CHAPTER SIX
GOODBYE, I LOVE YOU

            “Give him to me,” I pleaded.  Reaching, aching, yet trying to hold back my own urge to push the nurses aside and unhook him myself.  For fear that Jakob would pull on his IV lines or remove his life saving ventilator tube, straps had secured his ring-sized arms to the bedside since his birth. “Hurry, hurry, hurry” I exclaimed, frustrated at the nurses careful untangling speed.  Desperation set in to every cell of my being as I watched in horror as his heart rate continued to decline.  He was dying, “Oh, my GOD! Give him to me!”

            Finally, the staff managed to clear the massive medical paraphernalia from my precious baby for the first time in his life.  I grabbed him, held him to my breast begging, “Please God please.”  Raising my eyes to the monitor again and again, with a will so strong as to stop it, but it kept ticking 58, 47, 49, and 38.  I had watched the monitors for weeks I knew what it all meant.  I wanted to smash them.  Make it go away my mind kept throbbing, without a word spoken.  “Did we do everything?” I shouted at one of the neonatal intensive care nurses.  The vertical streaks of makeup on her face told the truth. 

             My throat choked with the scene. I looked around and noted that we were now hovered behind a screen, hiding his death from all the other parents struggling for hope.  Jakob’s lifeless body lay in my arms.  He was so warm and soft.  I had waited for this moment; no-no not this moment, a moment like other mothers whose dreams came true.  I was living this nightmare, a horrible gut-wrenching devastating pain like no other.

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