Saving Tayla

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Saving Tayla - book excerpt

Tayla

“Are you ready?” The nurse at the foot of my bed looked up at me as she spoke and I gritted my teeth through the numerous profanities I wanted to let loose on her.

She was sitting between my legs, her warm yet insistent hands on my thighs, holding me open as I pushed with everything I had inside of me. Each time I did, I prayed it was the last.

“One last push, Tayla. You can do this.”

No. No, I couldn’t.

“I… don’t know if I can.”

When I felt strong, yet familiar hands take hold of my shoulders, rubbing them gently, I looked up to see Scarlet standing at the head of my hospital bed, her sky blue eyes filled with encouragement and it gave me all the strength I needed.

My sister was here. I’d put her through so much, let her down countless times yet here she was when anyone else would have written me off.

“Okay. I’m ready.” Just one more push. I can do this.

Gathering strength from deep, deep inside of me, I gripped the metal bars on either side of the bed tightly, my bare feet held by my doctor’s insistent hands as I pushed.

I felt five grueling seconds of hot, searing pain I had never before felt in my twenty one years of living. Four breaths were forced through my lips, swollen from incessant biting. Three prayers sent up to the heavens that I would be strong enough to let him go. Two teary blinks of my eyes as I prepared for the birth of a baby I wouldn’t be able to keep. One hoarse cry, louder and more profound than I ever heard before.

Something pivotal inside of me shifted as my baby boy came into the world, his loud, beautiful cries the best sound I swear I had ever heard. All of my fears for this day evaporated in the wake of the miracle that was my son.

“Oh my god, Tay. He’s…” Scarlet moved from my side as the doctor took my baby boy away, placing him on a table nearby to check him. My eyes couldn’t help following her, fear that something was wrong coursed through me.

“What? Scar, is he okay?” He has to be okay.

“They’re just checking him, Tay.” Her words didn’t soothe me, like I thought they would.

Panic was welling up inside of me, the idea of him being anything less than perfect never crossing my mind until that very moment.

Then my baby was wrapped in a blue blanket and lowered to my chest and everything inside of me calmed, melted at the sight of this beautiful, innocent thing made from a life filled with sadness and pain and mistakes I wished to God I could re-write.

His little fingers wrapped around my thumb, squeezing in that way babies do and I knew I wanted to keep him.

I wanted him to be mine, but I knew that if I kept him, it would be selfish.

It would be a decision made for my well being, my happiness, maybe even my sanity.

But where would that leave him?

Would he be happy?

Would he have a good life?

It was just like a dream.

Holding him and seeing him, yet knowing that the moment was fleeting. No matter how much I wished for it, I wanted it, this moment wasn’t mine.

How could I let him go?

How could I go back to my life as I once knew it, when I could be a mom to such a precious boy? It took everything inside of me to close my eyes against the sight of his angelic face.

I couldn’t bear to look at him when I knew I was about to lose him, forever.

In a few, short, hours he would belong to another family.

“Take him, please.”

“Tayla, you have time-”

“Please, Scar.” My eyes burned with the tears that I knew were coming and once they started, I wasn’t sure if they would stop.

His loss was one I wasn’t sure I could bare.

But the alternative was worse.

All my life I’d been selfish, doing whatever I wanted, with no thought to who I would hurt, who I would let down by going down the path I had.

He deserved better.

“I have to let him go.” Silence settled after the words slipped from my lips and the deafening sound of that silence lasted until the weight of him was lifted from my chest. Then, the only sound in the room was the tortured whimpers that his loss caused.