Growing up in a traditional family, Camille never prioritized building a career. She wanted to get pregnant immediately after getting married, but it took a year before shewas able to carry a baby. In the meantime, she focused on keeping the house clean and organized.
She also loved visiting with friends, but by mid-pregnancy, her friends stopped wanting to hang out with her. Her inability to drink alcohol during girls’ brunches was a major turn off, and the baby shower was the last time she saw or heard from most of them. Camille felt that her party was more like a goodbye gathering, which made her feel sad and isolated.
Late one evening, while Antonio watched some television, Camille went to take a hot shower. Camille always liked to wash her hair twice because she felt like her hair was still dirty after the first wash. She poured a lot of soap into her hand, spilling shampoo onto the ground. As she scrubbed and rubbed her hair, soap covered her face. Camille was always aggressive when washing her hair, making brute movements around the shower.
She really wanted to shave her legs; she hated the prickly feeling but had a hard time bending over with her big belly. After trying to lift her leg onto the shower doorstep, she began to shave her right leg. As she slid the razor up, she lost her grip, and the razor slid sideways, cutting across her leg. Seeing the blood run down her calf made her slip on the spilled soap and crash onto the ground. At first, shedidn’t realize how hard she had hit the ground until she tried to move.
She screamed for Antonio, but he couldn’t hear her at first. She then began to yell louder. It wasn’t until there was a brief silence on the television that he heard his wife crying for help, making him jump off the couch and run to her aid.
Once he got to the bathroom, he saw Camille on the floor in a pool of blood. She lay near the drain, and the water and blood began to pool around her. Frantically, Antonio was able to scoot her just enough to expose the drain, but moving her was too painful for her. After the water drained, they both realized that the blood was gushing out from inside her.
While panicked, Antonio reached for his cellphone, and with shaking fingers, dialed for an ambulance. He tried his best to put a nightgown t-shirt on Camille per her request, and held her hand while she remained lying in the shower. Fearfully, they both looked into each other’s eyes while she sobbed in pain.
It didn’t take long before the paramedics rushed into the house, placed her on a stretcher, and hurried her to the hospital. She screamed and cried in the fleeting ambulance, while Antonio followed in his own car, forgetting everything his wife had packed for the hospital. At thatmoment, there were just two parents and a world of uncertainty.
Right after Camille was admitted to the hospital, she was put under anesthesia. Nurses quickly cut off her nightgown and poured several bottles of Betadine over her pale, naked belly. While wearing the surgical gown half off the shoulder, the doctor delivered the baby within eight minutes. Once the doctor came out of the surgical department, Antonio rushed towards him and ambushed him with questions.
“Where’s my wife? How is she? Is she hurt? How’s the baby? Fucking talk to me, damn it!”
“Your wife, Camille, is stable. Unfortunately, she suffered a hip fracture from her fall, which caused her to go into early labor. Due to the condition of her hip, we had to put her to sleep before performing an emergency C-section. We will do more x-rays and begin a treatment plan for her hip shortly,” the doctor said.
Looking down at the doctor’s shoes, Antonio mournfully began, “Is the baby…?” He paused.
“You have a beautiful baby girl, Mr. Santos, and she’s waiting to meet you. Congratulations. A nurse will be with you shortly to take you to her; she’s currently being monitored by the NICU staff.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” he whispered, his voice trembling with relief.
“I have to go, but I’ll check in with you again shortly with more updates. They’ll notify you when you can see her, okay?”
After the doctor left, Antonio had to wait a few hours before being called to meet his new baby. Drowning in both joy and sorrow, he held Belinda in his arms for the first time. Her eyes were closed and covered in goop; she still rooted towards him. The nurse offered him a bottle of donor breast milk, and he fed her, holding her close to his heart, listening to every gluttony gulping sound she made.
