Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Two
November- December 2025
Every grain of sand, story by Doreen Duffy.
The sea came begging in waves, over and over again. Standing at the edge my thoughts racing. Jostling stones struggling between brown leathery straps of weed, tied themselves up in knots. Over the sound of the washing waves, I breathed in. Heard my breath shake as I exhaled.
How could life alter so suddenly after a simple check-up. Maybe it was me, maybe I’d flaunted my happiness. I always got scared when I allowed myself to get too happy. The miscarriages had taught me that.
***
Earlier in the warm glow between sleep and fully awake I’d reached out to Joe, without opening my eyes, found his mouth and kissed him deeply, moving against him bringing him into me. It was pure bliss to make love just for the sake of making love. Afterwards he looked at me, smiling all the way up to his eyes. He looked at me differently these days. Warm relaxed smiles replaced guarded looks. Some of the creases around his eyes seemed to have smoothed out. When I felt him drift back to sleep, I eased myself out from under his arm and hauled myself out of bed.
In the kitchen I’d flicked the switch on the kettle, opened the curtains letting sunlight spill into the room giving everything a hazy yellow glow. My mind wandered into thoughts about how perfect our little family was going to be. I was so happy. Unable to resist I reached for the shopping bags from the day before. I took each item out slowly, one by one placed them on my knee, smoothing the tiny white Babygro’s, feeling their softness. I couldn’t wait to feel the little form wriggle inside them; the same way I felt our baby flutter inside me. When Joe came down to the kitchen, he saw me with the little clothes, he smiled and leaned down and kissed the top of my head.
‘You go have a shower, take your time getting ready to go to the hospital; I’ll make us a nice breakfast. I’ve got a few hours before I have to get to the airport.’
I knew he felt awful not being able to come to the check up with me, but his boss had insisted he was the man needed to secure the new contract in London and it had to be today. He promised he would be home tonight. I said I didn’t mind at all, but there was just a tiny niggle of superstition gnawing inside me. When we had attended the previous check-ups together, everything had been perfect.
I spent time choosing my clothes. I wanted to look nice, feel as pretty as I could, it was important to me because I knew I might feel older than some of the other ‘mums to be’ at the hospital. I thought of how long it had taken and winced at the memory of some of the more invasive tests before we finally became pregnant.
‘That’s what makes you even more special,’ Joe said regularly, stroking my stomach, using a soft voice I’d never heard him use before.
I chose a long skirt and a loose silky blouse over it that settled itself, covering my softly swelling stomach in its folds.
The other mums couldn’t have been friendlier. There was an air of happiness in that room that I was thrilled to be a part of. A buzz of excitement while we chatted, compared notes. Laughing, I showed them my attempt at knitting,
‘It’s a new hobby,’ I said, feeling the heat reach my face while I showed them. ‘I only started to knit when I found out I was pregnant. Mam said she would teach me.’
‘Imagine.’ I’d laughed, ‘only learning to knit at my age.’ It didn’t actually feel so bad to admit being older. Not anymore.
I loved the days me and mam spent together.
‘You’ll get the hang of it in no time,’ she’d said, piling on the encouragement. ‘Just persevere, don’t worry about making mistakes it’ll all come right in the end.’
The conversations we hadn’t ever shared before, topped up with cups of tea meant so much. I thought of the warmth of Mams hands over mine as she helped me with my knitting, I was taken aback noticing how much more wrinkled her hands had become. Hands that had dealt with so much, aware for the first time of their immense strength, reminded of all she had done for me.
I held up the shape of a tiny, knitted cardigan and showed the other mums the holes where distracted I’d dropped stitches.
‘But’ I told them, ‘I am determined to keep going even if my baby is the only one in the ward with holes all over their little cardigan. I’ll still show it off as one of my first masterpieces of knitting wrapping my little baby in its woolly warmth.’
***
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut against the salty breeze, trying to squash out the image of the nurse’s face as she had swept the transducer over my jelly covered stomach and watched the pictures on the screen.
She had started out happily pointing out which way baby was lying, showing fingers and toes. I was in my element. But then she went quiet, an eerie quiet grew around the room filling up all the space. She swished the transducer again. More slowly this time over my stomach. Everything seemed to slow down, the nurse’s movements, the whispering hum of the machines, everything except the beating of my heart, it started to race so much it hurt.
The nurse said she would be back in a minute, she just had to speak to someone. She left the room. When she came back, she had another nurse with her who smiled tightly, just for a second at me. Then they both sat and pored over the screen, this time the second nurse performed the scan. I was so cold I was shivering, trying to stay still, trying not to do anything to upset whatever it was they could see. Afraid to speak. I wanted to get up and run out, go back to how I felt in the waiting room but I maybe if I stayed perfectly still would the world stop spinning, stop whatever this was that was happening.
The second nurse stood up, held my now freezing cold hand in hers, mine cold and wet, hers warm and dry. She looked down with eyes full of concern. I felt that look reach in and rip something inside me, my breath caught for a second, my mind tried hard to clear the swirl of thoughts. The other nurse busied herself wiping the jelly off my stomach pulling a blanket up over me.
‘You see, it’s some of these measurements, some markers showing, fluid behind baby’s neck, they’re showing as a little more than is considered normal at twenty weeks.’ She touched the screen pointing her finger at the grainy image.
My stomach lurched at the word ‘normal.’
I felt cornered, at the mercy of these two people moving in front of me, a blue uniform dance of horror while they churned out words that broke off and splintered into me. I hated the fact that she could utter these words, that I could not stop her, that I could not put my hand over her mouth and smother the life out of every syllable. A surge of viciousness rose up inside me. What kind of sick twist of fate was this, turning life upside down in a second. Language I rarely used pierced my thoughts; burst all those stupid, stupid bubbles of dreams I’d had in my head.
