This evening Den invited me out to a dinner following the charity golf tournament he played in. I happily got dressed up and went – we had to pay some money, but it was a nice steak dinner and some of his family members were going to be there. It wasn’t a fancy deal and the sheer amount of people packed into the room was making me a tad claustraphobic, but the promise of food (steak!) lured me.

While waiting for dinner to be served we were sitting at a table sipping on ice water and chatting with his dad and step-mom. I happened to look up and see an obviously pregnant woman enter the room and make her way slowly down the aisle. It just hit me all wrong and I gulped and immediately averted my eyes. I started to feel a little panicky, like the room was far too small. I wanted her to move far, far away. Den noticed and asked me what was wrong. “There’s a pregnant woman,” I replied. “Where?” he asked. I glanced over my shoulder to check her location, then turned back to him. “Beside me.” Tears welled up in my eyes. Her presence felt like an elephant sitting in the chair next to mine as she chatted with the friends of hers whom we had the misfortune to be sharing a table with. It taunted me. Of all tables, of all chairs, why that one? I turned towards Den and steadfastly ignored her; he pulled me against his chest and stroked my hair. I tried to not cry. I didn’t want to have to go running out of the room. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Thankfully she moved on later – I don’t know when.

We ate dinner and tried too ignore the obnoxious, too-loud cackles from the ladies a table over. After dinner was of course the raffle. Now understand that Den and I never win at raffles or lotteries or anything of the sort. It has always been somewhat of a joke to us – we just don’t win at anything luck-related. Den kept saying we weren’t going to win, but he had purchased a couple of tickets (for a necklace, of all things – I asked him why and he shrugged and said, “for you”). I held my breath. Of course we didn’t win the necklace. I asked myself why I even held out hope.

Den wanted to leave after that, but they moved on to the blue tickets, the small item raffle. We had a string of blue tickets and there were 25, 30 items on the table. They would just pick random tickets from the bin, and you could choose your prize. And I felt stuck there until they called every single number. Den ended up leaving and going home and I just sat there, staring at my tickets, repeating my ticket numbers over and over in my head as if that would help conjure up a winning one. Number after number they called, none of them mine. I found myself getting angry. We won the worst jackpot in the world – one in 20,000 – and yet I can’t win a fucking raffle prize? In all my life I’ve never been on the small end of odds, I’ve never been lucky… so how the FUCK did I end up being the one with a dead baby because of some rare condition? How the hell does that happen? So I couldn’t leave. I had to stay, I had to see and wait and hope. I was waiting for something, looking for something: salvation, reassurance. I didn’t even care if I won something completely useless, I just wanted MY number to be called. I wanted to know that a dead baby isn’t the only thing I’m ever going to “win.”

I walked out empty-handed.