The One and Only | Klay Thompson | ✔️

ten

Hamilton General Hospital

Hamilton , Ontario

5:30 AM

Inanna Sarkis.

I was numb.

I felt nothing.

The same white lights blinded me every time I closed my eyes. The heart monitor had the same beat for the last three days.

I asked mama what happened.

She told me that I tried to get out of bed very early and tipped, slamming my temple on my nightstand. Baba found me and noticed I was bleeding , bringing me to the hospital.

They told me I was pregnant.

They told me I miscarried.

They told me I lost a baby.

I beg them to tell me it was cruel joke they were trying to sell to me but it wasn't. Their own tears proved to me it was true. I still didn't fully believe it until the doctor walked in.

The doctor's silence tells me everything I need to know. Eventually, he clears his throat, and says in a voice so gentle, "I'm very sorry". And so was I.

It was explained to me that my stress and lack of nutrition and hydration was the cause of my miscarriage. Or just me.

It was my fault.

I was so upset about Klay and I that I ignored my body. I ignored the innocent life in my stomach that I never knew about. I stopped eating , drinking. I stopped doing everything to mourn about a man and my child died.

He or she died.

In mama's generation, there were no early pregnancy tests, and you weren't officially pregnant until you had missed three periods. These days, it's different. The very first day of absent menstruation can find me racing to the chemist, and then fumbling with instructions and collection pots and testing sticks until that tell-tale blue line makes its announcement.

The next step would be a visit to my GP, where I would be told the day my baby is due. I would be handed a free book on pregnancy containing photographs and descriptions of my developing baby. It confidently states that, by 12 weeks, the fetus is fully formed. The book suggests that I should make an early appointment with your midwife and begin thinking about where I would want my baby to be born. So I do.

And I would discover the unmistakable differences that pregnancy brings – the signs that women have never needed testing kits to tell them. A visit from the tit-fairy brings me newly enlarged and extra-sensitive breasts. I have a vastly increased need for food and for sleep.I feel more squeamish, more nauseous, more emotional and more hygienic. The hormone rushes could've make me feel like I'm stoned. Lack of food would make me violent. I would feel the glow of life inside me. I would begin to plan and to dream. I probably chat to my baby. I consider its sex and its name.

But that didn't happen; He or she was gone.

With this miscarriage, I'm left battling through the layers of euphemism to even recognize that I have been suffering. What is this that has happened? "Pregnancy loss"? The word "baby" was never mentioned by the staff in the Early Pregnancy Advisory Unit. When the scan revealed that my baby was no longer living, I was sent for an operation with the horrendous name of "Evacuation of Retained Products of Conception". My child, described as clinical waste.

If there's no body, how can I grieve? I feel as though I must be kidding myself, wallowing in a pit of grief over a person who never even lived. Every time my mind trips back to this death, this loss, it strikes on empty, because there's nothing there to miss. This jellybean, lying on some toilet tissue – how can that sum up all my hopes and dreams for this child? How can it contain all my love without me even knowing ?

And how was I even supposed to tell Klay that I lost our baby ?

I had this underlying fear that he would deny me. Tell me I was lying. Tell me I was like every other female that threw themselves at him for the look of fame and power of money. Tell me to go fuck myself while he was still happy with Hannah.

But I wanted to tell him and I didn't know how.

I knew if I told him I would be a crying mess.

I looked over at the window , watching the sun burn the snow into water. I was that snow. I was stuck in this happy life on the ground before the temperature raised and I couldn't take the heat. Piece by piece, I was shrinking and my layers melted out.

And all I needed was the cold temperature and more snow to come back to build me back again.