Virginia Watts - "Domino"
My story “Domino” recalls my 1990 hospitalization for preterm labor contractions in the city of Philadelphia. It was my first pregnancy. I was young and afraid and everything was going wrong. My dream of enjoying the healthy glow of pregnancy, eating ice cream and dill pickles, decorating a nursery, buying special baby outfits from the Hanna Andersson Catalog was quickly replaced with powerful drugs, equally powerful side effects, heart monitors, and calendar dates focused on fetal viability and nothing else. A cold fear invaded my body and stayed until the end of my pregnancy.
Hospital floors where woman are trying to maintain their pregnancies are places you wouldn’t want to know about, unless you had to. When you are young and pregnant for the first time, you never expect to hear that you might not be able to carry the pregnancy long enough to give viable life to your own baby. In my case, I made it past the target of 28 weeks and ultimately gave birth to a healthy son. Tragically, some women are not as lucky as I was.
“Domino” is also the story of two complete strangers who came together in this world. Some unexpected human bonds, even though short, are so strong and so pivotal in a moment of your life, they never leave your memory or your heart. I was released from the hospital before Domino, and I never saw her again. We knew each other only inside the four walls of the hospital room we shared, where we held each together through difficult days. I am proud to share our story.
Hospital floors where woman are trying to maintain their pregnancies are places you wouldn’t want to know about, unless you had to. When you are young and pregnant for the first time, you never expect to hear that you might not be able to carry the pregnancy long enough to give viable life to your own baby. In my case, I made it past the target of 28 weeks and ultimately gave birth to a healthy son. Tragically, some women are not as lucky as I was.
“Domino” is also the story of two complete strangers who came together in this world. Some unexpected human bonds, even though short, are so strong and so pivotal in a moment of your life, they never leave your memory or your heart. I was released from the hospital before Domino, and I never saw her again. We knew each other only inside the four walls of the hospital room we shared, where we held each together through difficult days. I am proud to share our story.
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Virginia Watts has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Ruminate Magazine. Her nonfiction story “Marti’s Father” was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize by The Ponder Review. Her poetry appears in The Burningwood Literary Journal, April 2018, and is forthcoming in Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal Spring of 2018.
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