Tears

The pain, my God, the pain! At times it was excruciating and other times it was a dull constant ache. He was used to pain: football injuries, biking accidents, tooth aches, the list went on and on. He had known physical pain and was comfortable with it. He could deal with. A couple Tylenol or maybe some high powered Hydrocodone and hope that it would be over soon was all he had ever needed before. But this was a new pain he had never felt before. This was an internal pain. Not anatomical in origin, even though it had manifested itself into a non stop headache he went to bed with and woke up with. This pain was much deeper than that. This pain hurt him at the very core of his existence.

It was such a happy time for the young couple. They were high school sweethearts that married, started careers and had a family of 3 to their domestic resume. When news of baby #2 came they could not have been happier. The news promised a well rounded family of four and the long term dreams they had had from such tender young ages were about to realized. It was as if God had parted the clouds and poured a double portion of his love down on the young couple. They thanked the Heavenly Father daily for His blessing.

The drive to the doctor's office was delightful. Crisp fall air and not a cloud in the sky was the weather that morning. Once there he helped his pregnant wife out of the car and into the high rise medical building. Pride beamed from his countenance. He was going to be a daddy again. It's the best job in the whole wide world, nothing else like it. "Let's get this checkup out of the way and then I'm taking Tracy out to a fancy restaurant for lunch." That was all that was on his mind as he walked the long, white tile covered hallway.

"Mr. Lynn, could I see you and your wife back here please?" The doctor's voice was crisp and professional as he motioned them to take a seat while he hung a couple charts on the lightscreen behind his desk.

"Mr. and Mrs. Lynn, the baby is progressing as normal but I have some concerns." The tone of his voice had changed slightly from earlier and the face of the tall, slender medical professional had visible lines across the forehead as he removed his glasses and took a seat in the high backed leather chair.

"Mrs. Lynn, you have a condition known as Placenta Previa. This is very serious. There is a very good chance that this pregnancy will not go to term. Let me choose my words carefully......Mrs. Lynn, the umbilical cord, the lifeline between you and your baby is positioned so that the babies full weight is resting on it...and,...it's slowly bleeding. Mrs. Lynn, the spotting you have been having similar to a menstrual cycle is your baby slowly bleeding....possibly...to death."

It was as if someone had sucked all the air out of the room as the doctor proceeded with his counseling. "There is more to be concerned about. With expecting mothers the link between mother and child is a shared blood supply. Mrs. Lynn, this means you are slowly bleeding, and if the umbilical cord detaches under the weight of the placenta there is a very serious possibility of hemorrhaging. With the bleeding being internal it severely raises the difficulty in stopping a hemorrhage before serious injury can occur to both the fetus and the mother. Mr. and Mrs. Lynn, to put it in plain English, any type of fall or sudden jerk could cause you and the baby to bleed to death before anything could be done. Further complicating this is the fact that as the pregnancy progresses and the weight of the fetus increases the chances of this happening grow more and more probable."

It may have been the shock of the moment or the gut feeling that he had to stay strong in front of his sobbing wife but he holds himself together in the office and on the drive home. He prays silently about the situation for the rest of the evening. His faith in God still intact as he faces the worst news he had ever heard in his entire 26 year life.

Standing firm on his faith he keeps reassuring himself in his mind. This is the child they had prayed and asked God for, this is the child who's news of conception caused him to stand up in front of the Church and testify of God's blessings as he had done with their first born. There was no way God was going to let anything happen to this baby or his wife.

Tracy was following doctor's orders and moves in with her mom so that she could have 24 hour supervision. If she went to the hospital their daughter could not stay with her and he still had to work to pay the bills and couldn't be with her all the time so this was the best solution. She wishes he could be with them but it's an hours drive to work.

As a couple weeks pass the internal bleeding continued to worsen. So does the doctor's out look on the situation. The changing of her sanitary napkins grows more and more frequent. The option of terminating the pregnancy is being discussed more regularly with each passing day. God forbid it come to that.

With his wife at her mother's he is living alone and has more time to think. Is God going to take this baby? Is his wife going to bleed to death? Can he raise a daughter alone? His mind is constantly flooded with morbid thoughts of losing Tracy and the baby. They were high school sweethearts, went to three proms together, lost their virginity to each other. In his eyes there is not another person in the world like Tracy. She loved him when nobody else did. She was his girl back when the other kids at school made fun and teased him about his clothes, his weight, the beat up car he drove. She loves him. She looks past all that superficial stuff and loves him for who he is, not his social status. She made life fun. She gives him confidence. She makes him feel good about himself. In his heart of hearts he knows no one will ever love him to the degree that she loves him. The thoughts of that being taken away is to much for him to handle.

He is spending so much time pleading with God in prayer only to see things go from bad to worse. He had been crying himself to sleep for weeks. Every morning he wakes up with his head hurting a little worse than it did the night before. His boss at work is continually on him for his loss of productivity. Every direction he turns seems to offer him more pain to deal with.

