Atomictumor

So, we drove home from the doctor, knowing that the worst thing that could have happened had happened.

BJ was pregnant. Our lives were over. A BABY.

Oh shit.

I recall the drive home from the doctor, BJ and I were sitting in the back seat of her parents conversion van, and her mother was driving us home. Silence. The kind of silence that you can cut with a knife.

BJ and I held hands. My stomach was a twisted knot of fear. The fight or flight urge was big, and all I could do was sit quietly in the back of the van with her, waiting for the moment when her parents would sneak up with a gun on me (not that they’re those kind of people, but DAMN, I got their baby PREGNANT!).

I tell you this right now. I don’t think anybody is ever qualified to say a damn thing about abortion until they lay together in a bed late at night, with a centimeter long love fetus developing in the womb of your 19 year old, educationless and jobless girlfriend. Hell, I don’t think I’m qualified to say it, but I’ll always regret that that night, an abortion sounded like the only idea that would work.

The next morning, we changed our minds. We were going to be parents.

—

And with that, we had to grow the hell up. We fell deeper into each other, i dedicated my entire being to making sure that our live together would be good.

I started hunting for jobs. I had very little work experience, the part time job at Sophies, and a high school grocery bagging job were it. I ended up washing dishes for 6 bucks an hour (big money for me, at the time) at TGIFridays.

It was evil. The rest of the back staff were 20 something year old thugs, who didn’t like me, for reasons I don’t understand. I was young, and probably dumb, but damn, they were assholes. Total dicks. I worked 8 hours a day, and then came home to BJ, a 30 minute drive both ways. We had to save up money to get our own place, we weren’t going to be those kind of people who would raise their kid at the parents house.

TGIFridays closed ‘unexpectedly’ 3 weeks after I was hired. Bastards.

—

While I kept looking for gainful employment, BJ scored a job in the housewares section of Sears, at West Town Mall. I used to drive her to work, and then beat the street trying to find a job (which was really REALLY hard, nobody wanted to hire somebody without experience). I remember reading, and really enjoying Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil in the smoking section of Sears, while I waited for her to get off work. It was always such a joy to see her walk out, with her big smile, and growing belly.

She wasn’t having a ton of fun either. She developed a pinched nerve in her hip around the 4th month that bugged the hell out of her for the rest of her term. She was gaining all the weight she lost during her months locked in her bedroom the previous winter (yes, I ruined the only time she was really, really happy with her body). She was working with some real battleaxes in the houseware department, who weren’t interested in sharing the 5 percent commission she’d get on that luggage, and just helped themselves to her customers.

To this day, because of the crappy assed way that Sears does their employees (and ultimately, their customers), I wish them nothing but ill. I love walking through the dying store in Oak Ridge, just to bask in it.

I digress.

We were still looking all over the place for an apartment, but didn’t really have the money to do it.

Finally, I got the job I needed. BJ was just about to give up on Sears when it happened, so it couldn’t be at a better time,

—

BJ’s sister Sonja worked at Ryans on Kingston Pike at the time, and was able to talk them into giving me a dishwashing job there. The store was really hurting for a dishwasher, it turned out. They split the job between me and another guy, with a couple of non-english speaking folks working as backup. Because of the lack of back house workers, I was able to average about 80 hours a week during this time. At six fifty an hour, this made for some decent scratch, at least to us!

We moved into a very modest little apartment in Knoxville called Huntington Place. The demo apartment looked like a quaint, decent little place. The actual apartment, well, not so much. It was kinda like the cabins you’d stay at in camp, old buildings, wood floor, cheap plaster walls. There were four units that shared a front door, a screen door, so the hall outside was cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

It was awesome, it was ours.

I remember the day we moved in there, and got our first telephone number. I had to work (of course) and BJ and her folks moved us in. By now, BJ was probably about 7 months along, in late summer. I was working a double shift, from 6 AM until about 10 PM or so (usually later, because there are always those customers who have to come in right at quitting time and spend forever eating… bastards), and she called me at work to tell me she had a surprise for me!

