The promised update Thank you to everyone who is reading this story. This is a fairly dramatic chapter and I am sorry if any of this upsets you. I have found this story to be very strange as it has not turned out the way I planned at all. I feel like the characters are telling me what will happen next. I love that in writing. Just ignore the above if you think I am insane and please still read the story.
Everybody Hurts
When your day is long and the night
The night is yours alone
When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on
Don't let yourself go
Everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes
Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go (hold on)
When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on
Everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends.
Everybody hurts
Don't throw your hand. Oh, no
Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
If you're on your own in this life
The days and nights are long
When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on
Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes
So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on
(Hold on, hold on)
Everybody hurts
You are not alone
REM
Dear Edward
I received your letter yesterday. I must admit I was shaking at the thought of opening it. I really wasn't sure what you had to tell me that you couldn't say in person and my heart was filled with dread.
I couldn't stop crying when I got to the end. I feel like I finally understand your side of the story. I wish we had been able to talk sooner but I don't think either of us was ready.
I went online straight away and booked us a two week holiday in Spain. We always talked about visiting Spain and I think we need the time to connect and really talk. So we will be back in the USA for just one week before we fly to Spain. Your letter gave me hope that I can convince you to join me in Spain. It gave me hope for us.
Love
Bella
Dear Bells
I know that you are probably shocked to receive a letter from me. I hope you are enjoying your time in Italy and that you are also benefiting from the time away from home. I wrote this in my diary originally but then I realised I really needed you to read this. I needed you to know what happened to me yesterday and how it changed things. I wish we could discuss this over a glass of wine and dinner as we did in the past. I need your comfort and love today but knowing that you will read this provides it in a way. So here is the page torn from my diary.
Dear Bella
This afternoon started out as one of the better afternoons in our tiny makeshift hospital. I had just finished giving a group of young boys their multi-vitamin shots and we were joking and laughing about who had been the bravest and who had been the biggest wimp. A couple of them were kicking around a soccer ball outside and I was about to go and join them. I was clearing away the supplies when I heard the screaming.
I ran outside to find two men carrying a heavily pregnant woman. She was screaming in pain and there was blood everywhere.
I moved the boys out the way and called for one of the other doctors and a nurse who could help and translate.
The young woman was placed on the table. She must have been about twenty three. One of the men who had brought her in was shaking with tears and hanging onto her.
The nurse found out from the other man who was her brother that she had fallen badly while collecting water from a communal tap. The shaking man was her husband.
I started the scan of her uterus hoping that everything would be alright. There was no heartbeat. In that one horrible second I was back in that hospital in Seattle. I tried again but the baby was dead.
Doctor McCain and I exchanged a look and he told the parents the awful news.
The wife let out a keening wail and passed out.
The husband told us through his tears that they had lost their first child to the famine that was rife in this country just three months before. Two weeks ago he had found a new home and a job through a contact outside the camp. They were going to leave the camp and take a train to Malawi in just two days. All their hope was for this child and the new life they would lead together.
He was a broken man and I saw the me of a few years ago in his eyes.
We prepped his wife for a caesarean and he waited in the room wanting the one chance to see his child.
The surgery was simple to do but my heart was constantly breaking. I didn't want to have to face my demons. It was the moment that I pulled the baby girl from her mother that things started getting worse.
Her body started convulsing on the table and blood streamed from the open wound as it ripped. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I was still holding the little girls lifeless body while trying to help.
It seemed like hours but it was mere seconds. The long beep from the machine monitoring her heartbeat filled the room. She was dead.
I sat on a chair still holding the baby. The tears and screaming from the man seemed to echo across the whole camp. His whole world had ended in a matter of minutes.
He ran out of the room screaming and I was left still holding the baby.
A nurse walked up and gently took the baby girl from my arms. She was almost fully grown and perfectly formed. A few weeks from now she should have been born a healthy happy baby. The fall had torn the placenta and the baby had lost her source of oxygen and was probably dead in minutes.
I sat on the chair watching as a sheet was put over the mother and she was taken out of the room. She would be buried the next day and probably in one of the anonymous graves on the edge of the camp. She had died of a brain haemorrhage. Nothing could have been done even in a fully equipped hospital.
I watched them clean the room and still I did not leave the chair.
An hour later Dr McCain walked in and sat on a chair next to me.
"We all have demons we are running away from. I think the time has come for you to face yours."
He was right. I hardly ever let myself think about that day. Today for a moment I relived that pain.
The husband killed himself later that night.
I realised today that I didn't lose everything that night. I didn't have to bury you. I never saw that sheet pulled over your head and if I let myself think about it I start shaking. You never seemed to understand how sick you really were and how close to death you came.
I still have you and I need to move past what happened or I might as well have buried you that day with our daughter.
Edward
