A Life For A Life

It was Thanksgiving day, 2008. It was cold outside, cars are honking as they pass each other on the road and I was in the house alone. My mom went to her boyfriend's house for dinner, I was invited, but decided to stay home because I didn't like the way he looked at me, spoke to me, or slightly touched my shoulders with a gentle squeeze.

So, I stayed home. I played on the desktop that my mom allowed me the password for while she was gone for the weekend. On this cold lonely night, I had also broken up with a guy whom I had found out was cheating on me....or should I say was cheating on someone else, with me. We only dated for about a week but it still hurt. Especially knowing that I was the side chick.

We argued, he apologized, said he loved me, blah blah blah, but I knew how guys like him worked, my own father was one of them so I saw first hand how the apologies and the "I'm sorry, I'll never do it again" thing went. I didn't buy into it. I ignored his messages for most of that day while I just browsed on a vampire chatting site. Mostly looking at the profile pictures and liking the ones that I thought looked really cool and the ones that spoke to me mentally and emotionally.

While browsing this site, I come along this picture of a guy staring straight into the camera. He is holding up, what looks like, two heavy swords that had handles and spikes coming out of the handles in an "X" position with his head slightly down and a black hat on his head so his eyes were in the shadows of his hat. I liked his picture and kept scrolling out of complete boredom that I seemed to have been drowning in.

I fell in love with that picture. Do not ask how or why, but I did. While going through and liking other's pictures, that one with the swords would not go away from my mind. I was confused as to why I was draw to it. It was like the picture itself was calling to me. Sound totally insane, I know, but it was something about the man in this one.

So I decided to message him. One word was all it took for us. "Hi."

I can't even explain the feelings or emotions going on but....it felt like the butterflies that had died early that Thanksgiving morning were so full of life again I felt sick. But a happy feeling sick. He replied with "Hey, my name is Zombie"

I didn't think he would have even replied back, so I started telling him I liked his picture and asked about him. He did the same and from then on we became inseparable. I found out that he was on the other side of the country from me. But that didn't stop us from calling each other every night, doing face time for HOURS, literally hours. My mom had to unplug the computer one time because we were taking too long to say goodnight (the computer was in her room) she even unplugged the phone so we couldn't call each other either. He did not sleep at all that night, worrying about me because he couldn't call me.

After about 4 months of doing face time, he says, "I want to come visit you" I got excited for a min but then realized, how? He said he had the money for a plane ticket and had been saving up better since we started talking. Well...March of 2009 came and so did he.

We saw each other for the first time in person, and I had the butterflies full of life in my stomach again. He saw me and the first thing he did was say "Hey babe" and kissed me. I melted instantly because I knew he was the one for me.

We spent the next 3 weeks together, they were so short I cried the whole way back home after seeing him off. My heart was breaking in a way that I have never felt before. I knew we would still do facetime and call....it just wasn't the same as being able to watch him sleep or snuggle up to him when I felt unsure about myself. He was my safe place, I belonged in his arms and he belonged in mine. That, was the hardest day for both of us because he cried too.

It lasted a couple weeks before he came back for six months and during those months I he told me something that seemed to have made all the sense in the world!

He says to me one day, "You know you save me the day we met right?" I look at him confused, "What do you mean?" thinking it was just a cheeky line right? Wrong. He had such a serious look on his face that my smirk of a smile quickly vanished.

"I mean," he continues, "that day you messaged me, I was going to kill myself" I kid you not, there was a dead silence in the room so bad that I had to get up and start pacing my bedroom floor for some soft noise. I pondered this for a good minute while he watched me, looking to him to the floor, back to him then looking out the window, then back to him. Then just as it sunk in, I broke down crying, asking why?

He said because his whole life up until before he met me, he has been used by his ex girlfriend's who also abused him, beaten and almost killed by his family, blamed for things he never did which also resulted in a good beating, sometimes hospitalized and left there to find his own way home.

It was then that I realized, I was lead right to him. That unexplained feeling of why his picture stood out the most to me that Thanksgiving day. I felt now like I was meant to save him. Like something told me to message him, so I did. I saved this man's life. And he would soon do the same for me....

Fast forward to 2010, I find out in March that I am five weeks pregnant with our first child. We are thrilled with excitement! But we weren't married yet, so we set a date for a court wedding, I know not very romantic but we didn't have the money for a real one, we were still saving what we could.

We, unfortunately, being 3 months along, ended up homeless and sleeping in a nearby field next to a gas station for quick access to the restroom for 3 days before we met a girl, who had a son of her own, and took us in. For four months she kept a roof over our head and in return I cleaned her apartment, payed a bill or two out of the cash asst. I got on one of those government cards while saving what I could for my husband and I to get our own place.

Things start to go down hill for her, we are forced to leave as she moves to another part of the state where I am from and we are left homeless once more. Luckily I still had about two hundred in cash left just before the first of the month came and got my original amount of four hundred, it was just en0ugh for us to go back to his home state.

His parents took us in and then the day of the delivery came, it was exciting but something was off. I couldn't tell what it was but the whole delivery just seemed wrong. I wasn't dilating fast enough, the contractions were so bad I couldn't walk. We tried a hot bath, that got my water to break instantly, I didn't even get to sit down all of the way before it broke.

After that happened everything still seemed wrong, hours went by, something was wrong with the baby and I was in and out of consciousness. Mine and the baby's heart rate were in perfect sync, but not in a good way. When mine went off the monitor, so did the baby's, when the baby's heart rate disappeared, so did mine. My husband tried to get the doctor in to see what was going on but he was in a meeting and "didn't want to be disturbed" it was six in the morning by this point.

It got to the point to where I could now hear my husband yelling and screaming at someone to get another doctor in to help us....because me and the baby, were dying. I could feel myself loosing this battle but I fought it, I couldn't go like this. Not when we were about to start a family. But I couldn't hold on. No matter how hard I tried. The last words I could from my husband were now threats of blood-shed if some sort of doctor didn't get in the room and save us and then I saw my midwife rush in to my side....That's when I passed out completely. I woke up a few moments later when I felt a sharp pain in my lower back, it was the epidural.

They took me to another room where they wouldn't let my husband in and stuck me nine more times in the same spot before putting a mask on my face. I woke up with it still on after the baby was born but I was suffocating, there was a mouth piece going down my throat and all I could hear was, "breath through your nose" I tried but it's like it was numb, I couldn't breath at all, I couldn't even move my arms to move it away from my face. So out of a survival mode I took my tongue and pushed the mouth piece off to the left off my face and the mask fell. I took a big breath of air and was told to just lay still.

I asked about my baby, they said she was fine and in daddy's arms, I laid back down and relaxed. They told me that I had just had an emergency C-section. The baby had turned herself around, got into a bad spot and had wrapped the umbilical cord around her neck. But they got to her in time. And I can honestly say it was because of my husband. He saved both mine and our daughter's life that day.

It truly is a life for a life for us, and to this day we are still together, we have added a little boy to our family as well and we are all doing pretty ok. Things are hard because of the pandemic right now but it is for everyone. Just always know, that sometimes...you will be lead to an unexpected place to venture onto an unexpected journey.

My name is Erica Chamberlain and this is my story on how my husband and I saved each other's lives. Happy Holidays and A Happy New Year everyone. Thanks for reading!