I went to the new house, walked in there, took a shower (BJ couldn’t stand the smell of the nastyness that would be on me when I got off work, so she always marched me into the shower as soon as I got home, and then we’d drain the inevitable infection from under my fingernails… dishrooms, good stuff), and she sat me down to a candlelit dinner of spaghetti and toast. She was proud, because she made the toast (BJ never was a cook, her mom made the spaghetti).

It was the most romantic meal I have ever eaten. It was dark, and our new home, with most of our stuff still in boxes, was lit by the flickering orange light of the candle.

We went to bed, and I got up for work the next day.

—

And the next day, and the next day. By now BJ had quit work, and was getting BIG. We had no friends down in Knoxville, and only one car that I had to use to go to work (she didn’t like driving that late at night).

She sat, alone, in a little apartment, with nothing to do but watch network TV on rabbit ears, and read the same books over and over again. To this day, I regret the pain that she had to have suffered in silence, with nobody to talk to, while I worked.

When I got home, we’d go out to eat. We didn’t have the sense to save money, what I made we usually spent on food at restaurants, just enjoying ourselves before the realities of parenthood jumped in. We’d talk, we never once, in the years we were together, had a meal where nobody had anything to say. We were always so comfortable with each other.

We tried different restaurants. Afterwards, we’d go back home to watch a little TV, and go to bed.

Life was so good to us. I mean, looking back, it was a hard time, but we were so damn happy we never noticed. The days I’d have off work (and I did have them, once a week or so) were wonderful, we’d just stay home, and play cards, or we’d drive out and wander around. Life was so good.

I had proposed to BJ in those early days, playing around in her bedroom (we were wearing nice clothes, for the heck of it, and I offered my hand in marriage to her, which she accepted in style). In May, while she worked at Sears, I snuck enough money to buy a $140 engagement ring and make it official. I went down on one knee in the mall. She wasn’t surprised, because we never really had to say anything about marriage. What we had was so much deeper than marriage, it became moot.

Anyway, one day during those Huntington Place/Ryans days, in early October, we figured we’d go ahead and get hitched. She didn’t want a wedding, which I was more than happy to agree to (I wondered many times during the years if that was a concession to me, but she assured me that she saw a wedding as a huge pain in the ass. I often cited this reason to friends as one of the reasons I love her so much). I had a day off work on a Tuesday (I think), and we got dressed up and moseyed down to the Knox County Courthouse, and got married.

They had a pastor there, a poor old guy who must have recently had a stroke, because we couldn’t understand a word he said as he did the little quiet ceremony. It was witnessed by the clerk, and a guy from the News Sentinel who put the announcement in a paper. Theres a copy of it in a red rubbermaid container in the attic.

We wanted to make the wedding ours, so nobody knew about it until afterwards. We called her parents, and they bought us a bottle of champagne and a new TV. The TV is in my bedroom now, just to the left of where I’m laying here, writing this post.

On our wedding night, we went back home, and watched ER (so it was a Thursday, not a Tuesday!), and drank the champagne (her only pregnancy alcohol, so don’t get bent out of shape). Life was so good.

—

I can think back on many private memories in that apartment. Moments that would be meaningless to anybody but me anymore, but moments that I treasure more than anything earthly. Moments of tenderness, moments of love. Moments of laughter, of happiness. We had each other, we knew by then that we’d always be together. I loved her more every day, which I continued doing to this day, and still continue doing. I’ve always told her that, but I don’t know if she believed me.

Meanwhile, BJ was getting bigger and bigger. We had baby stuff that our parents were getting for us, a crib, a swing, carseat, all the accessories of a baby in the 20th century.

We were poor, and on Tenncare, so we got the kind of treatment that you get when you’re poor and on Tenncare. BJ always complained about the bedside manner of her OBGYNs, and the clinic she went to.

We found out that the baby was going to be a boy, and picked out names when she was around 3 or 4 months along. We were at the Chattanooga library, poring through book names. The boy name we came up with pretty quickly, Gabriel Ian. We had a computer game called Gabriel Knight, and BJ really liked the name Gabriel.

