It turns out that ultimately you wouldn't know about our baby until it had already begun to leave us, for my fear of losing you, your negative comments about my wanting children the day we left for the Park and the harrowing events that occurred there left no opportunity for me to tell you about the baby you had unknowingly slept with the palm of your hand cradling every night when we were in bed at the dig site. You would only know when you entered my hospital room on the mainland to be greeted by my lying on a hospital bed in a pool of blood, while a team of Doctors carried out a fruitless sonogram on my slightly curved belly and declared the need for me to have a D&C as the pregnancy had already progressed and my body was having difficulty miscarrying naturally. I don't think I'll ever stop blaming myself for putting my body through the trauma that I did on that Island regardless of none of us having a choice, nor for my not realising that I was already past the first trimester of my pregnancy. The minute I started cramping on that helicopter I knew that my body had been pushed too hard for that baby to remain alive...I knew right then that my life would never be the same and that on some level it was completely my fault.
Your face as you walked into that room was almost too much for me to bear. You looked at my strapped ankle – this the only injury you were aware of – at the still image on the sonogram screen and then at my wide and tearful eyes.
"Ellie what's...why are you lying in all that blood...why..?" You began only to be cut off by the Doctor.
"Are you the father?" He asked you softly as understanding filled your eyes. You nodded as if in a haze, walking over to me and shakily taking my hand in your own.
"Alan..." I whispered, wanting to say that I was sorry, sorry for falling pregnant; sorry for not telling you...so sorry that I was lying there losing the baby that you never even knew existed and probably never wanted.
"I'm afraid that your partner is miscarrying her unborn child. It's hardly surprising considering what you've all had to endure...We need to perform a procedure to evacuate the remaining..." He began and I sobbed as your gaze travelled once again to the image on the screen...the first sonogram of our child...a child that was no longer safe and sound within its mother's womb.
"Because the foetus was already four months in its gestation Miss Sattler's body is having difficulties miscarrying naturally." He started again. "We're going to need to undertake a procedure to help the miscarriage along. I'm very sorry." He told us and my eyes filled with tears.
I couldn't help but feel defective as those words passed his lips. I felt so broken and so terribly guilty. I still do even to this day. There isn't a minute that goes by when I don't think of that child and what it would have been like. Those were the most awful moments of my life.
"Four months?" You asked me and I saw the Doctor and his team retreat from the room to give us some space.
"Alan I didn't..." I started tearfully but you cut me off.
"You were four months pregnant Ellie? How could you not...why not say anything to me?" You asked softly and I could see such defeat in your eyes that my already shattered heart ached.
"Because I didn't know for that amount of time. I didn't know for sure until this past week and I was so afraid that I was going to lose you that every time I wanted to tell you I couldn't find the words. Every time I mention us having children you clam up and get defensive. I didn't know how to bring it up without having to watch you walk away from a child that you didn't want." I explained and you looked at the floor, my hand still clasped in yours.
"So you hid it from me? Were you hoping that you'd find out that you were too far along to do anything about it and make me choose between the pair of you or nothing at all?" You whispered coldly and the anger that welled up inside me became almost as unbearable as the pain of losing our child. I snatched my hand away from yours and pulled my knees to my chest.
"That's not fair. I was going to tell you on the Island...somewhere you couldn't run away without us discussing the pregnancy like adults first, but Dennis Nedry put pay to that by screwing with the fences and security systems. We had to run for our lives Alan...and that's cost me this." I whispered, placing my hand over the spot where yours had up until that point so gently rested in your sleep.
"You should have told me." You replied sadly, lowering yourself onto the bed so that you were sitting beside me. "You should have told me the minute that you suspected so that I could have been there when you did the test...so that you didn't have to do it alone. Dammit Ellie you clearly have a bump. I could have protected you there had I known." You whispered, and my eyes filled with tears as I thought once again that I should have protected myself more. I should have noticed a lot earlier than I did.
"Would you have wanted this baby?" I asked you, using my hand to tilt your chin up to mine so that our eyes met properly for the first time since you had entered our own personal hell that was contained in that room. "Honestly? I mean when I found out I was terrified but I loved it. I wanted to be pregnant, to feel it grow and move. To see you hold it for the first time, to hold it myself...would you have wanted that?" I probed, my heart thumping quickly in my chest as I waited for your answer.
"Before all this...probably not." You admitted and I turned away from you as hot tears fell from my eyes, feeling so ashamed that I had ever thought that you might want to be a father.
"Then what good would telling you have done Alan, if all you would have wanted to do was walk away from us?" I asked.
