Hope, Faith, and Love
There’s a low thrum in Faith’s ears. Not a sound exactly—more like pressure. Like a hand pressing in from both sides.
She opens her mouth to call for someone, anyone, but her tongue is thick. Swollen. Her lips crack at the edges.
The room is white. White walls. White gown. White crust drying on her thighs where the blood has already turned brown.
There’s a stench. Like pennies and eggs and the rusting metal of an old swing set in summer.
She turns her head. Slowly. The light above is flickering.
She blinks.
She sees the blue rubber glove balled in the corner. Dried blood on the fingertips.
Her stomach contracts.
Then again.
Then again.
She doesn’t scream.
There’s no breath left to scream with.
She was barefoot on the porch the first time Caleb touched her belly.
“She’s in there,” he whispered.
His voice cracked.
He bent down, lips just grazing the skin, and said, “Hey baby girl. We love you already.”
They hadn’t even bought a crib yet.
Just a single stuffed rabbit from the corner shop on Main.
She reaches for the call button but knocks it to the floor instead. It bounces. Disappears under the curtain.
It’s not like she can yell.
Her throat is shredded. Dried out. Like swallowing gravel.
She coughs.
The noise is wet.
Something comes up.
Dark. Red-black. It spatters the sheet.
She stares at it.
She doesn’t look away.
The ultrasound tech wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Just kept moving the wand. Back and forth. Back and forth.
When she finally said “I’m going to get the doctor,” her hands were shaking.
The doctor came in and sat down before saying anything.
“I want to be clear,” he said, quietly. “Your baby has no skull. The brain… it didn’t develop.”
Silence.
Then, “I’m so sorry.”
Caleb’s hand on hers. Bones grinding together.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
“There’s a safe way to end this,” the doctor said. “But the law says we can’t do anything so long as the baby has a heartbeat.”
“But there’s no brain,” she responds tearfully.
The doctor nodded. “I know. But my hands are tied. So long as the fetus has a heartbeat, there’s nothing I can do. That heartbeat has to stop soon though.”
“What does that mean?”
He pursed his lips together and said “It means that otherwise, the baby could very well take you along for the ride.”
Tears streamed down her face. “I-I could die?”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” he replied with a less than reassuring pat to her hand.
In her heart, she already knew.
A fly lands on her cheek.
She doesn’t even move to swat it. It feels like that will take too much energy.
The fly acts as if it understands this.
It creeps toward her mouth. Pauses. Then veers off.
The light blinks overhead.
She sees a nurse pass the window.
Tries to make a sound.
Nothing.
Her vision edges into black.
Like a slow camera shutter, closing.
They made her file a request.
A committee would review it.
It could take weeks.
They said her life had to be in “immediate jeopardy.”
What did that mean?
“She’s bleeding every day,” Caleb said. “She can’t eat. She’s hallucinating.”
“Her vitals are being kept as stable as we can make them,” the ethics chair replied. “The fetus still has a heartbeat.”
Caleb slammed the table.
“I don’t give a fuck about the heartbeat—my wife is dying.”
He was escorted out and told they would not speak with him if he continued to be aggressive.
They didn’t tell her. She just thought he had abandoned her.
She’s in the bathroom being held up with the help of an orderly.
Hands braced against the sink.
She can’t stand up straight anymore.
Her stomach pulses—tight and angry.
She breathes through her nose.
Tries to keep the vomit down.
Fails.
The sink turns red.
When she wipes her mouth, her gums bleed.
She leans over the basin, sobbing.
Not loud.
Just that soft, hopeless kind that only happens when no one is coming.
They had named her Hope.
Stupid name, maybe.
Too on the nose.
But when you’re twenty-four, newly married and in love and carrying something you helped make with your favorite person in the world, what else are you supposed to feel?
Hope was all they had.
The nurse finds her at shift change.
Alarms didn’t go off. They never hooked her to a monitor.
Too soon for ICU, the doctor had said.
The nurse lifts the sheet.
She recoils.
Calls for help.
A crash team pours in.
Flatline.
Twelve minutes of compressions.
They open her up, but it’s too late.
Everything inside is liquefied.
The death certificate reads:
Patient: Faith M. Johnson
Cause of Death: Septic Shock due to Intrauterine Infection.
Time of Death: 4:17 a.m.
Fetus: Nonviable.
They give Caleb her clothes she came in with and her wedding ring in a plastic bag.
He doesn’t open it for three days.
When he finally does, it smells like her.
Months later, Caleb is driven to the Texas Statehouse to testify on behalf of his dead wife before a committee that is considering an amendment to the law.
Outside, protesters chant.
“God doesn’t make mistakes.”
“No such thing as a life unworthy.”
“She knew the risks.”
“Only whores want to kill babies!”
Caleb bristles. Faith wasn’t a whore. She didn’t want to kill their baby. They had been excited about bringing Hope into the world. How could anyone reduce his wife to a picket sign?
Faith was a wife—His wife. A former homecoming queen. He had been her king. She was a nursing student—a good person. His soul mate—the only woman he had ever dated—ever loved.
The bill fails in committee. The protesters were louder than the supporters.
They say the language is too broad.
They say more study is needed.
They say these are rare cases.
They say the system worked.
They say she took her chances.
They say it was God’s will.
But Caleb lost his wife last year and the bill to make it mean something is long since dead and forgotten. Caleb just had his 25th birthday and he doesn’t believe in gods. He believes in justice though. He believes in vengeance.
Tonight, Caleb and his “assault rifle” will be the subject of debates nationally on the evening news while they continue to investigate and clean up the remains of guards and clerks and state legislators—Caleb’s revenge. And Caleb was just shot through the chest, neck, and head by sixteen different police bullets on the floor of the Texas State Legislature.
“Twenty-three people—plus the shooter—died today,” they’ll say. Because to them, like his wife whose death had meant so little to the people with all the power, Caleb is a tag on.
A footnote.
An extra in the shooter’s gallery of rogues.
Caleb doesn’t count with the other “twenty-three poor souls so tragically taken” because, to the power elite, he has no cause of action. He was “just a troubled young man” and he has ceased to even be a person.
Author’s Note
Between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2022, when it was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, no woman in America was legally forced to carry a nonviable pregnancy to the point of infection, organ failure, or death against her will.
Now, stories like Faith’s are no longer fiction.
In Texas, Amanda Zurawski was denied an abortion while miscarrying a nonviable fetus. She developed sepsis and nearly died.
In Tennessee, Allie Phillips was forced to carry a baby with no skull until full term, delivering a body that could not live.
In Louisiana, Nancy Davis was denied an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with acrania, a fatal condition, and had to travel to New York for care.
In Ohio, a 10-year-old rape victim had to flee to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy.
In Idaho, Jennifer Adkins was sent home from the ER while miscarrying twins, because doctors feared breaking state law.
In Oklahoma, Kate Cox had to flee the state to terminate a pregnancy threatening her life—her fetus had a fatal anomaly, and the state refused her care.
These are just the names we know. There are more. There will be more.
In red states across this country, women are being told they must be close enough to death before they are allowed to be helped. That their pain is not enough. That their autonomy is negotiable.
This story is fiction.
But it’s not a warning of what can happen.
It’s a reflection of what’s already happening.
no words, too angry