A married couple sat crying in a hospital room. The husband had crumpled up into the corner of a small folding chair, tears streaming in torrents of agony down his cheeks as small sobs escaped from his painfully pursed lips. His built physique and intelligent features were overshadowed by the weakness of intense grief to the point where he remained in the temporal world only as a shadow of his former self. His disheveled appearance was worsened by his lack of sleep and any semblance of personal hygiene in the last day. A thickening layer of facial hair had grown to adorn his face, but it did nothing to hide the pain in his deeply ringed eyes or the sorrow in his twisted frown. His shirt lay haphazardly untucked from his waistband, and the stains of replenishing rivers of tears gave him the appearance of someone who has given up on everything in their life. A few feet from where this man sat convulsing with the pains of sadness, his wife sat upright on the room’s uncomfortable bed. Rather than crying, she merely sat there, a dead look of disbelief consuming her countenance. Knotted strands of unkempt hair framed a small figure rendered even more petite by the pain that tore through her soul. Moist, bloodshot eyes and a fiery red nose told the story of a sleepless night while bloodied cuticles revealed her terrible angst. Her skin had taken on a bleak, unhealthy pallor in the hours following the birth, and it had only just begun to return to its natural color after nearly a day had passed. A hospital gown covered most of her body, but it could not hide the shameful lump of her belly. Splattered with blood and other entrails, the gore covering the gentle blue gown merely added to the haunted, defeated appearance of this worn woman. She had birthed a stillborn child.

A mere 24 hours ago, an onlooker of the couple would not be able to know that such terrible tragedy lay in their imminent future. Rather, the wife and husband spent the day before finishing up the new room in their house for the baby. Although they were not the richest of families, that did not stop them from pouring every last bit of their artistic spirit into their former laundry room. In the months leading up to this fateful week, a routine developed in their lifestyles. When the man and woman would get home from their jobs at their small toy store across the street, they would immediately take off the properly collared uniform shirts and exchange them for much looser, more comfortable alternatives. After changing, they would eat a small snack and play a simple yet meaningful game of backgammon at their worn kitchen table. They would then do a bit of cleaning throughout their compact living space and, finally, get to work on the newest addition to their house: the baby’s room. While the couple was anxious to finally have their child, they had refrained from finding out the gender of their unborn offspring until the day of the birth; living with this suspense made their lives much more interesting.

After serious deliberation, the couple decided on painting the little corner room within their sparse house a gentle shade of mossy green. Dark, shadowy foliage of roughly painted trees adorned the walls in flourishes that spoke of hours of effort, patience, and love. Swirls of beautiful vines and flowers and grass blended together to create a bucolic setting of serenity for their future child. Within this small space, the couple managed to cram a worn cradle and a pile of brand new toys. The crib, having been used by the wife, had many years under its belt. Chipped white paint covered a smoothed, skeletal carcass, and a small cushion- sacrificed from the only good couch in their tiny apartment sat in the center. In sharp contrast to this aged piece of furniture, the toys sparkled and shined in their untainted state. As the owners of a toy store, the couple had guaranteed access to certain children’s toys, and they eagerly took advantage of this fact. Cars, Legos, and figurines lay in a massive mound that had accumulated over a period of many months. Thus the room was organized, with a withering bed for their newborn surrounded by a blooming bed of gifts and games.
As her due date approached, the wife began to notice her stomach swelling; it was the most magical thing she had ever experienced. Having a living being inside of you, feeling it kick, knowing that you will love it with all of your heart no matter what; these are the elements of motherhood that bring smiles of wonder to the faces of anyone expecting. With every pulse of movement from within her plump bump, a joyous euphoria would overtake her and a gleeful grin would spread across her face. As a bystander, her husband was only able to experience this happiness from a diluted perspective; however, he still fell in love with the little kicking being growing inside of his wife. With both of them so infatuated with their unborn baby, the child’s prenatal death became an excruciating tragedy.

