It is easy to judge those of our fellow men and women who live on the street as dirty, evil or simply as losers while they peddle their unspeakable wares, in the dead of night. The Earth is replete with examples of young girls who today live in circumstances that seem unthinkable to us and unimaginable. Many of these women set out on a journey to places like Hollywood to “Make it big” to “Become a star!” only to find themselves to be the victims of broken promises, veins full of narcotics and in bed with someone they have never met before and never will again. The stories are many and the reasons are just as numerous even as their original motivations seemed to have merited their journey into the ultimately lonely and often fatal situations which led many into drug addiction, prostitution, prison and even suicide.
In “Stillborn! – Baby’s Lost” Susan Chacon’s reasons also were real and profound. She set out to escape some personal dangers that would eventually only lead her into a final and disastrous ones.
Read this excerpt from Steven Clark Bradley’s novel, Stillborn, and you’ll see how a life without hope, support or mercy can lead a hopeless woman to make some terrible choices. So many women today are trapped in circumstances exactly like Susan Chacon. Perhaps, after you read this passage, the next time you see such people in their self-imposed prisons, you’ll feel more sorrow than judgment. Perhaps it will make you appreciate anew, just how important a loving family can be.
Stillborn! - Baby’s Lost
“Doctor, I’ve got a lot of blood here. I think we’re losing her!”
Susan Chacon, simply put, was bleeding to death. It was no big deal for her. Her whole life had been hemorrhaging since she was thirteen anyway. It was the perfect ending to a very imperfect life. She was completely unconscious to the outside world, but in her mind, which was traveling deeper and deeper into the tunnel of malaise and death, she was seeing her life play back in vivid detail. It was all taking her back to the day that led to the very present one in which she had given away two new lives to the heartless world while her own was being not too slowly snatched away from her. Susan could see her sweet daddy, then her mother hugging her brother, her brother staring down at her. She heard weeping and pitiful cries, heard her brother’s hideous diabolical laugh and then felt an image begin to play right before her dimming eyes.
~~~
“Doctor, we need an I.V. started here, potassium is bottoming out! I’m losing her pulse!”
~~~
Susan Chacon was so confoundedly indifferent. She was a unique one; a lusciously beautiful girl, that is. Susan had a thing about her. She could take a heart, admire it for a time with passion and then cast it aside as unlikely to be of use to her in the future until right now as she was throwing away her own life so cruelly.
She lay stretched out on the emergency room bed, just a shell with a slightly beating heart. She had lost her will to fight. The blood she had lost in the delivery of her second child, where she had been left for dead, had also left her depressed and empty; with the feeling that there was nothing left to fight for. Yet, as she drew closer and closer to the end of the tunnel she could see the images flashing past her mind’s eyes! It all played like a sad ‘somebody done somebody wrong’ song that just would not end.
Throughout her life until thirteen years of age, she had been with lots of friends and had remained untouched and alive in the outside world. In her world, many of her girl friends had already ridden themselves of the lock to their garden, but not Susan. She had been around those who partied and caroused in a very Mexican secular, Catholic sort of way and had remained chaste at every level. For Susan Chacon, it was not outside with her friends that threatened to rob her of her innocence but rather at home where her future risked being ripped from her.
She had been at a time in her life when she had totally disconnected with her supposedly devout brother. It was her brother who had almost forced her to live away from the house as much as she could when her father was not there. She hated how her brother had started to look at her! It made her skin crawl and made her fear for her safety. He had abnormal eyes, which stared constantly at her in a manner that told her he had an unnatural taste for forbidden fruit.
This young 17-year-old almost-man, who should have been a male figure in her life in whom she could confide and whom she could trust, had instead become a source of fear and confusion for Susan at the tender age of thirteen. True enough, she was not your average thirteen-year-old flat-chested little girl. She looked at least five years into puberty, but those budding flowers were hers and hers alone! His aggression toward her, his intrusions into her room, the times she had found him staring at her as she was awakened in fear had told her that she was safer on the streets; a habit she would never quite abandon.