Belinda had black hair like her father and long fingers like her mother. Antonio had never seen someone more beautiful before. Holding his daughter and looking at her perfect tiny toes made him forget all the bad that had ever happened in his life, and all the bad things he’d ever done. She was his token of redemption, his new beginning.
Camille’s imaging was taken in the same operating room where she had delivered the baby. Just before surgery, she was positioned supine on an x-ray plate that rested flat on the table. Once the baby was born and transferred to the NICU, a radiograph machine was brought in to capture images of her pelvis.
A complex pelvic fracture would necessitate surgery, which needed to be performed promptly before swelling set in. Delaying the procedure could make it difficult for the medical team to see past the excess blood and swollen joints, potentially complicating the operation due to blood loss. After obtaining Antonio’s signature and completing the scans, the surgical team contacted the on-call doctor and prepared the operating room for the orthopedic intervention. Following several hours and transfusions of blood, with metal plates and screws secured, the operation was deemed successful.
While Camille was under anesthesia, she drifted into a dream-like, comatose state. She woke up in a hospital bed, the air still, darkness surrounding her. She could hear a shallow cry from afar, but she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.
She sat up painfully, her hip aching from unseen pressure. The cry began to grow louder, yet underwhelming. Camille carefully retracted the IV needles from her arms; the Tegaderm hurt her skin as it pulled her arm hair.Unsure of the floor, which looked black and bottomless, she cautiously rested both feet on the ground. After getting up from the bed, the only area illuminated by light, everything around her was pitch black.
Waving her arms in circular motions ahead of herself, Camille tried to feel for something, anything. Without success, she continued to walk into the void. When she looked back, the bed she had laid on had also disappeared. The cry gently intensified as she walked; she could only try to follow the sound of the baby. Her womb yearned for Belinda, and her breasts began to swell with colostrum. The louder the cry became, the more her engorged breasts soaked her hospital gown. Her skin felt cold, and she could see her breath in the air, but her breasts felt feverish.
As she continued to walk, she saw a white crib in the distance. The baby’s fingers were barely visible inside, shaking back and forth in hunger and frustration. Camille tried to run, but she could only move so fast without forcing half of her aching body. Her leg limped, but she pushed on, despite the popping sounds her hip made; all she wanted was to reach her baby.
The closer she got to the crib, the ground gradually began to turn into a mist of red, like a flowing river deepening. After feeling wetness between her toes that began slowly rising up her legs, she realized there was thick,viscous blood pooling around her. Camille tried not to panic, but her hands began to shake in fear. As she inhaled the metallic scent, her saliva turned bitter.
When she finally reached the crib, the blood had risen to her hip. Looking inside, she found her baby lying on her back, wearing only a diaper. Camille quickly scooped her up and held her close to her chest, grabbing the blanket from the crib. After wrapping the baby in the blanket, she limped away from the crib.
With nowhere to go and nothing to see, she walked relentlessly, looking around for any sign of escape as the blood continued to deepen. Her toes began to lose their grip because the blood was now near her shoulder. She wanted to see her baby one more time before they both went under.
Tearfully resigned to their fate, Camille gently pulled the blanket away from her baby’s face. To her surprise, instead of uncovering Belinda’s face, she uncovered the doll left on her doorstep. The doll’s wide brown eyes stared back at her, and a lullaby seemed to play in the thick air as they both continued to sink. Blood started to spill from the dolls’ eyes, and Camille let it slip from her arms, only to be shortly swallowed by the ocean of blood. Camille wanted to cry out, but instead, she just closed her eyes and went under.
After waking abruptly in the frigid coldness of her hospital room, Camille couldn’t find relief even after realizing she had only been dreaming. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she noticed Antonio sitting in the chair, holding their baby girl. They both appeared asleep, peacefully and content. She wiped the tears from her face, and a sudden sense of relief washed over her.
“You are awake, my dear. Everything is okay now,” Antonio whispered from the corner of the room, a look of relief washing over his face.
Chapter Three - Little Nightmares
