by Vivian Wood
“You need your sleep. That’s what will make you stronger,” the nurse said.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Harper said.
“It doesn’t hurt because you’re on pain meds,” the nurse said with a small laugh. “In LA, let me tell you, this is a rarity. Someone comes into the ER in the middle of the night and doesn’t want pain meds. That’s what a lot of people come in here for.”
Sean watched the nurse deftly swap out one of the bags. A fresh, strong fluid started to make its way into Harper’s arm.
“It’s going to make me fall asleep,” Harper said apologetically to Sean.
“It’s okay, you go ahead and sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up. P’s here, too, but they’re making him wait up front.”
He thought Harper nodded, but she fell asleep so quickly he couldn’t tell.
“Sorry,” the nurse said. “She’ll be much better when she wakes up after this dose, though.”
“It’s alright. Can I stay in here while she sleeps?”
“Sure, but it might be quite awhile,” the nurse said. “Consider the chair yours.”
He slumped into a hard, straight-backed chair and watched Harper sleep. Sean matched her deep breaths with his. His head spun. The father. He’d never considered being a father before. But he had to admit, a little version of Harper could never be a bad thing. A little boy or girl with a head of fire and those deep eyes of hers that spilled over with curiosity.
Sean took in her sleeping form and reached out to touch her abdomen. It was still flat. He could tell even below the thin hospital blankets. It was their baby in there, strong as she was, whether he was ready for it or not.
He closed his eyes and let the darkness encircle him. The beeps from the monitors got louder and the scent that all hospitals had poured into him. Please God, let her be okay. Let the baby be okay. Please, God.
Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed, unless he counted the prayers in his meetings with Joon-ki. But he was on autopilot with those, and had never really embraced the whole higher power aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous. Part of him felt like a fake for asking God, or whatever might be out there, for help now. But if not now, when?
Please, God, if you’re out there … I know I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve Harper, or the baby, or anything else good. But she doesn’t deserve this either. Please just let them be okay. Just let everything be okay.
Harper murmured in her sleep and his eyes opened. The brightness of the hospital room was nearly blinding. “It’ll be okay,” he told her quietly. “Don’t worry about anything. You and the baby will be okay. We’ll all be alright.”
She made a sound that he thought was contentment and he closed his eyes again. I know all the steps, all the stages. I know this is bargaining, and I know you get it all the time. But this is different, because this isn’t about me. It’s about Harper and the baby. Please, just let them be alright.
Sean listened to the footsteps that passed down the hall, the squeak of rubber soles on the tile floor polished to a dull shine. He felt the buckle of his jeans press into his abdomen, and was glad for the physical reminder of being in the world. But mostly, he listened to the hum and clicks of Harper’s monitors and willed them to remain steady.
24
Harper
Harper blinked her eyes open, but squinted against the fluorescence that shone in from the hallway. She felt the stiff, starched sheet over her and let out a small groan. The hospital. You’re in the hospital, she reminded herself. Fuck, that’s right. Sean would be pissed as hell, worried, or both by now and there was no way to get ahold of him.
She could feel drugs as they coursed through her system and could tell the fatigue she felt was enforced. Still, as she struggled to sit up and felt the pinch of IVs in her skin, she let out a gasp as she looked down her body. The otherwise bright white sheets were stained with a pool of blood that looked almost fake.
A scream built up in her throat. It sounded like an animal, but she couldn’t stop. A nurse in scrubs with a print of teddy bears burst into the room with a doctor on her heels. “Calm down,” the nurse repeated. “Calm down, we need to get the ultrasound set up to see what’s going on here.”
“The baby,” she screamed. “It’s the baby.”
The nurse prepped the machine that had been pushed into the corner of the room and pulled the soiled blanket and sheet off of Harper with a snap. Cold air rushed over her skin, and she realized her legs were covered in the congealed, sticky redness. When the nurse pushed up her gown and began to smear the jelly across her stomach, Harper was briefly embarrassed of the underwear she wore. The lace trim was worn out. “Always wear good, clean underwear in case you’re hospitalized,” her mother had always said.
The doctor took the little handheld element that looked like the scanners at department stores. He pressed firmly into her abdomen while he kept an eye on the screen. The same thing had happened when she was admitted, and Harper hadn’t been able to see much on the grainy screen then either.
“Is the baby okay?” she asked.
“Please keep still,” the nurse said. Her voice was kind but firm.
“Is the baby okay?” Harper asked again.
The doctor gave a slight shake of his head. “I can’t seem to find the fetus …”
Harper let out a cry that sounded even to her like prey that had been shot in the dark. Sean walked through the door, two coffee cups in hand along with a heavy paper bag of muffins. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” Harper choked out. “The baby … they can’t find the baby.”
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. He looked briefly at Harper, then at Sean. “Sometimes these things happen.” He looked at his pager. “It was the first trimester, and that time can be quite delicate—”
“It was me,” Harper said. “I did it. Or didn’t,” she corrected. The tears had turned silent, a quiet faucet she couldn’t turn off. “The baby couldn’t stay because of me.”
