NOVEL

The Darkest Day in My Life

The Love We Had, Chapter 27

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27

I was stunned.

I felt unlucky, without hope.

My body was stiffened, the pain during childbirth was forgotten, but the pain in my head would not let go, the pain inside me was tearing and rubbing in me and wanting to tear me into pieces. Going from the greatest joy when I knew the baby is coming out, when I knew she is born, when I wait for her to be laid on my chest, that she is finally here, close with me. To go from the greatest joy I have ever known to the blackest of the black, the darkest of the dark. To stand on the edge of this abyss. When this person in white cloth stands in front of me with a tight face and says this word that I shall hate forever. Stillborn. The child, she is a girl, is unfortunately stillborn.

I lie in the hospital bed, I try to rise, I see with my eye, I hold back a voice that will scream that it is not true, it is not possible, I know she was alive, I am certain, yes absolutely certain.

And then I fall back on the pillow, I know that there is no hope. The doctor in the white coat has said it because she must say it, and not because she is a vicious, hateful and random outsider. I say it to myself over and over again, it’s not true! It isn’t true! The whole afternoon, the whole night, until I float out into the night, helped by a syringe, finally in a beginning doze laying back on the bedsheet, letting the head rest heavily in the pillow. And I fall asleep.

But the next day it is still there. What I had hoped would be a nasty dream. And I have to spend all my time, all my energy to get used to this terrible, this horrible thing, and to live on with the gruesome truth. I will not accept, not reconcile to the loss. But perhaps one day far ahead, I will in some way manage to accept that it has happened, even if it is so despairingly unfair. I can’t stop, I repeat this question over and over again: Why do I experience this? Why is this happening to me? With my child?

I feel alone in the world, so unbelievably left alone. The day after birth, the stillbirth, my mother will come into my room. Dad is there too. He stands there in the background, silent. I see that he is upset and it annoys me. For some reason, it annoys me and I know he senses it. This makes him even more insecure and he is relieved when the visiting hour is finally over and he and my mother can go out the door and close it behind them. And they leave me, they leave me there, alone with the terrible loss.

And Lars on top of all this? My Lars, «Yours forever», as it is engraved in the ring.

I knew so deeply that I was unfair in my reactions to him, that it hit him in the middle of his face as soon as he came to visit me, to support me, perhaps to comfort me. I know so deeply that I was aggressive and angry — crying hysterically — I was in a state that I may never have been in before, a state in which he surely never ever had seen me before. I knew inside me that I was being unreasonable against him, that I was shouting things at him that should not have been shouted, and I thought — when I and he a few days later sat in the doctor’s office and having the after the birth conversation — that it was wrong of me, that I had overreacted, I should have held it back, should have held it more inside me. And when the doctor emphasized that it was important for me and my husband now, as a couple, to get pregnant again, as soon as possible, because it would mean a lot for how the family would make it in the future — then I felt that it annoyed me. I felt overwhelmed, dominated. As if it were a universal, irrefutable truth, what this man in the white coat said as if it had to be so.

As Lars sat behind the wheel, swung out of the side road at the hospital, and began to drive down the main road, I leaned my head back towards my headrest, closed my eyes, and tried to look for my life further. I noticed that he turned left down on the plain, and started driving upwards towards the hills. I noticed that he took a different road from the usual road when driving me home from the hospital. He turned off to the right by the graveyard, and I felt my cheek was wet. I felt it tighten across my chest, I squeezed my lips, squinted my eyes together. And I thought that this was my life, this is the start of the rest of my life with this man I married, this stranger sitting next to me and driving the car home to our common home, with a stillbirth in luggage, home to move on after all, back to the start, in order to embark on social life again, and family life, the rest of life.

The story that the novel tells takes place in a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.

The photos included in the chapters are taken on location in Odda and in the Odda Smelter (Odda Smelteverk, 1906–2003), the carbide factory that is part of the story.

The Love We Had

Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars. Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak. Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18 — XX, told by Eira.

For quick access to all chapters, go here.

Previous chapter: 26 Hindsight Can Be Salt in the Wound

Next: Chapter 28 The Night I Freed Myself

Øivind H. Solheim writes fiction, essays and articles aiming to help others understanding life, other humans and themselves. He has published five novels, two non-fiction books and a poetry book.

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