by T. L. Haddix
“Can we read her a story?” Noah asked with his quiet lisp.
“Maybe later. Come on, let’s get her to bed.”
Left with little choice, Zanny only gave a token protest as the boys hurried to her. Noah held her hand as they went to the bedroom, with Eli leading the way at a run.
“He doesn’t walk anywhere, does he?” John murmured from behind her.
“Not much.”
In short order, they had her comfortably ensconced against the pillows. John didn’t come too close, staying at the foot of the bed to supervise.
“I’ll take these guys upstairs, get them dressed, and find something to play with. You just take it easy.”
“They kind of wanted to go to story time at the library this morning. It starts at eleven.” She glanced at the clock. It was almost ten.
“I can do that if you want me to. Let you get some peace and quiet for a little while.”
“I’d appreciate it.” She knew her willingness to give in so quickly worried him, but she was too tired to let it bother her. “Thanks, John.” Closing her eyes, she was asleep almost before he pulled the door closed behind him.
Once he got the boys ready to go, John checked in on Zanny. She didn’t stir, even when he touched her face to check her temperature. She didn’t feel as warm as she had earlier, but he was still concerned.
He mentioned it to his mother when they got to the library.
“Do you think it’s the pregnancy?”
Sarah frowned and watched the boys as they went to the toys and started playing. “I don’t know. It’s probably just a bug. We’ll keep an eye on her.”
He took the boys for burgers and fries after story time, and by the time they got back to the house, Zanny was sitting on the couch in the living room, folding laundry. Although she was still a little pale, she looked much better than she had.
“Thanks for letting me sleep,” she told him with a smile. “These guys look ready for a nap.”
“I’m not. I’m a big boy,” Noah told her, but he leaned against John’s leg and rubbed his eyes with his fist. Eli was already dozing on John’s shoulder.
“Well, why don’t you and I take your brother upstairs and get him settled in? And if you could stay with him, so he doesn’t get scared before he goes to sleep, that would be a big help.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
With a smile for Zanny, they headed upstairs. Though he fought valiantly, Noah was asleep within minutes of lying down with Eli. John sat there for a few minutes, just watching his sons. What he’d told his mother the other night was true. He and Zanny did make adorable babies.
Noah was dark like him, but with Zanny’s hazel eyes. Eli was still a bit of a towhead, with eyes that were blue like his grandmother’s. John wondered, looking at them, what they would be like as adults. He knew that time would come sooner rather than later, and he tried to absorb as much of the moment as he could. With soft kisses placed on each of their heads, he left the room quietly and headed back to Zanny.
“Are they asleep?”
“Out like a light, both of them.”
“I’m not surprised. Thanks for getting them down.”
“I enjoyed it. You look like you feel better.”
She nodded and put the last of the laundry in the basket. “I do. Set this on the steps?”
John took the basket and put it on the landing. Turning back to Zanny, he watched her watch him. “Hi.”
She laughed and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Hi. This is a little awkward, I guess.”
“A little.” John smiled sheepishly and sat beside her. “Can we talk?”
Zanny turned on the couch so that she was facing him, her legs curled underneath her. “Sure.”
Remembering Sarah’s advice, he started by telling Zanny he loved her. “I think you know that, right? Everything we’ve been through the last little while, the way I feel about you has not changed. It will not change.”
“Okay. Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere?”
John scowled. “What? No. There’s no ‘but.’ There never will be.”
It was Zanny’s turn to frown, a slight furrowing of her brow telling John she was having trouble with the concept. “Okay.”
“This is hard for me. I don’t know how to say this without hurting you, and that’s the last thing I want. But you asked me what was wrong, and this is part of it. So I’m answering.” He kept his voice low and his eyes on his hands. He was rotating his ring again, which was a sure sign he was nervous, and he knew Zanny realized that. “When we fought the other day, I said some things… I said a lot of things I didn’t believe. I was angry, and I shouldn’t have said them. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
He glanced at her. “But there was some truth in what I said. Not that I don’t think you work. I know I’d probably be nuts within a week if I tried to do what you do. And I appreciate very much how much you give, how much effort you put forth, to make life for me and the boys what it is. Okay?”
“Um, sure.”
“That said, you set high standards. And I, well, I feel like I’m not good enough to meet those standards all the time. A lot of the time, if you want the truth.”
Zanny shook her head, her eyes on his hands. “You feel like you’re not good enough for me?” Her voice was quietly shocked.
“A little, yeah. You’ve made me a better person, Zan, please don’t think that I mean anything else. But sometimes, I don’t want to be as good as you expect me to be.”
“Is this about the pizza and beer thing?”
