The Appellate Court's Decision:
JUDGMENT AFFIRMED, ORDER VACATED,
AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS
In Noah's case this means that the jury's decision stands, and that the costs against us will simply be set for a hearing.
I feel like Noah will never have the proper closure to what happened to him at birth. It doesn't even matter what other's opinions may or may not be because I lived it. I live, breathe, eat, sleep and wake up to the truth every single day. I am haunted by it, knowing my son will never have justice. I re-live it all on a regular basis, the sounds, what was said, the hospital smells, it never goes away. It's as fresh as the day it happened. The memories never fade, and I carry this weight around me like a chain that grips my heart.
I dedicated nearly ten years of my life to a judicial system I believed in. A system I never thought would fail my son. I believed the truth would conquer all. And the truth is more important to me than anyone could ever realize.
I had to tell Chris about the news in the email. I seen his body just gently fall, his shoulders collapse and tears well in his eyes. He held his composure best he could so not as to deviate from being strong. Luke still much to young to even understand what has been going on or what this all means, looked with deep concern as endless tears followed down my face. I was in and out of sleep most of the night. Luke awoke with a bad dream and for a brief instant I forgot and then remembered the news. This pain in my head from the pressure of all my tears, shot down through my throat and past my heart and into my stomach. How could this be? This nightmare I cannot wake from.
We've endured putting Noah through invasive Court ordered genetic testing, faced an order to sedate Noah, who likely would not have survived sedation, for a MRI the day I was giving birth to his little brother, a theory that Noah suffered a brain injury weeks or days prior to birth (which is plastered all over the Internet in a Supreme Court ruling), only to get to trial and have them spring a new defense of merconium aspiration syndrome. Tell me where the truth of what happened to Noah is in that paragraph... because it's not there. It's not there at all.
It's in the fact that Noah wasn't timely delivered and was crying out for help and those cries were ignored until it was too late for Noah and he was born dead and then miraculously revived 13 minutes later. His life would have been different. He should be running around right now telling me how excited he is for his 6th birthday. And this pain, this terrible heartache as a mother that I can't change what is. I don't know how one recovers from this kind of brokenness. How much pain is one person supposed to carry in their lifetime?
And all I can do is try to hide the tears from my children as I celebrate Noah's sixth birthday, and move forward the best I can with Christmas.
Love,
Noah's Miracle by Stacy Warden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.