The girl, was a bit tricker. We finally settled on Anastasia Plum for the girls name. This is a name that I would still place on a little girl with pride, although I think I’m about the only person in the world who thinks so (I’m sure some of you out there will prove that wrong), My sisters always joked that we did great boy names, and crummy girls names.

Well, turned out that it was a moot point, because it was going to be our Gabriel.

Sorry about the backtrack

—

So, bigger and bigger and bigger. BJ was huge. She was a little girl, 5′2″, and I’m 6′4″, so fate would have to dictate that BJ be stuck with a mammoth baby. The due date came and went, and sailed by. I have reams of paper that we wrote contraction times on, getting closer and closer, but never making that 5 minutes apart rush to the hospital time.

BJ was getting pissed. She’d constantly say to little fetal Gabe “OK, Mommy wants you OUT! Time to get OUT!”, but, like G, he just wouldn’t respond.

Finally, on the night of November 20, we had false labor pains take us to the hospital. The doctor there couldn’t believe that BJ wasn’t induced, but he must have checked who our insurance was, because instead of inducing, he stretched BJ’s cervix.

Damn, that hurt. Hell, I could feel it, and I don’t even have those parts. Shit, I still feel it. Ugg.

He said if THAT didn’t start it within 24 hours, to come back for the induction.

—

We went home, and went to bed. Got up the next morning, November 21, and I went to work. By now, I was working 30 or so hours a week, because I wanted to be ready to take off at a moments notice. I had about two weeks off scheduled, so I could help take care of things.

I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. No amount of reading, or work, or preparation, can get you ready for having a kid at 18. Nothing. It is damn near the scariest thing you can do in this world, the sudden, lifelong, obligation to a helpless human being.

Mortifying.

—

The 21st came without event. I went to work, and came home, and still nothing. BJ started contracting around 8, and she said they felt ‘real’. They were still 30 minutes apart, so we tried to get some sleep. I remember laying down with her, knowing full well that this would be our last sleep as a childless couple. After this sleep, there’d be a kid.

We woke up at about midnight (rather, I did, I never did believe BJ slept that night) and headed to the hospital. I called family and friends, and they started making it up.

The maternity ward was packed at UT, so BJ had to go to a common room, and I wasn’t allowed in. That was a crushing insult.

I wanted to be with my wife. She needed me, we were inseparable, and heres this battleaxe of a nurse telling me to wait.

I waited. I guess when it comes to hospitals, I’m a follow the rules kinda guy. Or a sissy.

Finally, at around 8 AM, BJ got a room. I went in with her, and irritated her by dozing off a few times. She finally threw a book at me, which kept me awake.

She was tied down to the bed. She wasn’t dilating very much, only a few centimeters, but that didn’t seem to concern the nurses or doctors. I sat in there with BJ for a while, when suddenly, around 11 AM, the fetal heartrate machine started wigging out!

Nurses flooded into the room. It was decided that an emergency c-section was needed, that Gabe was going into fetal distress, and by the way, you can’t come, wait in the waiting room. I had to be escorted out, because I wouldn’t go.

I missed the birth of my son, at 11:19 AM, on November 22, 1996.

10 years ago, we became parents. Right now.

—

Gabe was shown to us in the waiting room, and placed in the nursery, where a nurse fed him a bottle, which may have caused his preference for the bottle rather than the tit. BJ never was able to nurse him, which I didn’t mind so much, because it meant that I got a share of that feeding time.

I used to stare into his face, those tiny eyes, and clutching fingers, as he sucked the bottle. I stared, and I wondered what he’d look like now. I don’t remember what I saw, so I’m not sure how accurate it was.

—

BJ, you did an amazing job. We created him, and he’s a marvel. He’s so strong, BJ, he tries to look after everybody else, even if I don’t let him. He loves you so much, but he keeps going with a smile and a joke.

He’s our Gabe, BJ. Thats our baby boy, now 10 years old. I’m sorry you missed this, angel.

I love you. So. Much.

You became an amazing mother, despite how scared you were.

I love you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 11:19 am and is filed under Kids, Pain, Love, The AT/GAC Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.