Nothing was allowed to go wrong. Not in our little paradise amongst the trees. We lived at the peak of a cul-de-sac, when you came up the road it seemed as if we were the kings of our block, sitting pretty on our central throne. And with my husband as the president of the HOA, we practically did rule the neighborhood. The grass couldn’t exceed 3 inches, fences had to stop at the bellybutton, and absolutely no loud noises after 10 pm (yes even on the Fourth of July). This was our way of life and we loved it, our community hadn’t suffered an accident or issue in years. The last one took place 4 years ago, when the Wheeler’s dog ran in front of the Bishop’s Tahoe. The mutt died instantly, and the damage to the black SUV was minimal. Yet some slight damages to property could hardly be seen as a catastrophe.

All in all- our life was perfect, until I became pregnant. My husband and I had been trying for some time, but my body just seemed to reject his. We fixed our diets, began working out regularly, we even resorted to seeing a doctor. He told us our bodies were perfectly healthy, we just needed to keep trying. So we did, and he was right. Some time passed and it finally stuck, I was pregnant!

The term started out normal, some nausea here and there. The strangest cravings you could imagine, I would pair spicy nuggets and pickles; cheese whiz had to go on top of everything. As my belly grew so did my excitement for our future child. I could feel my child moving, growing inside of me. Until one night I was thrashed out of my sleep by a twisting feeling in my stomach. I stumbled to the bathroom, reeling in pain. It was as if some hoodlum was rolling a cigarette with my intestines, his dirty hands poisoning my ever twisting insides. I was bleeding, and not just the normal spotting, this was thick, dark coagulated blood. There was nothing else to do, I screamed for my husband and we fled to the emergency room.

Standing around me in my hospital gown, the doctor and nurse examined every piece of me. They flooded my system with liquids and light pain killers while putting me through tests. Time seemed to slow under the bright fluorescent light. I could feel the life in me calling out to be saved while nurses rushed in and out. Finally, the doctor came back. His cheeks were sunken in from a long day of disasters, his face grey under the white light. He stood there for a moment before pulling the veil of professionalism over his face. The baby was going to die, and so was I if they didn’t remove the child. Unless I wanted to die along with my secondary beating heart, I had to go through with the procedure.

It was laid out so simply, yet my mind had crumbled under the weight of the life inside me. How could I go on after leaving this child to die alone? At least if I left the baby in me, they would have someone to cradle them in our last moments. I looked over to see my husband gripping my hand with all his remaining strength. He was shaking on his knees at my bedside, crying about two lives he saw as his own. But he had no understanding of what it took to carry a life, to call it your own, and then to have your own body refuse to carry it forward.

I went through the procedure. While the doctors hands gripped my body and their cold metal tools scraped against my being all I could do was tell my baby I loved them. I needed them to know how much our short time together meant to me. That it wasn’t for nothing, that they won’t be alone forever.

They discharged me after I had some time to recover. The drive home was silent, I just watched out the window, not fully processing the weight of my now empty womb. I felt dull, like a useless blade. Our grand white home with its perfectly level grass and quaint fence felt like a placeholder for something real. As if my husband and I were dried out corpses holding up a poster that said everything was okay. It didn’t take long for word to get out. Even for those who didn’t hear about it directly they noticed a change in my body, in my behaviors. Yet, they held no sympathy. They kept their distance, treating me like a plague ridden rat. The women of our neighborhood only held my name with disdain. How could I just give up on our child? How could I just let them take it from me? My husband had to step down from his presidency, fully removing himself from the HOA. Our home went from the royal castle to the ground zero of a haunting. The kids would ride outside on their bikes trying to catch a peek of my thinning body through the windows. It was all supposed to be perfect, nothing was allowed to go wrong. So rather than reach out, we were exiled. We sold our house not long after, and forever left behind our little perfect life.