The bus was a sardine can. Every seat taken, every inch of standing room claimed by weary commuters. I’d snagged the window seat, a tiny victory after a day that had felt like an eternity. My head throbbed. My back ached. I just wanted to be home, to melt into my couch and forget everything.Then she boarded.
She wasn’t dramatically pregnant, not yet, but enough that the swell beneath her coat was undeniable. Enough that the tired slump of her shoulders spoke volumes. Oh, great, I thought, sinking deeper into my seat, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. Here we go.
A hush fell over our corner of the bus, an unspoken expectation. Everyone saw her. Everyone saw me, glued to my seat. I pretended to be engrossed in the urban landscape flying past. Someone else will stand. There are other people closer. Why does it always have to be me? I’m exhausted too. I have my own problems. My heart hammered, a frantic drum against my ribs. It wasn’t just selfish exhaustion; it was something sharper, a raw nerve exposed.
A close-up shot of a man in a suit touching his wristwatch | Source: Pexels
She gripped the pole, swaying slightly with the bus’s jerky movements. Her eyes met mine for a fleeting second. Not accusatory, just… tired. A different kind of tired. A pregnant kind of tired. My stomach twisted. I knew what I should do. But I couldn’t. I just absolutely, irrevocably could. NOT.
Then it started. A low murmur from a few rows back. A cough, pointedly loud. And then, a clear, sharp voice. “Excuse me. Don’t you see a pregnant woman standing?”
My blood ran cold. My face flushed, hot as a furnace. I felt every single eye on me, burning holes through my carefully constructed facade of indifference. No, no, not me. Don’t look at me. I WANTED TO DISAPPEAR.
“She looks like she could use a seat,” the voice continued, bolder now, joined by a few nods of agreement. The pregnant woman herself looked mortified, trying to shrink into the crowd. She just wanted to get home, not be the center of this spectacle. I felt a fleeting pang of something akin to pity, quickly buried under a wave of defensive shame.
I kept my gaze fixed out the window, a stubborn, pathetic defiance. My jaw was clenched so tight my teeth ached. This wasn’t just about a seat anymore. This was a battle, and I was losing. Badly. The humiliation was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
“Seriously?” another voice chimed in. “Some people have no common courtesy.”
My eyes stung. I could feel tears pricking at the corners, a shameful, childish response. They don’t know. They don’t understand anything. But how could they? I hadn’t told anyone. I couldn’t.
A nurse in scrubs and face mask looking back | Source: Pexels
At the next stop, I bolted. I didn’t even wait for the bus to fully halt. I squeezed past the glaring faces, the tutting disapproval, and stumbled out onto the sidewalk, gasping for breath as if I’d been underwater. The air was cold, sharp, but it didn’t clear the suffocating cloud of shame. I walked, fast, aimlessly, anywhere but there.
The image of her, standing there, so vulnerable, so pregnant, while I sat, rigid and unyielding… it replayed in my mind like a broken loop. I hated myself in that moment. I hated the judgment. But more than anything, I hated the raw, aching wound inside me that had made me behave that way.
I reached the clinic. The sterile smell always hit me first, a stark reminder of where I was, what I was doing. My appointment was for an hour ago, but I just kept walking. Delay it. Just a little longer. I couldn’t face it.
The receptionist looked up, a sympathetic smile already softening her features. “You’re a bit late, dear. Are you ready?”
I nodded, mute. My throat was tight. My hands were trembling.
She led me down the familiar hallway, past doors that whispered of hope and despair. Into the small, quiet room. The doctor was already there, her face grave, her eyes kind. She didn’t need to say anything. I could see it. I already knew.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice soft, gentle. “The tests came back. It’s… it’s just not viable. There’s nothing more we can do.“
My world didn’t just stop. It shattered. Into a million tiny, irreparable pieces. The hope I’d clung to for so long, the fragile dream I’d nurtured in secret, had just been ripped away, violently, irrevocably.
A youngster with a serious facial expression | Source: Pexels
That baby. My baby. The one I’d been trying for, praying for, enduring endless treatments and agonizing waits for. The one I had just lost, definitively, at this very moment.
Suddenly, the bus, the glares, the pointed remarks, the pregnant woman… it all faded into a blurry, distant echo. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
My legs gave out. I didn’t even realize I was crying until the tears were hot streaks down my face, tasting of salt and pure, unadulterated devastation. It wasn’t just a regular ache in my back that day. It was the crushing weight of a dream dying. It wasn’t selfishness that kept me in that seat. It was a raw, festering wound that had been pricked open by the sight of someone else’s blooming life.
I refused to give up my seat to a pregnant woman. The memory was still there, a shameful blot. But now, it was framed by a grief so profound, so utterly personal, that the public humiliation felt like a whisper compared to a scream. I had been so consumed by my own silent, invisible agony, that I couldn’t see past it. I had just received the call, minutes before she boarded the bus, telling me to come in, that the news wasn’t good. I had been reeling, trying to process it, numb with shock. I was on my way to confirm the worst, hoping, against all medical evidence, that it was a mistake.
And there she was, a living, breathing symbol of everything I had just lost. Everything I would never have.
An angry man | Source: Pexels
I wasn’t a monster. I was just a woman, silently breaking apart, in a world that didn’t know, couldn’t know, the war raging inside me. And in my utter brokenness, I had lashed out, or rather, I had simply shut down. The humiliation on the bus was just the first tiny crack in a dam that was about to burst. The real confession isn’t just about the seat. It’s about the silent, excruciating pain that made me incapable of compassion in that moment. It’s about the impossible burden of carrying an invisible grief, and the public shame it inadvertently brings.
