Leaving the hospital

I remember being wheeled out of the hospital.  It was a Sunday.

The funeral home had just come to pick up Conner and Benjamin.  I tell them I love them and tell them to take care of each other.  Tim takes them to say goodbye. He goes to place them in a basket filled with blankets handpicked by the nurse. He starts to cry. I beg to see them again, one last time.  I cry over them some more after giving them kisses on their foreheads.  The nurse and the ladies from the funeral home offer to give me more time.  I know that if they do, I won't ever let them take my babies.   Shaking my head, I wave them away and tell them to take my boys and go.

There is cold hospital food on a tray.  My nurses want me to eat before we leave.  I eat some.  I am hungry, but I am in no mood to eat.  Tim and I laugh a bit over the food.  I think it was lasagna.  It looked like vomit.

The nurse comes in with discharge papers.

I sign them. They give me other paperwork.  There are duplicate copies of some, since I lost two babies.

Actually, can we just pause right here and discuss this word "lost"?  I lost two babies?  I understand the meaning behind it, but I know right where they are.  I didn't lose them.  Their ashes are right next to my side of the bed.

Tim goes to go pull his truck up to the hospital.  He motions to take the bags that has Conner and Benjamin's blankets, hats, stuffed animals, memory boxes, and Bibles.

I refuse to let him take them.  I need something to carry out of the hospital with me, since I don't have my babies to carry out.

My legs and feet are so swollen I can't get my boots on.  My pants, once loose, fit snug over my legs. Waiting for the nurse to come get me, I finally send a message to my friends and family telling them what had happened to my dear boys.  No one knew I had been in the hospital, so everyone was blind-sighted. The nurse comes with a wheelchair.  I sit in it, my boys' belongings in my lap.  I don't want to leave that room. That hospital room was my babies' only home.  I wonder who will get that room after me.  They won't even know what happened in that room before they got there.

We pass by the giant monitors in the nurses' station. The screen might as well be for a movie theater. "So that's how you saw all my vitals," I say to the nurse.  Duh. I am wheeled out into frozen air.  People turn around to stare at me.  It must have been a strange sight, a woman with baby blankets and stuffed animals but no babies.

My nurse hugs me goodbye.  I climb into Tim's truck with my hospital socks on.  I stare at the hospital as we leave.  A song comes on the radio - The Band Perry's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely."  It is a song that was in my head while we were in the hospital with the boys.  I don't let Tim change the station. I need to hear it. I don't cry on the way home. I'm still in shock.  Surely, tomorrow I will wake up pregnant.



It is three months and five days after Ben and Conner were born.  I have yet to wake up and find that this is all a dream.  Yesterday, there was a lunar eclipse.  I had a hard time sleeping last night, or even just relaxing.  I took a few Benadryl to help me sleep. I woke up at 1:21 a.m.  For some reason, I felt like it was the boys waking me up to see the eclipse.  I had already missed texts from my father-in-law about the eclipse starting.  I looked out windows. Nothing.  It seemed cloudy out.  I didn't try to put on pants and stand out in the driveway.  I went back to sleep.  Today I woke up with overwhelming guilt.  My babies wanted me to see that eclipse.  I didn't even try.  I wrote down that I need to catch the next one on October 8th.