Chapter 3.2 — The Moment Everything Changed
A note to readers: this passage describes pregnancy loss.
“I’m sorry, Claudia…”
The words that followed shattered the world I had been living in only moments before. The doctor spoke softly, carefully choosing her words, but I barely heard them. She explained that the baby’s development had stopped. There was no heartbeat. No movement. No life.
I stared at her in complete disbelief. Nothing made sense. Just minutes earlier, she had measured every tiny part of his body. She had reassured me that everything looked perfect. She had told me I was carrying a healthy baby boy. How could everything change in a matter of minutes?
My mind immediately began searching for another explanation. There had to be a mistake. There simply had to be. This wasn’t just any doctor. She was considered the best gynecologist in the city. Women waited months for appointments with her. Through family connections and a great deal of luck, I had managed to become her patient. I trusted her completely. And perhaps because I trusted her so much, my first reaction was not grief. It was disbelief.
How could someone so experienced fail to notice something so important for almost twenty minutes? I kept replaying the examination in my mind. She had measured his arms. His legs. His head. She had even told me he was a boy. How could she describe him in such detail and only later realize that his heart was no longer beating?
The questions flooded my mind faster than I could process them. I wanted her to repeat the examination. I wanted another doctor. Another machine. Another answer. Anything except the one she was giving me.
The room felt strangely distant, as if I were observing the scene from somewhere outside my own body. I remember looking at the ultrasound screen one last time. Only minutes earlier, it had been a window into the future. Now it felt like a goodbye.
The doctor continued speaking, explaining that these situations happen more often than people realize. She reassured me that I was young and would likely have healthy pregnancies in the future. I heard every word. And yet I heard none of them. How could she be talking about future pregnancies when I was still trying to understand what had happened to this one?
I wasn’t thinking about another baby. I was thinking about my baby. The little boy I had known for fifteen minutes. The little boy whose future I had already begun imagining. The little boy I had been carrying beneath my heart. The little boy I would never meet.
From Seven Souls, by Anrona. Unpublished English translation — full manuscript available on request.