“I’ll let Nurse Connie clean you up,” the doctor said. “And I’ll be back in a little while to discuss your options.”
“Options?”
“It was the first trimester and you lost quite a bit of blood, but it wasn’t a traditional miscarriage,” he said. “Most of the time, I recommend a D and C to ensure all the waste is purged from the body.”
Harper flinched at the word. Purged. She’d never be able to escape it. “No,” she said vehemently as she started to shake her head. “I’m not doing that. I want a second opinion. The baby was just here—”
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said as she squeezed Harper’s hand. “It’s gone.” Sean started to move toward her, but the nurse stopped him with a single look. “You can sit in the chair,” the nurse said, “out of the way.”
“You don’t know!” Harper screamed at the nurse, the doctor, Sean, all of them. “Try it again.”
“Honey, I’m sorry,” the nurse said. The doctor was silent, but made small scratches on the chart that hung from the foot of Harper’s bed.
“You’re sorry?” Harper asked. Hysteria mixed with a macabre laugh in her voice. “You’re sorry? What are you sorry for? What did you do?”
“You’re young,” the nurse said. “You can try again.”
“I wasn’t fucking trying the first time!” Harper said. “I don’t want another baby, I want this baby. You don’t fucking get it, it was my only chance—”
“Up the sedation,” the doctor said bluntly.
“What? No!” Harper said. “You can’t just knock me out—”
But it was too late. Her own weakness surprised her. As Harper raised her hand to keep the nurse away from the IVs, the nurse easily pinned her arm down. She couldn’t do anything but watch as the fluids flooded her body faster. The faux sense of calm and exhaustion moved through her body like an electric blanket.
“Harper, stop,” she heard Sean say. Stop what? “It’s okay, just rest.”
Rest. She was tired of being told to rest, to calm down, that everything was okay. Everything is clearly not fucking okay, she tried to say, but the words just echoed in the empty chamber of her head.
She felt familiar arms around her shoulders and breathed Sean in. His body eclipsed the painful bright light above her. Harper tried to fight off the drugs, but they were too strong. She heard nurses murmuring and smelled fresh sheets. Someone, somehow, had already cleaned off her legs. She pressed her thighs together like she always did in bed, aware that the thigh gap had disappeared as the hard mattress pushed against her flesh.
I’m sorry. I fucked up. I fucked everything up. The words didn’t come out, but she prayed that Sean could still hear them. Even as the blackness crept closer around her, she scanned her body and realized something was missing. There was an emptiness, a space, that was spooned out from her center. How can you miss someone who’d only been a whisper inside you?
She’d been wrong for all those days. Maybe there hadn’t been any kicks or swells of the stomach, but the baby had been there. She’d known him, through and through. Him, she thought to herself. I didn’t realize that until now.
Harper felt a bustling of busy nurses around her. They worked around Sean, too. The steadiness of his arms kept her from drifting away into the wild unknown. The smell of bleach filled the air, and she felt gentle sponges across her skin.
“ … in time to make the softball game …” one of the nurses murmured. Harper would have laughed if she could at the idiocy of it all. Here they were, changing out her bloody sheets with bits of her baby on them as they talked about finishing a shift in time to go to a game.
Probably one of their kids’ games, she thought and it hit her. Her child was gone. Her only child. No matter what any of them said, no matter what Sean would say when the drugs wore off, she wouldn’t “try” again. The first had been the only, and he’d been a miracle. And she’d ruined it all, and for what? So she wouldn’t get fat.
“There’s a difference between fat and pregnant,” P had said. Obviously, right? But she hadn’t fully believed that. She’d watched friends expand into happy motherhood and had never understood how they could do that. Especially the models, the actresses, how they could just give up their whole body for a wiggling little pink thing. But now she knew. Why do I always have to figure everything out so late?
The walls were black velvet and closed in tighter. “I love you,” Sean whispered into her ear. He just kept repeating it. She tried to open her mouth to tell him again how sorry she was, how she loved him, too. But no matter how much she tried, nothing came out.
She wanted to tell him that she understood now. Just give me another chance, a do-over, and I’ll get it right. She would eat right, exercise in moderation, rest and do everything else she was supposed to. She’d no longer obsess over getting just the right supplements, but go with her gut and just start it already. Anything it took, she would do.
The doctor could be wrong, she tried to tell herself, but she knew that was a lie. She’d been asleep when the baby had slipped away, and she hadn’t even noticed. Harper would never forget the shock of those red sheets. So bright and cheery, it had been so wrong. Where had everyone been? she thought. She remembered Sean with those white paper cups and the little brown paper bag that seeped out oil from the café.
The baby had known. He’d waited until it was just the two of them to make his escape. And Harper hadn’t been able to stop him, to keep him. Even on her back, with her thighs spread thick, she hadn’t been able to clamp her legs shut tight enough to keep him safe. The thigh gap had done what it was supposed to do. It was an alley, a highway, that let the greatest thing that had ever happened to her make a getaway into the night.
