I placed my feet into slippers laid beside my bed. With my dad on one side and Patricia on the other, I tentatively stood. I wasn’t sure if the ache in my back was from the accident or sleeping on a bed for so long. My casted arm was in a sling. I held my hand over my stomach. That act caused a lump to form in my throat. It was an action I’d done many times to protect my bump. Now it was to protect the wound of a C-section.
I lowered myself into a wheelchair and a nurse pushed. I was grateful it wasn’t a porter. We rode the lift in silence, down a few floors, and when the doors slid open my heart started to pound. I gripped the arms of the wheelchair, thankful for it, I wasn’t sure my legs would have held me up.
I’d cried over the past week, so I’d been told. I’d screamed and been sedated. I’d fought, pulled the cannula from my hand, apparently. But those tears, those screams had come from nightmares and drugs.
Trey lay on the bed; a sheet covered him to his neck. Hannah, in a cot beside him, was dressed in white, angelic and serene. Blonde hair covered her head. I didn’t know who to go to first. I pushed myself from the chair, I placed my hands on the bed beside Trey’s head and I broke. I completely broke.
“You can pick her up, Dani,” I heard the nurse say.
I picked up my baby but she felt like a doll, a porcelain doll. I held her to me, hoping to breathe in her scent, she smelled clinical, not like my baby should smell. I laid her on the bed beside Trey. I stroked the side of his face, and then her hair.
“They need to be buried together,” I whispered.
The tears that flowed were my soul leaving my body. I watched it. I watched my soul climb on that bed and curl into Trey’s side. I watched its arm reach over and cradle my baby. I died inside that day.
The sobs that left my mouth were the last sounds my lungs, my voice box, would produce.
Chapter Two
“We are gathered here to celebrate the lives of…”
I looked up at the vicar standing in front of me. Two caskets, one oak, one white, sat to the side of me.
Celebrate! She hadn’t the fucking chance to live, so what the fuck are we celebrating?
Those words were screamed in my head. I hadn’t been able to utter a word since that day, three weeks prior, when I’d seen Trey and my baby, cold and lifeless, in a morgue.
I was angry, I was bitter. The truck driver had been charged, death by dangerous driving, a fine, a ban, was all he’d received. A fucking driving ban! I’d thrown up at the trial when that sentence had been passed.
The vicar droned on, I tuned out. He hadn’t known Trey or Hannah. He didn’t know me. He spoke about Trey’s life in the U.S. before he came to England. He spoke about the angels that had decided they needed my baby. If I could make sound, it would have been a snort at that one. There was no God, there were no angels—if there was, what a sadistic bastard he was.
Patricia took hold of my arm. I blinked as I looked at her. She gave me a small smile and a nod. I turned my head to the side. Pallbearers stood beside Trey’s coffin, looking at me, as if waiting for some instruction. My brother had Hannah’s coffin laid across his arms. It looked like a toy. I stood, keeping eye contact with my brother. I reached out, my arms straight in front of me.
Christian frowned. I opened my mouth; no sound emerged. Then he understood. He laid my baby’s coffin on my arms. I was going to carry her; she was mine. I turned and walked down the aisle to the sound of sobs.
I was glad I couldn’t speak; I just wished I couldn’t hear. My voice was trapped inside my head making one sound only—screams.
A pallbearer took Hannah from me and laid her in the back of a hearse. Trey was laid beside her. We drove the short distance to the grave in the cemetery Trey and I would walk around, fascinated by the inscriptions on the gravestones.
Trey and Hannah were buried together, as I’d wanted. They were laid to rest in the small cemetery near the house my dad owned, on a cliff overlooking the sea.
When the burial was over, I walked away. I walked to the edge of the cliff, wrapping my jacket tight around me as a bitter wind blew off the English Channel. Dark clouds rolled over the horizon, the sea was angry. It matched my mood, and for that, I thanked Mother Nature. She was as pissed off as I was.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing there, looking out as waves crashed against the cliff. I felt a hand on my shoulder, before the arm pulled me into a firm chest. I breathed in the familiar scent of my dad. I swallowed back the tears, but it was just too hard.
“Cry, baby, cry,” he whispered, his words caught on the wind and were whisked around us.
I gripped his jacket, my fists curled into the material. I opened my mouth to let out the silent sobs. My body shook with utter despair.
I’d left London the day I’d been released from hospital. I didn’t go home, I was driven straight to Cornwall. Christian had packed up my house, Helen, his wife, had organised all the baby items to be taken to the local charity shop. I imagined that task had brought her to her knees; bearing in mind she was pregnant herself. I hadn’t been able to see her, I’d shut her out, and she held no malice towards me for that.
“Let’s get you inside,” Dad said. He turned me gently and we walked towards the house.
Hushed voices floated around, mixed with stilted soft laughter. The house was full of people, most I knew, and some I didn’t. Patricia walked towards me, she took me from my dad’s arms and ushered me to the sofa. I obediently sat. I was thankful she took the seat beside me and held my hand. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want all those people to be there. I kept my head bowed. No one came and spoke to me, everyone knew of my inability to speak. I guessed they just didn’t know how to deal with it.
How do you have a one-sided conversation with someone so broken their hands shook too much to even write a response?
I’d given up on the pad and pen I was supposed to carry around. I didn’t invite conversation full stop. Other than to sit on the cliff, I didn’t leave the house, there was no need to communicate with anyone, other than my dad and Patricia.
As the afternoon wore on, the anti-depressants I’d taken started to work. My eyelids began to droop. I slept more hours each day and night than I’d ever had. I’d been told it was my body’s way of allowing my mind to heal. I was hoping I was dying, that I wouldn’t wake up one morning to pop those little white pills. I was longing to be reunited with Trey and Hannah.
I felt an arm wrap under mine and I was lifted to my feet. I think I was carried to my bedroom, the room I’d slept in as a child. I didn’t remember my feet touching the wooden stairs.
My shoes were removed and I curled on my bed. Christian, my twin, the other half of the non-me, pulled a comforter from the chair by the window. He placed it over me before climbing on the bed himself and pulling me into his arms. I was beyond crying at that point. I was beyond fighting to live.
I closed my eyes, thanking the pills for emptying my mind. I let myself sink into the blackness and I slept.
I slept on and off for the next week, or maybe it was more. I ate when food was placed in front of me, but I didn’t taste one morsel. I ate to please my dad, Patricia, no other reason. I’d have happily starved myself.
The day Patricia had to leave, to return to the U.S., was a day I felt I lost more of Trey. Her voice, although feminine, reminded me of him. The accent, her mannerisms, kept that connection. With her gone, that last thread to my husband was severed.