Chapter 9
Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Type 2...the medical diagnosis that destroyed their happy pregnancy bubble.
"With type 2, we're dealing with low birth weight, underdeveloped lungs, swallowing problems, respiratory problems. If carried to term type 2 infants typically die within a few hours of delivery. Sometimes days. Your baby is also at high risk for inter-uterine fracturing." Dr. Nicole Herman, the Head of Fetal Surgery at GSM, an expert in her field. She was the 'Big Gun' of the Department, fired-up to break the news to them, destroying their hopes with the nature of this insidiously devastating diagnosis.
They'd been plodding along, so happy in their marriage bubble, learning each others quirks and the little idiosyncrasies that friendship hadn't prepared them for. Of course there were arguments, they were too different and let's face it agreeing on everything (when they'd butted heads before) was improbable and would make for very boring wedded bliss. The make-up sex alone was incentive enough to disagree.
Admittedly when they fought they went big! No wishy-washy minor problems, they fought about organized religion and whether it was ridiculous or if lack of faith was something to be pitied. They fought about whether their hypothetical children would be raised with a belief system, other than the moral compass that both their parents epitomized. Although, on principle alone, they'd both learned the art of compromise and Jackson sometimes gave in, simply to remove the expression of devastation from his stubborn wife's face. In his quiet moments he admitted to himself that he was whipped and simply because he was unable to bear her experiencing any pain or hurt. Which made this diagnosis doubly hard on him.
The pregnancy had been a surprise. Shifting the conversation from hypothetical to real had required a period of adjustment for him but once he'd allowed himself to accept the reality of children with the woman he loved, he was ecstatic. For April, the acceptance was much easier – she was born to be a mother!
"Inter-uterine...my baby's bones are breaking...inside of my belly? The place he's supposed to be safest, his bones are breaking. Can he feel it...his bones breaking? I mean he can feel it right? So he's in pain?"
While religion reared its fatalistic mores, creating conflict with his Kepner in-laws, one thing that made him fall more in love with his wife than ever was experiencing her strength. Her beliefs, strong though they were, took a backseat to the suffering that their baby would have to endure, if he survived.
Letting Samuel go was so devastating for him and he could not even comprehend what April suffered. She lost a bit of her faith too, on that disastrous day when their only alternative was an induction-termination procedure. Samuel Norbert Avery was born and died within that hour.
Grey Sloan Memorial, the constant, was the site of their greatest happiness (when they wed) and also the site of their most devastating deprivation – to enter a hospital pregnant and to leave without a baby was something that a soul would never recover from. Perhaps the unbearableness of the pain would wane with time, but never abate.