We were careful, we didn’t tell anyone until we were twelve weeks. We did everything we were supposed to do. Read all the books. Ate the right food. No one told me that from the time I realised I was pregnant I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from thinking about this child’s life, school, leaving school, getting a job, maybe having their own family. I saw and imagined their whole life. I couldn’t stop myself.
‘These measurements.’ The nurse went on quietly, ‘would mean you would need to have further tests.’
Even while she said it, her eyes made their own confirmation.
‘Your doctor may recommend that you consider having an amniocentesis. I’ll make an appointment for you to discuss this as soon as possible.’
An appointment, was she mad. I had to leave here today with our three lives turned upside down and inside out. I had to tell Joe, how was I supposed to do that, and then we were to live each day and try to sleep each night until I went for another appointment for some sort of test, I couldn’t even remember what she called it. How, how were we supposed to do all of this.
Questions bubbled up in my throat. But there was no point in questions now. I knew the blame lay with me. I didn’t know how, but I just knew it. I shook my head, tried to sit up, they didn’t stop me, they helped me, fixed my clothes, brought me to the chair, a glass of water was poured, the second nurse held it to my lips told me to sip it.
I had left the Hospital clutching my things to me.
‘No, I don’t want you to contact anyone; I just want to go home and talk to Joe.’
I was surprised to hear my own voice sound normal, that I could still form a sentence and speak it. I half walked; half ran through the waiting room of happy expectant mothers. One of them jumped up smiling,
‘You forgot your knitting.’
She held it out to me but when she saw my face, a tiny gasp broke free, she bit her lip to stop it, rolled up my knitting and pressed it softly into the top of my handbag and turned quickly away.
I drove, somehow, I don’t know how, almost automatically. I didn’t stop until I reached the car park at Greystones. The place Joe and I loved. We went out there to the coast almost every weekend, in all weathers. I needed time to think, time to breathe. The thought of telling Joe, seeing his face tighten, as the words filtered through, the pulse in his jaw start with the effort of trying to be strong. He would do his best to try to stifle his own fears to support me. He would tell me everything would be okay; he would tell me we would be the best parents for this baby. But I didn’t know if we would.
The thought of him trying to cover his emotions made mine rush to the surface. My throat made a horrible choking sound. I thought I was going to be sick. I opened the car door, grabbed my handbag to get tissues and felt the soft wool brush my fingers. There’s this tiny life, there’s Joe, there’s me, there are all the people in this world who wake up one day and their lives have changed forever.
***
Everything has darkened, the sea has changed colour from blue to dark green, a completely different view in a split second. A cloud has passed across the sun. I shiver. The silky blouse isn’t warm enough to shield me now from the cold coming in from the sea, it seals itself to my skin in parts, trying to keep in the heat. I can feel my body beneath all these folds, still the same. The shape still there. I wish I was still in the waiting room, waiting for the scan, looking forward to getting another glimpse of our baby, a peep at the little life growing inside me. Waves are riding in, pushing against me, like a monster hiding a bellyful of horrors in its depths.
My feet and legs are totally immersed now. I can hardly see anything beneath the water. The coldness has settled into me; it is no longer unbearable. I move further in. How long would it take to cover me completely. Could I just stop all of this, the hospital, the scan, the nurse’s face, her pointing finger, could I take my baby and all those babies before that didn’t make it. Could I give in and let the gasping fear choke the life out of us in its salty liquid.
The cloud moves and a glare of heat sears my shoulders around my back, sweeping around my legs now deep in the water. I look down at them feel them rocking gently against the grainy mass, trying to envelop them, but they are still moving, it’s not just my legs, my hands go to my stomach and feel the little life inside me move and nudge against me, gently at first and then stronger.
There’s a stinging burning at the back of my eyes and tears start to fall. Hot like the blood I had lost so many times before. I cry, hard, for the baby I thought I was going to have, and I cry for the baby I now know I will have.
I keep my hands around my middle raising it above water and drag my legs, one at a time out of the deep suffocating sands I struggle through the shallows towards the beach. I walk back to my car, my skirt slapping wetly against my legs. I lower myself into the car, pull my knitting out of the bag. I smooth the little cardigan over my stomach feeling my fluttering baby inside. I sit for a long time, until it gets too dark to see the holes in the wool.
© Doreen Duffy
Doreen Duffy was awarded her Masters with 1st Class Honours in Creative Writing, at Dublin City University, she also studied at National University Ireland Maynooth, University College Dublin and Oxford Online.
Doreen is a Pushcart Nominated Writer.
Publications include Chicago Writers Association, Write City Ezine, Poetry Ireland Review 129 by Eavan Boland, Live Encounters (Free Online Magazine From Village Earth), Washing Windows 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 by Arlen House, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, (Germany), The Storms Journals 1 & 3 & 4, The Galway Review, Flash Fiction (USA) and in, Glisk & Glimmer by Sídhe Press, The Incubator Journal, The Woman’s Way and The Irish Times amongst many others.
She won The Jonathan Swift Award and was presented with The Deirdre Purcell Cup at The Maria Edgeworth Literary Festival.
Doreen was shortlisted in The Francis MacManus Writing Competition. Her story ‘Tattoo’ was broadcast on RTE Radio One.
http://doreenduffy.blogspot.com/
X@doreen_duffy13
https://twitter.com/doreen_duffy13
@doreenduffy13.bsky.social