There’s no heartbeat

It’s day forty-three. I stare blankly at my journal, struggling to write the words. My therapist said I should write down my thoughts, set aside thirty minutes each day just scribbling away, get those thoughts out of my head and on to paper.

But my mind is blank.

All of the the ache is in my heart.

I lift my hand and rest my palm on my chest. I can feel my heartbeat. A certain, consistent rhythm of ups and downs, give and take, the universal signal of life. And it’s the same beat my mother heard for the first time thirty-some years ago, the same beat that excited her to tears, the same beat that echoed inside of her for ten months until she gave birth to me.

My heart sinks deeper at the thought of this. I can hear the three little words echo in my head. Those three little words the ultrasound technician said, they clung to the air, dense like moisture in a hot shower. I recall that memory, suffocating inside of me. I hold my breath, and I’m suffocating along with it.

Jolted by the pain clambering up my chest, I finally have something to write. I pick up my pen and lay down the tip gently. There’s a truth I haven’t been facing honestly. There were four little words, not three.

“There’s no heartbeat, anymore.”

It’s the, ‘anymore,’ that’s killing me slowly.