It starts with a tugging at my heart, and I push the thought away that it could be 'time' as so many women say the words, contriving excitement despite their greatest fears.
It will never be time.
It will never be right.
You are not here to see this, and it will never be time.
But the tugging moves down farther into my being as I sit her alone in our...my empty house, and I fight it, putting my hand against my stomach, I can stop this.
I can hold on just a little while longer with the vague hope that this is still all a dream.
I rise from the chair, my abdomen swelling with searing pain and I have to take pause, leaning against the wall, begging for mercy from my body, now unforgiving.
It can't be time.
I grasp at the phone to call Meredith as she's told me to do a million times, and my heart stops when I hear your voice.
The voicemail from the cell phone I never turned off, the voicemail that I listen to every night that I try to sleep and I hang up the phone, realizing that I dialed your number.
Like you're going to drop everything you're doing and come to my side to be there for me.
Be there for me while I have your child.
I attempt to dial the phone again, but I feel winded and the tugging only greatens, the acme of the contraction and I'm taken aback by the amount of pain it's causing.
If there was a physical pain to equate to the pain I've felt since you've left, this may be it.
Or maybe it's that the physical pain is only accentuated by the emotional pain.
It finally resides and I dial the numbers to Meredith, using those very same words that every woman udders before her world is about to be turned upside down, "It's time." I utter into the phone and she's off the other end and on her way before I can get another word out.
I lean over the counter as another contraction tugs at me and I press my lips together, trying not to let out a cry of pain.
I'm above that.
I'm not one of those women.
My mind begins to race, my contractions shouldn't be this close together so soon, and I start to think of the complications, a precipitous labor, a precipitous birth, the implications for such things.
What could go wrong during the delivery that fate would be so cruel as to deal me a hand where I could lose the last living bit of you despite the fact that I've had a healthy pregnancy, and the first cry makes it's way through my lips.
I can't do this without you.
Why did you do this to me?
Why did you leave me?
I can't do this without you.
I don't want to have this baby without you.
I don't want to raise this baby without you.
Another tug at my soul and I cry out again, but this time I don't know if it's the contraction or the gravity of the situation, that this is really happening.
That I'm going to have this baby, our baby, and you're not here for it.
That life does indeed go on, and it will go on without you.