Nearly 26 weeks into her pregnancy, the wife went into labor. It happened while they were working on a Tuesday afternoon. One moment the wife was helping a young boy pick out a superhero action figure, and the next she was lying on the ground, rocking in a fetal position as knives of ripe, sharp pain assaulted her senses. Quickly closing the toy store, her husband carried her to their compact car behind the store and carefully lowered her into the back seat. With his wife secured, he dropped any pretense of caution and sped away towards the hospital. Screams escaped from his wife’s lips as they arrived at the emergency room. Whimpers and yelps were torn from her mouth as the husband carried her in and placed her on a stretcher. Her contractions built into a crescendo of agony before settling into a calm that would again give way to the Hell of labor pains. This cycle went on for hours after the nurses had brought her into a secluded room.
In a private conversation, the doctor on call explained how there was an increased chance of a miscarriage because of the extremely early labor and the unforeseen amount of pain that the birth was causing the incapacitated woman within the room. He also explained how he had never seen a case of this nature and would do some research to try and figure out what was wrong with the woman inside. The husband nearly fainted. His sight faded into grey; his mouth failed to produce words; his heart dropped and shattered into millions of pieces. The clinically sympathetic professional gave him a slight pat on the shoulder and returned to the care of his laboring wife within the nearby room. The forlorn man slowly leaned back against one of the pristine white walls of the hallway and slid down until he had reached the floor. With pains of agitation consuming his features and a fatalistic deadness in his eyes, the husband sat, curled into a fetal position, as he listened to the screams of his wife and thought about how he was supposed to deal with the information that he had just been given. Eventually, he got to his feet and dejectedly trudged into the room where his wife was in the process of squeezing a baby out of her. He went to the corner of the room and sat down in a small folding chair and watched as his wife birthed a stillborn child.

The actual birth took place relatively quickly. With a final cry of anguish, a roughly child-shaped lump was thrust from the wife’s body and into the arms of the waiting doctor. Instantly, a look of relief overtook her face and her screams subsided. However, the cries of a newborn child did not fill the void left behind. As both husband and wife looked at each other with frenzied, terrified expressions, the doctor and a group of nurses stood to the side of the room trying to revive the small mass that would have been a crying child. Eventually, their efforts subsided. The nurses stood crying in the corner as the recently swaddled infant was brought to the bed where the couple waited. With a deep sigh, the doctor proceeded to ruin their lives. A grimace overtook his features as he told the weary, innocent pair of adults that their child had been born too soon and had not fully developed its body systems. The wife buried her head into the chest of her husband as the doctor told them that they had only an hour with the corpse before they had to take it to the morgue to be put on ice.

It was a girl. They had a girl. The swaddled bundle of love and joy that they had seen in their dreams had been replaced by the symbol of death and pain that now lay in the wife’s lap. Tears of anguish dripped slowly from their eyes as they rocked their unnamed baby girl into an eternal sleep. By the time a nurse came to pick up the body, the couple had managed to compose themselves enough to watch their child go without bawling.
There the couple sat, shocked, crying intermittently for hours after the baby was taken. The wife developed a fever after around 24 hours had passed from birth; while the doctor claimed that it was probably just a temporary side effect of grief and giving birth, the husband thought otherwise. The wife's condition deteriorated rapidly over the next two days. Staying in the hospital, her pallor greyed and sweat poured from her pores. Her luscious hair became increasingly scraggly and patches of fiery red appeared on her cheeks and forehead. After three days of this, the doctor recognized her condition for what it truly was: postpartum infection. In an erudite manner that made it hard for the couple to really understand, he described how, after a miscarriage, a woman can sometimes develop a deadly bacterial infection in the uterus. The husband could only focus on one word: deadly. Over the next week, the extremely ill woman began to experience the other side effects of her puerperal infection. Each day, her discharge would get worryingly discolored and odiferous. Each day, a worsening pain would consume the lower part of her abdomen. Each day, her life force would fade a little more. After nearly a week in intensive care and hours of effort to remedy her on behalf of the doctors, the woman died peacefully in a sedated, empty sleep.

A deadness overtook her husband when he saw the monitor stop beating. However, only a single tear would fall out of his bloodshot eyes; he had run out. Heavy hearted and with a massive hospital bill under his belt, the widower returned to his quiet apartment. After opening the door to his apartment and a bottle of whiskey, the dreary man pulled up a small folding chair from the kitchen and sat down in the middle of the baby’s room. Shades of green still shrouded the entirety of the space in an overly natural atmosphere. Careful not to disturb the state of the room, he slowly got up from his seat and trudged over to the cradle. Taunting him with thoughts of happiness, the cradle began to rock with a slight creak as he pushed it. He reached down to the nearby pile of toys and picked up a small baby doll. Lifting it to his scruffy face, he gave it a slight kiss on its smooth, plastic head and placed it snuggly into the crib. With a final look around his former home- a place of love, happiness, and tragedy- the man opened the door and left for the last time.