Sam
by Rachel Moncada
My son would have turned 12 this month. The only evidence of his existence are a birth certificate and a death certificate with the same date on them. I remember I was alone. For hours I tried to get his father on the phone. I sent emails, I sent texts. There are just far too many ways for people to ignore us nowadays. Eventually I had to give up because I had to push.
Sam was born April 4th at exactly two minutes after two in the afternoon. The sun was bright outside, so he got to feel the warmth from the window for a few moments in his short life. Exactly 11 minutes later he was gone.
His heart was too weak. I’d known he would have trouble from previous appointments, but there was always a chance he might make it. I did everything I was told, from bed rest to eating disgusting food and vitamins. He was desperately wanted. I’d had three miscarriages before with the most recent only getting as far along as six months. But now, with Sam, I held out and even prayed sometimes despite my disdain for the practice. Watching his last cry sucked all the air out of my lungs. I’m pretty sure my blood stopped moving through my body at that moment, and I just froze, watching him, waiting for any movement or sound. I didn’t want to miss it.
There was nothing to miss. He was tiny and limp, still covered in afterbirth and attached to me through his umbilical cord. I couldn’t talk and I don’t think I uttered another word for the rest of the day. Still alone with the nurses and my dead son, they asked me if I wanted to hold him. I did. Then they asked if I wanted a picture of us. I couldn’t. I felt very defensive of his little body at this point, and the idea made me ill. Selfishly I also wanted to be one of only a few who got to see him. No one else deserved him. A line from a poem pushed into my mind, and all I could think of was the future we’d never have.
I could feel pity staring at me from every direction. Nurses had taken off their masks and were looking at me, their faces twisted in pain. My doctor just kept saying he was sorry. He asked if I wanted to be alone for a minute because they would have to take Sam away. My eyes burned, my jaw ached, and oddly nothing below my waist felt anything. I hadn’t even had an epidural. I was just in as much pain as I was numb. I asked if he would stay with me for a few minutes. He pulled up a chair.
The nurses walked out looking back at me or at Sam, I couldn’t really tell which as they disappeared behind the door. Then there was silence.
Suddenly, my doctor grabbed my hand and began his own venting session. He knew how hard I had worked and what I’d sacrificed to have Sam to try to give him a chance. He’d been in constant communication with my oncologist since the first day I came to him. Everyone did everything they could, and no one was to blame.
He was a specialist in an already specialized field. My oncologist referred me to him as soon as I found out I was pregnant. At the time, I was on chemotherapy and radiation for leukemia. Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, to be more exact. By the time I had an inkling I was pregnant, I was already three months along and had been putting poison and radiation into my body the entire time. My oncologist recommended I terminate the pregnancy not only because I’d been on chemo to that point, but I couldn’t continue if I held on to the pregnancy. I would have to stop immediately to give the baby any chance. But that would hurt me. I needed my treatment, as I’d fallen out of remission months earlier like a brick from a building top. From stage 0 to stage 4 in only a couple of months. I barely had to think about it: I wanted my child. Treatment stopped and I went to the OBGYN he recommended who has seen many women with cancer through their pregnancies.
It wasn’t going to be pretty, he said. The treatment had already wracked the baby’s body, which was undersized and not developing properly. I would have to make a lot of changes and assess the risks. Again, another man asking if I wanted to terminate. I realized they were looking out for me. But it left a bitter iron flavor in my mouth every time I’d tell another medical professional I wasn’t getting an abortion. Not because I didn’t “believe” in them, but I didn’t want one. Hence, choice. I made mine. And now I was living with it.
After sitting silently while my OB rattled on, I’m sure as a means of comfort, a nurse came in the room to take Sam. I let her. But I didn’t offer him up. She had to dig into my arms to take him, but I admired her gentle touch. She had even gotten a different, softer blanket than those blue and white stiff towel blankets every hospital has for babies. He was safe with her.
I asked the doctor if Sam had suffered at all. Was there pain? Fear? Panic?
He said he doubted all those things very much. But he said Sam would have felt my touch. Which makes me dubious about his previous response. If he felt my touch, he had to feel other stuff.
Everything went very fast after that moment. Once Sam was out of the room, nurses and administrators and other people who I have no idea what they did were bustling in and out. Nurses tended to my body while administrators asked me what his name would be on the birth certificate. They asked me to verify my information. Then they asked if I was putting dad on the form. I don’t think he knows to this day that I left him off Sam’s birth certificate. Sam was mine.
I was in a wheelchair before I knew it. I hadn’t suffered much physically from the birth, so I was safe to leave that same day. They asked if I had someone coming to pick me up, and I lied. As soon as they left me alone, I abandoned the wheelchair and walked to my car. When I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat, I got this feeling of déjà vu. It was in reverse, though. Just hours before I’d been in that seat, driving myself to the hospital after my water broke. I had messaged him the second my water broke and kept trying to call Sam’s dad on the way there. Even now I don’t know where he was or what he was doing in all that time.
I drove home with no memory of doing it. I must have because I ended up at home on my couch staring at my ceiling. At this point I’d given up on getting a call back.
Sleep took me. I didn’t want to sleep, but I didn’t get a choice. It was after nine that night before I woke to a touch on my arm. It was him. I was too sad to be angry.