Susan had told her mother about her brother’s behavior, but mama just explained it away as though big brother was just being over protective and instead accused Susan of having impure thoughts. She had even begun to question herself. In her heart, she knew though, that she was right and had never given her brother any reason to act in such a vile way! It had pushed her away from both of them, but she had her daddy!
Susan knew she dare not say a word to her father about her brother’s actions or apparent intentions. She knew her daddy would beat him, perhaps even kill him for having contemplated the awful-awful with his little sister. It was only the protective hand of her father that had allowed her to live in the same house with her brother and his adoring mother. Even Susan knew how much she had developed the capacity for alienation towards the ones she lived with and just accepted herself as having to live constantly in a survival mode. The nights were peaceful though for Susan. Her father was there and he loved her! He had always had a special affinity with her and he had made her strive to be a good girl, a good student and a good catholic. He was proud of her and she drew all her courage from his existence!
Then her world fell apart! “Papa!”
~~~
In the emergency room where Susan Chacon laid lifeless and still a nurse began to yell.
“She’s flat lining! I’ve got no pulse here!”
~~~
In the inner recesses of her mind, Susan was watching, repeated before her dimming eyes, the worst day of her life! Susan Chacon could see it all over again in her dying brain as she had seen it more
than 15 years before! She had never gotten over having found her father that way.
“I need some adrenaline over here STAT!” the doctor ordered back in the emergency room.
~~~
Back in her head, Susan could see her mother come in the bedroom where her daddy lay dead on the bed and heard her bitter mother begin to scream in a manner that resembled some Middle Eastern dirge, though she had treated him with disgust on a daily basis and just the night before. It all played back so realistically to Susan. She recalled thinking, as she had on that bitter morning, how her brother had not even come into the room! Her daddy had been so good lately, but there again as so many years before, Susan; her daddy’s baby girl was left lonely and bitter, staring unbelievably down at her blessed father lying dead in his bed.
~~~
As the emergency room doctors and nurses labored over Susan’s body, monitoring, injecting medications, checking vitals, the doctor took the large syringe full of adrenaline and tapped it and then pointed it downward toward here bare chest.
“Try the paddles first!”
The Medical Assistant held the paddles while the instrument charged.
“Clear!”
The force of the electricity made Susan’s body leap into the air and caused the image she was seeing become momentarily hazy and broken.
~~~
As Susan’s life faded away in her own dying world she rejoined her recollections of the past. Her father had suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep. She remembered being unable to scream outwardly, and how she felt internally as she cried out so loudly in her head that it deafened all her senses and rendered her numb. She could not cry. She could not breathe! She turned and fled from the room that
had just rendered her uniquely and utterly hopeless.
~~~
“We got nothing here, Doctor!”
The doctor looked down at Susan’s lifeless body as the heart monitor produced a flat green line across its screen and a low constant hum. He wondered if it was worth putting her through the adrenaline.
~~~
Susan had only had her daddy for the first 13 years of her life. The doctors had tried unsuccessfully to revive him, but it was useless. Susan could see the doctor arrive at her house and saw him turn over her daddy’s body. She saw a large bruised area on his back in the heart area where the blood had pooled. It was not fair! God had turned His sight from her. There was an evil spirit on her or she had not said the proper amount of ‘Hail Marie’s to protect her family from the curse of the evil eye? All she knew was that she had not kissed her daddy enough the night before. Had she hugged him? She was sure she had, but wanted to again, and now he was gone and she was alone. She ran right out of the house and saw her brother standing at the door. She knew he did not care! She knew he had not physically killed her daddy but she inwardly blamed him for it all! She stared at him with hatred for a few seconds and then ran away, running, which was something she would be characterized by for the rest of her life. Her race into binging on a little fooling around and forgetting that there was a real world that would only leave her exactly bitter, defiant, alone and overpowered and perhaps now, dead!
Susan was different than so many others. She was a mixture that took the eyes of men’s attention, even at her young and tender age; some out of appreciation of her beauty and others of more impure intentions, including those of her own brother. The envy of women out of the pure undefiled heart that beat in Susan’s developing chest made the women around her covetous, including her mother. She wore the eyes like that of a Latin Princess. She had come from the purest stock of the Mexican heritage, Mayan blood with a dark mystic tint of the beautiful women of Central America. Most women with a heavenly designed face like Susan’s would justifiably spend hours admiring themselves in a mirror, but not Susan. She now hated the beauty that was budding all over her. That which would normally make a blossoming woman rejoice was, for Susan, a reason to fear for her safety in her own home.