“Does she have any other family?” she heard a nurse ask.
“Not really,” Sean said. He hesitated. Don’t call my mom. Don’t you let them call my mom.
“Parents?”
“Uh, not really,” Sean said. She was aware of her phone, dead in her purse, but all it would take was a slight recharge for anyone to scroll through it to find her mother’s number.
“Okay,” the nurse said. “Just checking.”
Harper sighed internally, slightly comforted, and let the dark take her.
25
Sean
Sean’s back ached, but he’d grown used to it. The little plastic chair he’d camped out in since Harper fell asleep pushed against his spine and refused to give. You have to give it props for that, he thought. The chair was nothing if not determined. And it reminded him of all the pangs and groans that went along with life.
Nurses came in after thirty minutes and went through a series of checks and tests that he knew nothing about. They always told him she was stable and that the rest was good. There were moments her eyelids fluttered wildly in REM. During those times he gripped her hand and spoke soothing words to her. Sean could only imagine the kind of demons that roamed her nightmares.
He went back and forth to the waiting room to check in with P, though he never had any news. Finally, Sean urged him, “Go home. I’ll call you as soon as she wakes up.”
P had looked around wearily and held the steady gazes of children who took in his outfit with curiosity. “Maybe you’re right,” P said. “This outfit doesn’t exactly translate to daywear.”
Sean thought about texting Joon-ki or even Connor, but what could he say? There was no way he could talk to anyone without spilling why Harper was in the hospital to begin with. It might be half his child, but it was her body—and up to her whether she ever told anyone else or not.
Instead, he asked the nurse for a few pieces of paper from the copy machine and a pen. He lost himself in his imagination and dreamed up cloudless landscapes, magical creatures and beautiful scenery on the white blank sheets. The least he could do was create a miniature of a perfect world, one suitable for Harper and the baby that had gone.
There was a shift in the hum of the machines that made Sean look up. He’d just finished a pastoral landscape drenched with flowers drawn in aching detail. He imagined it to be the kind of place they might retire one day. Maybe in the English midlands, or some vast openness in the middle of the country he only knew in dreams.
Harper let out a soft moan and flexed her fingers.
“Hey,” he said as he stood up and leaned over the bed. “Welcome back.”
“What time is it?” she asked, groggy.
He glanced at the clock. “Almost three.”
“In the afternoon?”
“Yep. You slept most of the morning. Which is good.”
She tried to push herself into a seated position but flinched.
“Don’t strain yourself,” he said and propped an extra pillow below her.
“I’m sorry.” They were the first clear words she said.
“No more sorries.”
“I can’t help it,” she said. “I feel like I, you know, I failed. At the first task of motherhood. Keep the baby alive, that was it. That was all I had to do.”
“You make it sound like that’s easy. Or that you even had much control over it. Do you remember what the doctor said? These kinds of things happen all the time.”
“They happen a lot more when you’re underweight. Malnourished,” she said. “God. I’m so sorry. I mean, I knew I had vitamin deficiencies. Anemia, all that. I hoped the prenatal vitamins would boost me back up, but—”
“You have no idea whether that had anything to do with it or not. And we’ll never know. So why worry about it?”
The nurse walked in as Harper started to protest more. “There’s our sleeping beauty,” she said. Her smile had the familiar slight tinge of coffee stains from daily habits, the same all the staff had. “Feeling better?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Harper muttered. “Can you tell me more? What happened—I mean, I know what happened. But why?”
“Harper—” Sean started, but she quieted him with a look.
“I need to know,” she said. “Was it me? Did I do something? Or … not do something?”
The nurse went about her tasks as she checked Harper’s vitals and the machines. “Miscarriages are a lot more common than most people think,” she said. “They’re most often caused by chromosomal abnormalities. Now, don’t let that worry you,” she said. “Even if that is the cause, which we can’t know, that in no way means that you won’t have a slew of babies in the future with no complications. It could also be a bunch of other reasons. If and when you’re ready to try again, it’s always best to work with an OBGYN before you even start trying. You can get tests to see what challenges you might face, and that can certainly give you peace of mind and help make future pregnancies easier.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll ‘try’ ever again,” Harper said. Sean squeezed her hand.
“You might and you might not,” the nurse said with a shrug. “All I can tell you for certain is it’s pretty pointless to think about such a big decision right here, right now.”
“Thank you,” Sean said. He meant it. The idea of actually planning a pregnancy seemed a world away. Still, there was a distinct sense of loss in the room. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted that baby, even under the circumstances.
“Yeah,” Harper whispered. “Thanks. When can I leave?”
“The doctor will come in to talk to you about that,” the nurse said. “I don’t expect you to stay overnight, but a little longer just for observation might be in order. Rest, relax. The café here is pretty good if you’re hungry—at least, relatively speaking,” she said with a wink.
They both listened to the nurse’s footsteps as she retreated down the hall.
“You know,” Sean said carefully, “don’t take this the wrong way. I’m devastated about the loss. Really. More so than I thought I would be. But there’s a part of me that’s also … relieved.”