The next day came too fast. Sam’s dad was behind me, playing big spoon like he had a hundred times before. Occasionally, I would be big spoon. I’d struggle to put my arm over his wide shoulders, so instead I’d have to loop my arm between his chest and his arm as best I could. I welcomed his touch and was reviled by it all at once. My indecision left me frozen, staring at the wall, wondering if the events of the last 24 hours had actually transpired or been a cruel nightmare. Pain in my stomach and loins shot me out of the bed towards the bathroom, and the spots of blood and pain in my crotch brought me back to reality.
I stumbled back to the room after cleaning myself. My legs were weak and shaking, and I kept grabbing surfaces to steady myself until I reached the edge of my bed. He appeared in the doorway with a look of concern, asking if I needed something to eat. I didn’t answer: I just stared at him, holding his gaze as I fell towards my pillow and curled into a fetal position. My expression must have been grim. He retreated towards the kitchen, and I heard the fridge doors open and shut and the slight click of my stove turning on.
He was making fried eggs and rice. I knew somehow. It was my comfort meal even before my pregnancy. A couple over easy eggs, fried with avocado oil, put over a bowl of rice and sliced. The yolk would turn the rice a slight yellow. Imagining the color right then made my stomach turn.
I scootched up a bit towards my headboard so I could watch him. He always moved fluidly, quietly, as if he knew my kitchen better than his own. Which was likely true since he spent more time with me than at home. That thought sparked anger in me. He was usually with me, usually at my home. Where the hell was he when I needed him the most? I squirmed in my bed, trying to relax, as the sudden flare of fury brought about a boiling hot pain in my groin. I wasn’t allowed to be mad; I wasn’t allowed to be sad. I was trapped.
He finished in the kitchen, turned quickly, and walked towards me with a steaming bowl in his hand. I inspected him. I wondered if Sam would have looked like him or like me. Maybe he would have looked like one of his grandfathers or uncles. Would he have had that winning smile like his dad’s that engaged me the first time I met him? Who would he have been?
I named him Sam for many reasons. The least important being it was a name his dad and I could settle on. The most important being how many wonderful Sam’s there are. When I was filling out his birth certificate, it was difficult for me to write Samuel instead of Samwise. It’s not as if his dad was there to stop me. I could have done it. Samwise Gamgee was one of my favorite literary characters. He still is. There was no one braver, more loyal, or more self-sacrificing. Would my son have been like that? Could he have lived up to his name?
He never got the chance and I will never know. I do dream on occasion of a boy. Brown hair, deep brown eyes, quick witted with a devilish grin. But also kind. So kind and good. No matter what happens in those dreams, as soon as Sam arrives, it’s never a nightmare.
The steaming bowl of rice and eggs was placed gently on the side table in front of me. The clank drove me out of my thoughts and back to where I was. Where I didn’t want to be.
Don’t ask me now what I was thinking. I have no idea, I only have regret. Despite my condition and knowing how bad it was, we made love just then. It hurt worse than when I lost my virginity. But I needed the connection. I was falling apart. Part of me tries to blame him for that moment, wondering why he would care more about sex than how delicate I was. Stupid as it was, it was my decision. Afterwards we laid there, and I’m reasonably sure he was talking to me. I wasn’t listening to him. I didn’t care what he had to say. I wanted to keep thinking about Sam.
I fell in and out of love in a 24-hour period. I’d never look at Sam’s dad the same, and I loved someone who I would never see again more than I could express. I was as full as I was empty. I barely spoke a word to his dad the entire time he was with me. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask where he’d been while I gave birth and watched our child die alone. Part of me didn’t want to know the answer. He was a love I always knew would go wrong one day. I hadn’t realized how horribly wrong.
It’s been 12 years, and I still dream of Sam. I like to fantasize about how wonderful and smart he would be, how adorable. Even how at 12, he would likely be giving me a hard time like any tween. Sam and I were robbed. I keep him to myself, rarely telling anyone about my ordeal. I can’t stand looks like the one the nurses in the hospital gave me. I didn’t want to give birth alone. I didn’t want to leave his dad. I don’t want pity. I just want my son. I have his ashes in a tiny ceramic urn, blue, with his name written in gold. Two small praying bears sit around him at all times. Fuzzy sentinels.
I’m not typically triggered by events. I can see a movie that discusses child loss without automatically equating it to my experience. For some reason, though, a poem makes me think of Sam. It’s titled, “When Tomorrow Starts Without Me”. Fortunately for me, this isn’t a particularly well known or repeated piece of poetry, so I can go months or years without the words making me fail. I feel like a failure still, like I should have and could have done more to save him. When I researched what more I could have done I found nothing, but I did find research that states he might have saved me. According to research I stumbled upon, the stem cells creating him might have healed my damaged organs and stopped the cancer from killing me. My baby, my love, likely saved my life even when I couldn’t save his.
BIO
Rachel Moncada was born in Portland, OR, and currently lives in Vancouver, WA. After 18 years working in the medical field, she is now a student at Washington State University pursuing a BA in English and Communications. She hopes to write grants for non-profit organizations along with her own personal work. Her writing is predominantly non-fiction pieces about her life and those around her. “Sam” is her first published work.