How could God bless me with a wife and family and then take that away? Is He not hearing my prayers? Does He not feel my pain? Is He punishing me for actually considering abortion even under the circumstances? This is my life on the line here, he thinks. If Tracy dies I don't want to live! I can't raise a daughter on my own. I don't want to be single father. I can't go on like this.

Try as he might he can not escape the horrible thoughts controlling his mind. He has even stopped visiting Tracy at her mother's. He is making up excuses about being sick and not wanting to get her sick in the condition she is already in. He just can not look at her like that. He don't want her to see the lines in his face and hear the desperation in his voice. He is afraid she will see his vulnerability and love him less because of it. He can't bare to let that happen. Somehow he manages to sound normal enough when he talks to her on the phone but he can never hold back the tears when he hangs up.

He knows that his wife and child are going to die and take the only reason he has for living with them. Yes, he has a daughter he dearly loves already but the depression in his mind reasons that she would be better off being raised by her grandparents or in some other loving home with a mother who was more equipped to nurture a young woman into adulthood. He would be a lousy father anyway, without Tracy to stay on him about giving baths and washing clothes. He knows she makes him what he is and her love gives him the confidence in himself he needs just to be the mediocre father he is. If she was gone how good of a father could he be? Self pity blinding him to the truths that he is a very capable parent that can handle any situation.

The longing to die before morning came is the last emotion his conscious entertains before his aching body surrenders to sleep every night. He is done with praying before bed. He is done praying period. What is the use anyway? God did not care. God sees the situation and can step in but He doesn't. He does not take comfort in his faith any longer. The very things God had blessed him with He is threatening to take away. How could he have ever had any faith at all in a God like that? He wonders.

He is angry. Easily angry enough to kill. If God, who had caused him this pain, would only manifest Himself in the form of a man in front of him he knows he would kill him for this. No doubt in his mind. His left arm starts tingling at times when he thinks about it. He knows he is having a light stroke but doesn't care. If God is going to take his life like this then he is ready to face Him.

He decides he is done with crying, he is done with all this wait and see stuff. He is going to talk to Tracy about terminating the pregnancy. If that's what it takes to ensure his wife's life then so be it. He is pressured past the influence of his religious convictions. He is done with God anyway, to Hell with what his church thinks. He doesn't give a damn anymore. They aren't the ones going through this living hell. He wants his wife beside him as long as he lives. God and eternity can find somebody else to mess with, someone else's life to destroy, he thinks.

He goes to his mother-in-law's and begs and pleads with Tracy until she agrees to make an appointment to have the procedure done, he kisses her gently and then he goes home feeling slightly relieved. Since God is not going to fix this problem he would let modern medicine do it.

For the next couple of days instead of growing more confident in their decision to terminate the pregnancy he grew more uneasy. He was still having the headaches and his blood pressure made his extremities tingle from time to time. An appointment with a planned parenthood counselor was coming up and then after that the taking, no, the destruction of the baby would take place. Something that was once un-thinkable and out of the question was about to become a reality. He had laid down his convictions and given in to the pressure. Where prayer had failed he would let a doctor take over. He was done dealing with God but God was not done dealing with him.

Earlier that night he had confided in a close friend about the decision he had pressured Tracy into making. His friend assured him it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. Even with that approval he could not convince himself he was doing the right thing. He went to bed feeling guilt and remorse for the things he had set in motion.

A pounding headache wakes him up during the night. The throbbing makes his stomach feel like he is going to throw up. He rolls out of bed on his way to the bathroom for a Hydrocodone and just stops on the edge of the bed. He thinks about his wife and their little girl. He remembers the good times they have had as a family as well as the hard times. He thinks about the times when their daughter had been sick and Tracy was gone on business and he had to step up and take care of the sick child himself. He thinks about all the midnight feedings and diaper changing he done when she was just a baby. He thinks about tucking her in bed and how he loved saying night time prayers with her. He remembers how when they prayed together it would always chase away her bad dreams. He thinks about the unborn child scheduled to be terminated. This situation was much worse than any bad dream though. Could prayer chase it away? He rolls off the bed and kneels down in prayer. Tears soak the bedsheets as he looks for strength to petition God just one last time before he severs that relationship. He makes up his mind that they are not going to have an abortion.

With a voice barely audible and cracking from emotion he utters a prayer: "Father, I can't take anymore. I turn this over to You. We are not going to terminate this pregnancy. I'm am going to trust You. I'm putting this in Your hands. Whatever comes from this I will accept as Your Divine will. Amen." With that prayer said his headache ceased instantly and he felt a warm presence as if a hand had been laid on his shoulder to comfort him and he knew in his heart of hearts that everything was going to be OK regardless of what happened.

The End.