~~~
“Doctor, what do you want to do?” The doctor bent down and aimed the long needle at the area around Susan’s heart.
~~~
Susan started to hear the voices of the nurse and the doctor and the hum of the heart monitor, but she would not let herself be relieved of her sorrow and remorse long enough to rejoin the land of the living. She blamed herself for the evil that had befallen her family. She knew when men lusted after her. She always responded with a prayer her daddy had taught her, now prayer seemed totally worthless!
She blamed herself for it all! This was not the life she had expected. Her daddy was supposed to see his grandchildren one day! Now, she had given away both of his grandchildren! He would hate her and oh how she loved him! She wished he were there now to give her a reason to let her heart beat again! He needed to be there to give herself away to her husband one day! How would she know if she found the right man or not? She knew that if her daddy gave her away one day to any man that he would definitely be the right man. Now, how would she know? She decided that she did not need a man! She had also decided to kill her brother if he so much as looked at her with the lustful eyes she had learned to recognize! Now, the only man in her life was her 17-year-old brother who wished to revile her and steal her innocence away. She knew what would be her fate and she knew what she planned to be his final outcome! Her life could be worth something if she would give it to a worthy cause. His fate was a reason to be! Yet, right now, with her babies gone, her life a disaster, she was glad her daddy could not see her and feel the shame she felt!
Three months and five days into the loss of her daddy Susan saw fate take its next stride and saw her life go tumbling down with a knife in her right hand slamming downward again and again! She saw
herself drop the knife that was stained with blood not so different from her own and fleeing, running, crying, living in fear and finally swimming across some river into a land of supposed safety. Then she heard a voice speaking to her. She knew that voice.
~~~
“Doctor, stop, we have a slight pulse!”
An officer had come over to the bed where Susan was hanging between life and death. Susan could hear him speaking to the nurse.
“I’m Officer Wallace Findings. I was at the scene where she was found. Is she dying?”
“Do you know her?” the doctor asked.
“Well, not well…yes, I know her.”
“She is closer to death than to life but she is trying to come back. We just got a slight pulse. I don’t want to do the adrenaline if I do not need to because she has lost so much blood it could cause her heart to explode, so try to talk her back, Officer.”
The sound of Officer Findings’ voice got Susan’s fleeting mind’s attention. It felt soft and warm and like he really cared, an emotion she had experienced little. She knew he was good and that he too had
suffered a loss that he had not even known of yet.
“Susan, this is a friend. You know, I just got you back. I’ve been looking for you for months and now that I have you here I’d like to have you back…take care of you.”
~~~
Susan felt suddenly at peace. Findings’ voice gave her a strange feeling of safety. She wanted to see him and again she saw herself swimming; taking long and hard strokes to get to the other side. In her mind, she could see a figure waving to her and calling out to her.
“Susan! Susan, come on back! Don’t give up! I am here for you…!”
As she got closer to the other side she began to make out the image as the face of the father of her babies, the last man she had deceived, a man who deserved to know everything! In the world, circled around her body in the emergency room the doctor, the nurses and one sad and lonely police officer looked down at Susan as she fought her way back to life. The heart monitor recorded increased heart rhythm with periodic breaks in the rhythm.
“She’s fighting Officer. Keep on talking to her, she can hear you, don’t stop now!”
~~~
In the wealthy neighborhood of Palisades Park, Illinois a young couple pulled their car up to the door of their emotionally empty house. What they were bringing home today would fill the big house in a way it had never been since they had wed. A woman is helped out of the passenger seat with an infant in her arms. Little Jeffery was her baby; their child and he would never know the wiser! They would see to that!
