My Last Birthday: I Died While Mommy Said She Was Done With Me Chapter 05
I lay quietly in the bathtub.
The water was dark red.
My face was so pale it almost looked see-through, and my lips had turned blue.
My long hair spread through the water like seaweed.
I was still wearing the pink pajamas I had worn the night before.
“Ah!”
Mommy let out a terrible scream.
She stumbled forward and dropped to her knees beside the tub, trying to pull me out.
“Emily! My baby!”
Her words came out all mixed up.
“Don’t be scared, sweetheart. Mommy’s here!”
My body was already stiff and cold.
I felt heavy, like a big stone.
Mommy used all her strength.
Her hands slipped several times before she finally managed to pull me out of the bloody water.
She held me as tightly as she could, as if she could warm me back to life with her own body.
Mommy lowered her head and pressed her cheek against my forehead.
“Baby, open your eyes and look at Mommy.”
Tears fell onto my pale, blue-tinged face.
“Mommy was wrong. Mommy was so wrong!”
“I didn’t mean to ignore you. Please wake up and yell at Mommy, okay?”
“You can even hit me. Just please open your eyes and look at me!”
She kept calling my name over and over.
Her fingers trembled as she gently combed through my wet, sticky hair and wiped the water and blood from my face.
But my eyes never opened again.
I knelt beside her and reached out, wanting so badly to wipe away her tears.
But my fingers passed right through her cheeks every time.
I couldn’t touch her.
All I could do was watch her grief swallow her whole.
Lily was frozen with fear.
“Emily?”
She slowly walked over to Mommy and tugged on my pajama sleeve.
“Emily, get up. The water’s cold.”
“Come play blocks with me, okay?”
She didn’t understand why I wouldn’t move.
She didn’t understand why Mommy was crying like this.
When Mommy heard Lily’s voice, she broke down even harder.
She pulled my body tighter against her, like she would lose me forever if she let go.
“Oh, my baby. Mommy is so sorry!”
She was crying so hard she could barely breathe.
Her whole body shook, and her eyes looked unfocused, like she was about to pass out.
Daddy heard Mommy’s screams and came running to the bathroom.
But the moment he saw what had happened, all the color drained from his face.
His lips trembled.
He stared at me like his mind couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
Then his legs gave out.
His big body dropped hard onto the floor.
“Emily?”
His eyes moved from my face to Mommy’s broken expression, then back to me.
He shook his head and crawled toward us on his hands and knees.
“No. This can’t be real.”
He reached for me.
There was no pulse.
Daddy suddenly slammed his head against the side of the bathtub.
“Why? Why would God do this to me?”
He jerked his head up.
Tears and snot covered his face.
“Where’s my phone? Call someone! Call an ambulance!”
His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold his phone.
He entered the passcode wrong several times before finally unlocking it.
When he tried to dial, his fingers kept missing the numbers.
Tears blurred his vision so badly that he could barely see the screen.
He spoke into the phone, but his voice was broken and barely made sense.
He stammered out our address.
After he hung up, he pulled Mommy and me into his arms again.
Lily was completely terrified.
She stood there crying as loudly as she could.
I stayed beside them, my soul hurting so badly it felt like something inside me was being torn apart.
I wanted so badly to tell them to stop crying.
I wanted to hug them.
But there was nothing I could do.
All I could whisper was,
“I’m sorry, Mommy and Daddy.”
“Even dying, I still made your lives harder.”
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“It was my fault you got so scared.”