"Because I would have tried for you...I would have tried because I love you." You told me truthfully, and I realised that was the first time that you had ever said those three words. "Ellie I hate seeing you like this." You stated, leaning over and brushing a stray piece of hair away from my eyes.
"You think I'm enjoying myself?" I winced. "Alan you say you would have tried but answer me this... Would you really have wanted us to have this baby together?" I couldn't help but ask as I moved to try and make myself more comfortable but ended up enduring a fresh wave of pain.
You remained silent and slumped down in the chair beside me, tiredly resting your head in your hands.
"Just trying wouldn't have been enough you know. Babies need parents who love them, not a daddy who's just going through the motions." I whispered softly as the pain became stronger.
"Going through the motions?" You asked me sharply. "Is that what you think I would be doing if everything was okay now? After Tim and Lex... If this...if we weren't in here losing it..." You began reaching for my hand again. "I'm so sorry sweetheart." You whispered.
But as I opened my mouth to reply, a wave of pain overcame me and sent my world into darkness.
I woke up hours later in the hospital room in a fresh gown and in fresh sheets with you asleep in the chair at my bedside. I immediately felt different, empty somehow...hollow, broken and incomplete. I looked at your sleeping form and immediately noted the worry etched on your face. Worry that I know was for me and only for me, but I couldn't help but feel anger as I looked at you sleeping beside me, regardless of the concern that you had shown, regardless of your admitting that you loved me at a time I really needed to hear it, because I knew then that the baby that I had lost, the one that I was grieving for didn't and couldn't have meant as much to you as it did to me.
I shifted in the bed and felt pain radiate through me, pain something I remember at the time welcoming...it being something that I felt like I deserved. When I had found out that I was pregnant I was scared to death about your reaction but so, so happy that we had created a child together at the same time...a child I imagined having piercing blue eyes and your chestnut hair and the cutest little dimples that would have us wrapped around its little finger. Feeling like I failed that image made me want to hurt somehow, to punish myself for losing something so precious...something that I should have protected a lot more than I did regardless of our not knowing when we arrived on Isla Nublar what we were up against. I welcomed the discomfort the after effects of the miscarriage brought. That was something you could never understand, but then you weren't the one who had started to cramp and bleed on that helicopter...who had fallen to their knees as soon as you were wheeled away to be checked over yourself, knowing that you were carrying inside you a child that was lost.
When you awoke later that evening, it was as if we had become two completely different people in the space of just a few hours. We had lost not just our child but we had lost us as a couple too, something which pained me greatly because I was sure that I would always be at your side. You told me as soon as you laid those piercing blue eyes on me that had you had found out after spending time with the kids that I was pregnant...had things been alright with the baby that we had now lost...you thought you would have been okay with fatherhood. You would have been happier knowing that I was carrying your child. You thought you could have handled it and enjoyed the process whereas you wouldn't have been sure before. I appreciated that. I appreciated those words; I revelled in knowing that my pushing you towards those children had made you feel on some level that you ultimately would have been ready for one of our own. It wasn't enough though. After hearing you say that you wouldn't have wanted our baby before that I could no longer trust anything you said regarding how you felt about it now that it was gone, and when you climbed onto the bed next to me and gently pulled me into your arms as I cried - your hand resting on the spot where it had so often covered our child in the days that it had unknown to you been inside me - for the first time in years I knew that this was no longer where I wanted to be.
You tried so hard to understand what I was feeling in those days after the miscarriage. You tried so hard to understand why I was pulling away from you and so patiently tried to support me regardless of your own feelings of confusion over fatherhood and the short amount of time you had known that our child was inside of me. Ultimately however the damage was irreparable and we found ourselves torn apart, a tearful goodbye marking the end of our years together and your gentle hand on my empty abdomen a poignant reminder of what the Park had caused us to lose. I left the dig site and you far behind me - although the pain of losing our baby in such an awful way has never, ever ebbed away - met Mark and started a new family with the birth of my little man and my beautiful baby girl Amy. Everything was perfect...I had a gorgeous, caring husband, these two beautiful children, a house of my own...I felt settled and content...until you came back into my life and into my home and sat in my garden playing dinosaurs with my little boy and once again turned my world on its axis.
Watching you with Charlie...seeing what a natural you actually were with him, irrespective of your being way too scared to hold Amy which I have to admit quickly reminded me of old times, brought something to the surface that I had long thought buried and reminded me just how much I had missed you in the years that had passed since I left. For the first time in a long time I wondered if rather than being settled I was just settling with the man who had given me everything that I wanted...the things that we had been too afraid and too broken to ultimately pursue ourselves. After you'd left the house that day, I tried to push those thoughts to the back of my mind, after all Mark was the father of my children, the man who I'd vowed to be with til death do us part, the man who had put me back together when I was broken from the loss that we had sustained. Then you called for my help for the first time in your life and as I stood in hysterics in the lounge worried for your life and begging Mark to call for someone to help, both he and I realised that I was and always had been in love with another man...you. No matter whether I stayed with him or whether I didn't, regardless of his giving me the children that I had always wanted, his heart would never truly belong to me, nor mine to him for my heart had always been yours. He left me the day that you came home safe from Isla Sorna, wishing us every happiness together before you had even known that he had gone.
