Christian Bryce Patrick - The Beginning of our story

I keep putting this off, as if telling Bryce's story makes it somehow more real. So many words rush throughout my head and I pick and choose which ones will tell him best and yet nothing really seems to work... It's funny how memories change, the good ones fade as though they were bleached old sepia portraits that are soft and blurred around the edges, while the bad or painful ones are crystal clear like a sharpened knife that still cuts and makes one hurt and bleed. I guess I can't go ahead with Bryce's story without telling a little about his father and me and how he came to be.
Bill and I met the end of February of 1990 in Las Vegas, NV, a town I was born in and somewhere he ended up after leaving the military. I was working at a truck stop as a waitress while he was in the mechanic shop. The first night I worked there it was as a cashier, and he had volunteered to help clean up by mopping the floor in exchange for a free supper. I leaned over the counter as he worked and told him he missed a spot. He claims he fell in love that moment, but I considered him to be more of a buddy than anything else. The first few times he asked me out, I said no and finally, feeling a bit sorry for him, agreed the next time. We started dating the end of May and were married the end of July. A little over a month later, I was pregnant. We were both young. Bill was twenty-one, and I was only twenty.
Shortly after we announced our engagement, the management where we worked told us there was a no dating policy and one of us would have to quit or we would both be fired. We decided I should quit as it's always easy to find kitchen work. The day after I quit, Bill was fired and his roommates decided to make him very uncomfortable at their apartment. Without really knowing what to do, we went to my mother for advice. She suggested that we go ahead and marry and move out into their garage until we could find work and save up enough to find a new apartment. It was on a Tuesday we spoke to her, and Bill and I were married that Saturday. A few days later, I tripped and fell with my perpetual grace and broke my ankle. While I stumbled around on crutches, Bill would walk the streets looking for work. Unfortunately, it was the recession of the early '90s and jobs were scarce. Bill took a few day jobs until he finally found one in a small casino as a maintenance man. Within a few months, we moved into our own apartment. There was nothing very interesting about my pregnancy with Bryce other than Bill was amazed how much I could consume and then throw up before announcing I was hungry again. It was the first pregnancy we were really familiar with, as both of our siblings were born when we were children and not very interested in anything remotely to do with their births.
Two weeks after Bryce's due date, I was admitted to the hospital to start labor. It was discovered then that the same medicine I took to help my asthma was the same given to women to prevent premature labor. I was on the "Pit" for an entire day without any result when the doctors decided to give it up for the night and resume again the first thing in the morning. It was memorial day weekend, and the weather was very stormy and the lights actually went out throughout the hospital for a few hours, so it was decided that I could be given a meal and rest until the following morning. My younger sister Heidi had come to the hospital to keep me company until Bill got off work so she and I were talking when the doctor burst through the door. She told us not to worry but that the baby's heart rate was dropping for some reason and they wanted to monitor it a little more closely. A few seconds after she spoke, she screamed for the nurses and I was rushed into the delivery room for an emergency c-section. I woke up once in the recovering room where Bill kissed me and with tears in his eyes told me we had a beautiful baby boy. We named him Christian Bryce Patrick. He weighed 7lbs and 14ozs and was twenty-one inches long, the same as Bill was when he was born.
I was told later that Bryce was born in full cardiac arrest and they had no idea what had happened, but his heart was okay and other than asthma, he seemed to be perfect. They thought it might be that he had simply ran out of amniotic fluid but they weren't certain. At four in the morning, I saw my son for the first time. I can remember looking at his little fingers and counting his toes as I'm sure every new mother does. I was convinced that no one had ever given birth to a more beautiful baby and Bryce was a beautiful baby. He had my red hair and brown eyes and dimples on both of his cheeks when he smiled, which was often.
When Bryce was about six weeks old, Bill lost his job due to lay offs that were happening all over Nevada. My mother again suggested that Bill and I talk to my older sister Robyn who lived in Utah with her husband and three kids. I called Robyn that night and she wanted Bill and I to move there, where we could live with her until we could find work and get our own place. So we loaded up our few possessions into our old 1968 Ford Mustang Cobra II and drove until we reached Springville, UT. Bill went to work with my brother in law Billy as well as took a part time job doing plastic work for Billy's aunt and uncle. I took a full time job as a waitress at another truck stop and a part time one cooking at a diner. Robyn and I traded off babysitting so one of us was always home with our kids. It wasn't an ideal situation, but it was better than anything else we could think of.
Bryce was a very happy baby who didn't suffer from colic or anything some babies go through. His favorite thing was to sit in his chair in front of the television and watch whatever was on. Sometimes he would actually cry if we moved him from his favorite spot. One day while I was working at the diner, Bill called me frantically and said that Bryce was bleeding from his mouth and he didn't know what to do. I told him to call our doctor immediately and see what he said. Bill did, and the doctor told him to bring Bryce right in. The doctor told Bill he suspected Bryce had a condition called Trachea Malaysia, in which the trachea was soft and could collapse easily. He suggested we take him to a specialist, and the doctor there put Bryce on some medication that would hopefully make his trachea stronger. He also warned us not to let Bryce sleep on anything but his stomach as his trachea could shut and he could suffocate without warning.
