I understood enough even then. They were hiding me.
I kept telling myself that once the baby was born, they would have to let me see him. Maybe hold him. Maybe say goodbye if they forced me to give him up. I was 17. I still believed there were limits to what people would do.
There weren’t.
When labor started, I was alone with a nurse who looked nervous the entire time. She was not cruel. She was just scared in that quiet, professional way people get when they know something is wrong and decide not to look at it directly.
No one answered me.
After hours of pain and panic, I heard my baby cry.
Just once. One thin, angry little cry.
I tried to sit up. I said, “Is he okay? Please let me see him. Please.”
No one answered me.
Then my mother walked into the room in a cream coat, calm as ever, and said, “He didn’t make it.”