You came to my door again two months later. We'd spoken on the phone a few times prior to your visit but when I had told you about Mark you had wanted to give me time to grieve for my broken marriage and to begin to settle the children into a new life without their father in the house before you stopped by and possibly confused things even further. I think you would have stayed away longer, but the anniversary of our babies passing came around and you were worried in regards to how I would handle it on top of looking after my two young children alone and rather thoughtfully had asked if it was all right for you to stop by so I had some company on what was still such an emotional day for me.
That night when you'd put Charlie to bed and rather gingerly helped me to settle Amy, ended up being the first time that we had ever truly reflected on the miscarriage and our lost baby, and held a conversation regarding it that wasn't fraught or influenced by raw emotion as it had been in the days just after it had happened. You told me how every year on this day up until now you had gotten horrendously drunk as you thought of me being too scared to break the news of the pregnancy to you back then and how awful it was for you to think that I had hidden the cramps and bleeding from you in the helicopter until I was alone with the Doctors who could confirm our child's fate. I had never realised that you too had been so affected by our babies loss until we spoke about it properly, nor that the reason you found it so hard to be around Amy was because in the years that had passed you had for some reason become convinced that we would have had a little girl and my beautiful baby daughter reminded you of all we could and should have had. You told me that you had always thought I that I would be a natural mother and that seeing me with Charlie and Amy had confirmed such thoughts, and we spoke about the pregnancy all those years ago as we never had before, about the morning sickness, about how I felt whilst taking the test and afterwards and about how I used to lay in bed wide awake as you slept beside me with your hands resting protectively on the small bump that I would have seen a Doctor about as soon as we got back from the Island...that is until it was all cruelly taken out of our hands. When Amy cried that evening you carefully helped me to settle her, and when a small smile appeared on your lips as she chattered to you in baby talk, looking up at you with her piercing blue eyes, it really seemed as if you were finally at peace after the events of Jurassic Park and were finally opening up your heart to the future.
I knew it was the start of a new beginning for us three months to the day after that sad anniversary when I'd had a phone call about Charlie injuring himself at school. I'd called you as soon as I'd heard and you rushed to the house to look after Amy so that I could be with my little man, regardless of your worries, hesitation and the sad memories that seeing her roused. I worried the whole time that I was with Charlie at the hospital when he was getting checked over, convincing myself that I would not only come home with a wounded son, but to find my daughter crying hysterically in the arms of the well meaning man I had for so long loved whose aversion to babies would leave him stressed and my daughter uncomfortable and tearful in his presence. Instead I entered my house to be met with peace and quiet, and a lounge which albeit looked like a small tornado had hit it, held the sight of you lying bare chested and fast asleep on the sofa, cradling my peacefully sleeping little girl protectively in your strong arms, your lips resting on her forehead as if you had drifted off soothing her with a tender kiss. It was then that I knew that everything had changed and as you told me later that evening when you finally awoke and helped me to put both Charlie and Amy to bed, that my family were coming to mean just as much to you as I still did.
So here we are, seven and a half years after the events of Jurassic Park, once again in a hospital room with a sonogram machine sat at my side, and here you are lying beside me with a hand tenderly resting on my stomach. This time however we are looking at the frozen image of a baby that we have just seen wriggling and somersaulting on the monitor beside us, a baby boy that is currently doing his best to kick against his daddy's hand.
"I guess in a way we can thank Hammond and Jurassic Park." You whisper into my ear, planting a soft kiss onto the side of my neck as you entwine your fingers with my own.
"Oh?" I answer in return, watching Amy and Charlie play with a now grown up Lex at the other side of the room, a small smile playing on my lips as Amy looks over at us and waves. "And why would we want to do that?" I ask, shuffling over so that I'm facing you, my bump pressed against your stomach with our baby kicking wildly inside.
"Because without it I wouldn't have learnt how important this is. I wouldn't have Amy and Charlie and our little man here and I would have been much too scared to ask you if you would do me the honour of being my wife." You ask me shyly, and as a blush forms on your cheeks I run my fingers through your chestnut hair.
"Of course I will." I reply, pressing my forehead against yours and kissing your nose softly. "It's all I ever wanted...all of this...right here, right now."
The End.