It’s the day, March 13, 2025. It’s Eli and Benny’s due date and I’m back at the hospital. The place I should’ve been to greet them. The drive that should’ve been full of me and Anthony weaving through the feelings of anticipation, excitement, nervousness was a quiet drive by myself in the early AM.

There’s a part of me that wonders what today would’ve looked like if it were THE day, but the truth is we never would’ve made it to this date. Our most ambitious hope was to make it to February 13th. Still, March 13th was their official due date—the one that I gave every time I came in for an ultrasound. The one that hovered in the right corner of the screen next to how far we’d made it into the pregnancy.

I was led to the smaller waiting room from the bigger waiting room at 2:20 AM—the same time the boys were born to me while I was under anesthesia. I wonder, did they make a sound when they entered they were lifted from me? I never got to hear either of their cries. Were their lungs even big enough for them to? I’ve never asked that until now. Maybe I should’ve.

The whole time I knew them in life, they had so many contraptions in their noses and mouths other than their last few seconds before they faded. I think Benny made some sounds while he was still hooked up to everything, when he was able to try the tiny vial of milk I’d pumped only hours before. I don’t think I ever heard Eli make a noise. I wish I knew for certain. It’s so cloudy now.

Maybe their noises were like a felled tree in a forest—I can believe the sound penetrated the air, even if I didn’t witness it. Their whole existence is a bit like this. Two small trees in a giant forest, not falling, cut down against their will, but lying down on a bed of pine needles with few onlookers around. Sometimes, it feels like they were never real.

When you lose a child so young, you start writing a story about them. The story you want, maybe, or perhaps, the story you need. For me, I guess it’s the story I wish I could’ve known more and authored a piece of. So, I take the little details I remember of them during their short lives to extrapolate tales—sometimes simple, sometimes complex, about who they are or would’ve been.

I think I’ll add this one as well—that our boys, when they were born, bellowed, announce their tiny presence in the world. Yes, I think they must’ve. That the sound that came from them surprised the doctors retrieving them. That such volume could come from beings so small.

I’m sitting in the same waiting room I sat in, completely shattered, almost exactly three months ago, sobbing by myself, holding a bag of my blood, desperately wishing to be anywhere else in the world than at the hospital where I lost my babies—the holding cell for their tiny bodies.

But this ER visit has been different. I walked in by myself, looking whole—though I’m not. Carrying my own bags. Locking the car I was able to drive myself in. I didn’t come crashing through the doors wondering if yet another tragedy would strike my family.

My walk through the sliding doors under the illuminated EMERGENCY sign felt defiant. Somehow, after these three months that have lasted a lifetime, I’m still here, still alive, still on my feet. Things I wouldn’t have believed would be true.

There are certainly other places I would choose to be at (now) 3:00 AM—namely, my bed. But in some ways, being here feels appropriate. Not good, not horrible, just…appropriate. My boys aren’t here anymore. Their earthly form is in our home, and maybe for the first time, I’m glad for it.

This hospital no longer feels like a prison, like the keeper of all the awful things we went through on November 28th and 29th. I don’t think going through the maternity ward would feel this way. I’m grateful not to be in the same wing as the NICU, but somehow, maybe just today, maybe just for these minutes, my boys and my memories of them aren’t locked in this building. They are somewhere else—some with me, some with Anthony, some with our families, some with the doctors and nurses who cared for us.

It’s maybe the first time it’s felt like my boys aren’t stuck somewhere in here, that there is a piece of them with me. Maybe it’s their representation on my skin, maybe it’s something else, but for this moment, as I’m only partially alert and partially awake, this place doesn’t feel so scary because my boys aren’t held here anymore. They’re held in me.