~~~
Every time Susan’s heart would skip a beat she could feel someone pulling on her legs to draw her back to the land of the dying and she would kick it away. She could see herself looking back at one of the distress points in her journey back to life. When she turned her head she saw her brother, grimacing and tugging at her, screaming that he would avenge his death and pay her back for her actions against him! Behind him was a trail of men who had abused her and next to her brother was that evil doctor, the man who had left her for dead in that filthy place and the one who had lied to her and who had stolen away her babies! At the other side of her brother was Richie, her pimp. He was not smiling, not crying, not doing anything; sort of just along for the ride as he had always been! The scene made her swim faster and harder with deeper and longer strokes!
~~~
“Susan! That’s it!” Officer Findings pleaded with her as he watched the heart monitor. He could see her heart picking up its pace!
“Her heart is good, just had too much stress on it from the loss of blood and God only knows what she was seeing in her state!” the doctor wondered.
“Saw what? What do you mean?”
“She seemed to be reliving something because there were tears in her eyes and she just gave up at some point and the heart stopped!”
Findings thought about that for a second and began to cheer her forward again.
~~~
“Mr. Policeman! Help me! Please help me!” She could see Findings at the shore with his arms outstretched ready to take her to safety. Then she saw another man behind him and her heart began to race again and the rhythm started to become erratic again.
~~~
Findings saw the monitor recording the irregular heart activity. He turned and saw one of his fellow officers there.
“Doc, what are you doing here? You ain’t getting this one!”
“I am a doctor you know. I wanted to tell you that the second baby has died. Oh, I heard she was dying, sorry. Guess I heard wrong. She gonna make it?” the officer asked.
“You better believe it! But she saw you somehow, because the moment you walked up, her heart went crazy again! You mind…?”
“Are you out of your mind, Wall?”
~~~
The Forensic specialist and Findings’ best friend left the area around Susan’s bed. Susan looked forward again and saw that the other officer was gone and started to again swim toward Wallace Findings.
~~~
“That’s it! Come on! You’re gonna make it!” Finally, she reached the shore in her tunnel vision and took hold of Wallace Findings’ open hand. Suddenly a light began to shine so brightly that she was forced to open her eyes! She saw several hazy figures looking over her. After blinking several times and regaining her reality she could see the doctor and the emergency room staff and there was Findings; the one she had returned for. She was sure she would have never come back had he not showed up. She moved her eyes around and in the distance saw Doc, Findings’ friend. Her brow began to perspire and she began to shake in fear.
Findings followed her eyes and realized that she was looking at his friend Doc.
“Hey Doc, you gotta get outta here! She doesn’t like you very much for some reason.”
Doc looked perplexed and shrugged his shoulders and turned around and left the room. Susan calmed down opened her eyes and looked directly into Findings’ face.
“Oh, Officer I came back for you! I am sorry! Please forgive me!”
“Forgive you for what? Now you rest ok? We can talk about everything later. Right now you listen to these good people! You made them earn their money today!”
“Please do not leave me! Please…”
“I promise Susan, I am right here, just let them get you stabilized and I am right at your side!” The doctors were busy putting medications through her I.V., but Susan knew that her life was far from safe. She had come back to finally do one good thing before she died. She had no idea how vicious it would all become in the land of Babylon!
~~~
A car pulled up behind an orphanage called the Queen of Peace. The driver stopped the car and the administrative sister rushed out. The man in the passenger seat opened the back door and pulled out
an incubation chamber. He reached it out to the catholic sister. She stared at him and felt that strange feeling of guilt she had already so wonderfully learned to ignore.
“We will burn in hell for this!” she declared to the man before taking the chamber that held a newly-born little boy. The man looked at her unbelievably.
“Got bad feet does he? When he’s old enough we will put him to good use. The man gave the infant chamber to the nun and spoke angrily to her.
“You are right, you know!” he smiled at her. “You really will burn in hell!”
The woman snatched the baby away and turned in anger and walked quickly towards the door. The man screamed back at her,
“He’ll find a name! Everyone deserves a name you witch! I hope
he grows up and kills you and your evil partners!”
The nun turned around at the door and stared back at the man then entered the orphanage. The man got in the car and it sped away. The nun took the infant to a crib in a room with a huge cross on the wall. It cast a shadow like a dagger being thrust into the child’s heart, this child with no name, no future and so much like a child who was lost, alone, stillborn!
Stillborn - When Existence and Vengeance Become A Driving Force
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