It felt like all the lights in her world had been turned off, everything was dark. The baby blues hit hard. She curled up on her bed at the hotel for days. Everything hurts. Her soul ached and nothing can make her feel better.
Her breasts were leaking milk, her whole body swollen, the wound from the C-section was painful but there was no baby. The worst thing was there was no explanation to why it had happened, one minute it was there, healthy and fine, the next it was gone. One minute they were planning to welcome a new person into their lives, the next was a funeral.
She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to bury a tiny casket with her child in it. What was once growing inside her body was going to rot in the ground.
Gabriel and Perry took care of the arrangement and said their goodbyes to tiny baby Kendall Patricia Love, the name they put on the tombstone.
“Can you stay here for awhile? She needs the both of us here … and to tell you the truth, it’s hard for me too …” Gabriel asked Perry.
“Of course … I’ll be here for as long as it takes.”
“Thank you,” he patted him on the arms. It was hard for him too, he had to cope with the loss of his first child and to juggle his business at the same time, not to mention to console Jamie’s broken heart that seemed to get worse by the day.
His employees didn’t dare to ask a thing about it, other than the words “I’m sorry,” no one said anything to the grieving couple. They did their best to provide them with everything they needed, quietly, sometimes without even being seen.
Perry stayed by Jamie’s side 24 hours a day after the funeral. She wasn’t saying anything. Most of the time she just cried. Perry tried to persuade her to eat, she refused.
She only gets out of bed to go to the toilet, Perry insisted that she shouldn’t lock the door, then she would go back to bed and sulk, and cried herself to sleep. It went on for 6 straight days.
That was when she finally decided to clean up, took a warm bath, washed her hair, got dressed and sat on the dining chair to try something decent to eat.
Perry smiled, he sat across from her and saw a hint of hope in her eyes. Hope that maybe in time, she will feel better. “We can do this baby, you can do this … you always do,” Perry held her hand firmly, he too was still crying sometimes. She started putting food in her mouth.
“My turtles are ready to be released,” she said softly.
Perry nodded, “Is that what you want to do?”
She nodded, “Can you ask Gabriel if he wants to join?”
“Of course … he’d been worried about you … it’s been hard for him too.”
She kept eating and didn’t respond.
They went to the conservation that afternoon, the three of them. Some of the first batch of hatchlings were old enough to be released back to the ocean. They each got a bucket and put some turtles in it, all the other crew did the same thing and they walked towards the beach.
They tilted the bucket so the turtles could come out. The turtles then made their way to the water with their tiny feet wobbled on the sand. They were crawling further away from her, they were leaving her.
After the months she spent nesting them, protecting them and cared for them, they were ready to go back to where they belong … without her, not looking back, as if they knew it was the direction they were supposed to go.
Their tiny steps slowly touched the water until they finally waded, pushed against the subtle wave, swimming away into the vast ocean. Their time together has passed. It was time for their next phase of life, it was time to move on. For Jamie too.
She cried, buried her face in Gabriel’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed the top of her head. Perry came over and hugged her from behind.
Releasing the turtles became something else entirely. It was a reminder that life must go on, no matter how painful letting go something you cared for so deeply, our time is limited and sometimes you have to let go before you can begin again.
**********
How do you go back to what it was before after something like that?
You can’t. At best, she had to re-learn how to live without a baby in mind. What was once unplanned had become a new priority and now she was back without a plan. With a broken body, a broken spirit and a whole life ahead of her … to what? She had to figure it all out again.
She was so occupied with her own grief and sorrow, she forgot that Gabriel and Perry had to go through the same thing in their own way. She tried to go back to conservation and busied herself with new batches, new campaigns, documentation of her progress. Anything to take her mind off of what she had lost, a life she was yet to begin.
Perry returned to Lancaster to catch up with the work he left behind. Gabriel was nowhere to be found. He spent most of his time in his room and only came out to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with Jamie.
It was back to that, and she started to think maybe it was all because of the baby. What they had the past month or so was all for the baby.
She stared vacantly at Gabriel’s flat expression as he ate his dinner in silence. His mind was somewhere else, his heart probably went along with it.
“What do we do now, Gabriel?”
He looked up to her and thought of a response, “What do you want to do, Jamie?” he sounded cold, formal.
“I need to heal properly … I need to get better,” she said.
He nodded, “How do you want to do it?”
“There are some things I have to do at the conservation this week … and then I need to go back to Lancaster.”
Gabriel looked surprised, he didn’t expect her to ask for a break, “For how long?”
She shrugged, “For a month … I feel so out of place … I need to get myself together … and then I’ll be back to finish the program.”
He held her hand, “If that’s what you think you need … than you should do it.”
He wasn’t stopping her. On one side, she needed to go back to a familiar place to get back her sanity, re-organize her mind, and re-examine her life. On the other side, this man in front of her had become a new familiarity to her. She was hoping he would stop her, and asked her to stay and be with him.
They were going through the same loss, the same tragedy, at least that’s what she thought. There’s a tiny voice inside her wanting him to ask her to go through it together.
They both have been solo fighters for years, and this wasn’t any different. They kept to themselves and silently went through their grief alone in their own spaces. Of all those months they’ve known each other, it was still not enough to keep them together after their loss.