It's amazing how I can recall every tiny detail of the day Bryce died. It was a Thursday, and I had just gotten paid from one of my jobs and didn't have to work the other that night so Robyn and I decided to have her friend Karma watch the kids and sneak out to dinner, just the two of us. Bill left for his job a little earlier than normal to pick up some doughnuts as they were having a party at work so I jumped in the shower and got dressed in a pair of black leggings and a black lace shirt while Robyn was lying down reading a book until Karma arrived. I had checked on Bryce who was sleeping in a cradle our Dad had made for Robyn's middle child before she was born next to Robyn's bed. Robyn told me she had just put him down and not to wake him up. I placed my hand on his back for a few seconds and felt him breath before going to the shower. After getting dressed, I sat down on the couch and started counting my tips so I could figure out my bills and how much money we could spend without Bill killing me. Robyn started screaming to call 911 then.
At first I thought she was joking and went to see what was going on. She carried Bryce's lifeless body into the hall and laid him down on the floor. I felt him and was shocked at how cold he felt. In my confusion I thought all I needed to do was rub Bryce until he was warm and he would be fine. Robyn jumped over me and grabbed the phone. She dialed the number and told the dispatcher that Bryce wasn't breathing and then I realized something was dreadfully wrong. She handed me the phone and began doing infant CPR on Bryce while I shouted the procedure to her from the 911 operator. I can remember telling the operator that Bryce was my baby, my only son. I was dumbstruck. The ambulance seemed to take forever to arrive but in reality it was only a few minutes as the station house was only a few blocks away. A neighbor who lived next door had heard the call come in on his scanner and ran across the street to see if he could help. When the paramedics came, he took my arm and led me away. They were going to try to do a tracheotomy and he didn't want me to see it.
He half dragged me outside. I kept rubbing my arms, shivering. It was a warm day for the end of September but I can still recall how cold I felt, inside and out. There were scores of people standing outside watching. They crowded the ambulance and me. I can remember shouting at them, calling them vultures and telling them to go away. I don't think anyone moved. The excitement was too fresh to ignore. The paramedics brought Bryce out on a gurney with Robyn following close behind. Robyn was allowed to sit in the back, but I was lead to the passenger side of the front of the ambulance. How long that ride seemed to last and how angry and frustrated I was with the every day traffic, wanting them to move listening for some sound coming from the back of the ambulance, anything to give me a little bit of hope or something to hang onto. There was a weird breathing sound and I prayed that it was Bryce holding on. I found out later that it was a respirator. We arrived at the hospital and Robyn and I were sent in a different direction than Bryce who was taken somewhere in the back rooms. We were led to the administrative offices to fill out paperwork.
A woman asked Robyn if she was the mother and I replied that I was. Before we could go any further into the paperwork a doctor came out and asked for the mother of the baby brought in. I replied that I was her and he coldly told me that Bryce was dead and walked off.
I would have fallen if not for Robyn grabbing me quickly. I screamed and sobbed hysterically. I understood what he had said, but I was numb with shock and kept waiting for someone to wake me up, to tell me it was just a bad dream. They took Robyn and I into another room, one that was empty of people. I can't even recall what we did but soon after we entered I heard screaming once more. I thought it was in my own head at first and then Robyn rushed out of the room and returned a few minutes later with a sobbing Bill. Bill and my brother in law Billy had first been sent to the wrong hospital and when they arrived at the right one, Bill had gone up to the desk saying that his son had been brought in by ambulance. The nurse asked if he meant the DOA. That's how Bill found out our son was gone.
Later they let Robyn, her husband Billy, Bill, and I back into where Bryce lay. He looked like he had been horribly beaten, his face a terrible molten purple and he was making a weird gasping sound. I exclaimed that he wasn't really dead, that he was breathing but the doctor told us that it wasn't breathing like I thought, but the gas in his body settling. I sat in a rocking chair and held him tight to my chest, rocking back and forth while tears splashed on his little face. As hard as it was to accept, my son, my little Brycie was dead.
We buried Bryce in a little town that my mother grew up in named Elsinore, in the central part of Utah on September 30th, 1991. We had a small grave site service for Bryce as there weren't many people to attend. In less than four short months, I had given birth to a son, and buried him. It just didn't seem fair. Everywhere I looked women were pregnant, giving birth, or holding a baby. I felt so left out and almost that Bill and I were being punished for something we didn't quite understand.
It's been almost nineteen years since Bryce died. Still there are many good days and a few bad ones as well. I suppose there will always be something missing in my life, a hole where Bryce belongs and although I do firmly believe I will be reunited with him someday, until then I will wonder the what-ifs that always go with the loss of a loved one.