Paul is at it again.
All night kicking and squirming. I swear it's impossible to sleep next my wife anymore. Just months ago I was the happiest man there was, and now I can't muster to look at my wife without tears swelling in my eyes.
We had enough money, we had a house, we bought a dog to practice on. I was ready; we were ready. When she decided to tell me, my heart sunk. Me... a Dad. The idea of playing catch or having a tea party. It made my life so much brighter. Going to work and having the guys pat me on the back, I felt like I had shed the darkness that had taken over my life. I felt new and fresh like a snake peeling out of it's skin and feeling the warm sun fall.
Everyday when I returned home, I was greeted by my beautiful wife; glowing and barley touching the ground as she walked.
"I want to name it after my grandfather", she told me one dinner. "Which one? The Vietnam one or the Korean War one?" "Papa Paul, my Mom's Dad." "Oh? And what if it's a girl?" "Well then we could name her Pauline, after your mom."
To be honest, we could have named it anything and I would still would have felt the unconditioned, free flowing love for my unborn kin.
"Well, sounds like a plan," I kissed her cheek then her stomach; I remember.
After three months had passed, it was getting about time for the first trimester ultrasound and my wife had planned a beautiful, early baby shower.
My boys took me out the night of the shower for cigars and whiskey. I came home wobbling After I stumbled through the doorway, I saw the the presents. I broke down. That moment is the moment that any father can describe. The moment it really sinks in that you will have a kid. The moment when you feel some primitive accomplishment and pride. You have brought life into this desolate and bare universe. You have granted Earth matter, newly fashioned.
There, are on the floor of my house, I cried until I fell asleep dreaming of my baby, my child, my kid.
Strife comes to those who fall. Strife or Sorrow. I don't remember. I read it somewhere in the paper right about the time we had the ultrasound.
On the way to the hospital, my wife was beaming with light. She seemed as if she had the sun under her skin, and it was cracking through; trying to break free. She had already written the cards for the ultrasound pictures she would send out to cousins and old aunts even though this ultrasound was just a check up. We were only going to see a black blob of a baby, at most. It was soothing watching her her filled with some much joy. I had no one to send anything to, or anyone to call. My mother died of cancer and my father died of a heart attack. My wife had enough family for us both.
The nurse's face (I think her name was Cathy). Her eyes. I will never forget the feeling of watching that nurse's face go from laughing and freely talking to a sudden sunken and grim expression.
The ultrasound showed nothing but a uteruian back drop.
"Oh god. I'll be back"
"Is it the machine?" My wife asked as the nurse bolted out the door.
'What the hell is going on?' I thought.
A doctor came in and restarted the ultrasound. He pulled the screen away from my wife and I's view and looked deeply into it as he surveyed the outside of her stomach with the camera.
"Cathy can you leave us for a moment?"
The nurse left.
'What the fuck is happening right now?' I darted my eyes rapidly trying to figure out. 'It couldn't be a miscarriage there was nothing on the screen. There was nothing. Where is my child. Where?!'
"I have some unfortunate news..." he trailed off trying to leave us time to soak up the obvious tension in the room.
"Have you two ever heard of gestational trophoblastic disease?"
I hadn't. Neither had my wife. The doctor went on to explain that when two people who have an inherited gene for cancer create a baby there is a rare chance no baby is conceived, but instead a tumor is created. I didn't believe it. I couldn't.
A tumor.
That night we cried together. All I could think of was that I had created life and put this thing into my wife. The doctor said it was treatable but the procedure to extract the tumor would make my wife sterile. I would never hold my baby. I would never look into my son's eyes or hold my little girl's hand. I was promised bliss, and was granted the joy of it's forthcoming only to have bliss transform into betrayal and death as I reached for it.
Each face I broke the news to when they asked how 'the baby' was doing was just another spear through my side. It seemed some days the sun never rose and I spent hours in the dark. But what killed me most was my wife when I came home. She used to hover around the house beaming light. Now I returned home to her grey, in front of the television surrounded by packages of diapers and stuffed animals. We had cried all the tears we could and now we were left to wither away as our body's imploded with the lack of love.
The procedure to get that thing out of my wife was scheduled in two weeks. I had two weeks to curse God and drunkenly punch walls. I had two weeks to hate myself and ricochet mad thoughts around my skull. I had two weeks to watch my wife shrivel.
At nights she squirms because of the cramps. She never had them until we were told. Each night I listen to her grown and cry as that damned thing inside of her takes her femininity and soul. That piece of cancerous cells that I conceived. That monster, that demonic tab of flesh that I loved with all my world. Paul the killer. Paul the Vietnam Green Beret granddad who poisoned villages. Paul that cancer that killed my mom. Paul! Paul! To hell with the Earth! Paul!
Paul is at it again, taking my colorful world and staining it black and opaque. A ghost of a father loved unconditionally, I became. A ghost of a fool who loved freely, I am.