Page 90 of Dirty Hearts

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Seven years ago…

From the minute I’d heard my son’s heartbeat in yesterday’s scan, I knew something was wrong.

Actually, I got the feeling during the first scan. The heartbeat didn’t sound right to me. I’d read in my collection of books that babies and children had a heartbeat double to that of an adult.

So, during the first scan, when the beat sounded a little unlike what I’d expected, it got my attention. I even asked about it, and the sonographer told me it was normal.

The second scan cooled off my anxiety because my boy had a strong heartbeat.

It was that scan where we found out we were having a boy, and at that moment, something changed between Marissa and me.

I didn’t know what to call our marriage. If anyone were to look a little closer, they would be able to see that things weren’t as they seemed with us.

They’d see me trying to make the best out of a messed up situation. I’d bought a house and moved her in there a month after she told me she was pregnant, then I moved in too and watched her like a hawk. Making sure she was taking care of the baby.

It was my idea to get married. It was my way of taking a step in the right direction to do what was right. No way was I going to have my kid growing up with me visiting every Sunday or some shit like that, and his mother seeing every Tom and Dick. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Or, him growing up and living believing he was a mistake.

Sure, I’d made the mistake, but he was anything other than that.

She changed too and I saw that I didn’t need to watch her the way I was. I saw it. I noticed it from a few months back, just before I brought up the idea of marriage. In the two months since our wedding I saw the change take complete fruition. Marissa became a mother, pushing aside everything that I disliked about her, putting aside everything to make sure she was doing what was best for our baby. She became a better version of herself, and it was that person I tried to love.

It was this version of her that reached out to the person inside me who was trying to do the right thing.

We were those people, and I was trying to make it work. It had to.

I’d messed up a lot of things in my life. I was an absolute bastard a good eighty percent of the time, and this was me trying to be a good man.

My father was a guy who would do anything for his family.Anything.That anything had made him go all the way to LA for my mother for her to achieve a dream we weren’t part of. When she left us, he took care of Luc and me, always looking out for us first.

That was who I wanted to be. He’d be shocked to shit if I ever confessed that, but it was the truth.

In that truth I had to accept that Marissa was my wife and I would take care of her and my son. And I would love them both.

I just wished my gut feeling didn’t tell me those plans were about to change in a way I didn’t want to think about.

Dr. Braithwaite stood beside Marissa’s bed. He had paperwork. Lots of paperwork. I was sitting next to her on the bed with my arm around her.

She’d cried all night. I’d held her until she fell asleep in my arms, crying.

Yesterday, we’d come to the hospital for our third scan. It was only then that our baby’s irregular heartbeat was detected.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum,then nothing for close to a minute.Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum,then nothing for longer than a minute.

I would never forget the sound.

It told me everything.

It was the first time it sounded like that.Terrifying.

Of course, they’d kept Marissa in to monitor the baby’s heart for the night.

Dr. Braithwaite looked like he didn’t know how to begin whatever speech he’d prepared. Not a good sign at all.

Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip, and he took off his glasses.

He released a slow sigh and gripped the paperwork tighter. “Mr. and Mrs. Morientz, the entire prenatal department have been working hard to think of every way we can save your son.”