He shrugged. “Kinda. And it isn’t even so much about me, per se, but about us. About you. I know you enjoy taking care of us, but I worry that you feel like if you don’t do everything, that if you aren’t perfect, I won’t want you. Won’t love you. And that simply isn’t true.”
When she crossed her arms, John cursed himself silently. “So you want me to what? Not clean house? Not cook?”
“Not if you don’t want to. I don’t want you to feel like you have to. That’s what I’m trying to say here.” He moved so that he was face to face with her. “I want you to know that you don’t have to-to earn your keep. Your value to me isn’t dependent on how nice the roast turns out for dinner or how crisp the sheets are at night.”
He let her process that. She watched him warily, as though waiting for him to tell her he’d been joking, and then she pursed her lips and looked away.
“So let me get this straight. You feel like because I’m the way I am”—she gestured around at the house—“that you have to be just as ‘perfect’ as I am? And you think we both need to not be so ‘perfect’?”
John was sure there was a question in there he needed clarification on, but he wasn’t about to ask her for it. “Uh, yes?”
“Because you love me, no matter what, even if I don’t change the sheets for three weeks or burn your dinner? And that’s why you’ve been acting so distant lately?”
“It sounds a little nuts when you put it that way, but yes.”
She was eyeing him with obvious doubt, but she didn’t seem upset. “Okay.”
John started to relax. “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate all the little things as much as the big things. Because I do. But I want you to make sure you’re doing what you’re doing because you want to. Not because of some expectation you think I’ll have.”
“Okay.” She stood and rubbed her lower back. “I, um… I’ll be back. Excuse me.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, just need the bathroom.”
John watched her go. He was a little uneasy, not being able to get a read on her feelings, but he hoped that when she came back out, they would talk more and things would be better.
&
nbsp; But when she reappeared in the doorway, tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her face was so pale that the skin under her eyes looked bruised.
He jumped to his feet. “Zanny?”
“Something’s wrong.”
He didn’t see the blood until she held out her hands, and then, for several seconds, he stupidly thought she’d cut herself. When the implications sank in, his heart shattered, and he knew things weren’t going to be okay—not for a long, long time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zanny didn’t remember John’s frantic, devastated actions after she came out of the bathroom. She didn’t remember him getting her into clean clothes or making the phone call to his mother that had Sarah rushing over from the library to stay with the boys. She remembered a little bit about the trip to the emergency room, but nothing of the exam that followed.
The first real memory she had was of waking up in the middle of the night, intense cramps tearing through her abdomen. She was in a hospital bed, and the only light in the room came from the bathroom. John was in a chair beside her.
He woke as she whimpered with pain. “Zanny?”
“Hurts.” She curled into a ball, ignoring the uncomfortable wetness between her thighs. Even though her thoughts were somewhat muddled, she knew what was going on. “Please make it stop hurting.” She wasn’t sure if she meant the physical or the mental pain.
John smoothed his hand over her hair and her back, then pressed the button for the nurse. “Okay, sweetheart. They’ll bring you something. Just try to breathe through it.”
She felt tears trickling down and into her hairline, but she didn’t try to stop them. If she let go of her knees to wipe them away, she would fly into a million pieces.
The nurse was there quickly, and whatever she gave Zanny acted almost immediately. As she drifted off, she felt John press a kiss to her temple and heard him whisper over and over again how sorry he was.
“Me, too…” she tried to say. “Me, too.”
When the next morning came, Zanny was numb. Her doctor came in early, and the exam that followed was an ordeal she never wanted to experience again. His face was grim as he finished.
“We’re going to need to go in, do a little procedure,” he told her and John. “You’ll be under sedation, so you won’t remember any of it, but we need to make sure we take care of you so that you don’t set up an infection.”
Zanny gripped John’s hand tightly, knowing the doctor meant a D&C. She’d read about the procedure some time ago and had been horrified by it then.
“Why’d this happen?” she managed to ask.
“This early in the pregnancy? Given that you didn’t have any problems with the boys, it was probably just one of those things. There isn’t any way to tell, not really. I’m sorry.”
“Is it because we’re separated?” She pulled her hand from John’s and let it fall to her side.
“Stress can cause issues, you know that, but I doubt it’s the cause of this loss. As much as I wish I had answers for you, sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes, it just isn’t meant to be. And I know you probably won’t take much comfort from this now, but I see nothing that tells me you couldn’t have another child down the line.” He patted her knee gently. “I’ll have the nurse come in and start getting you prepped.”
He closed the door behind him when he left. Silence filled the room, and Zanny tried to bring herself to look at John, but she couldn’t. The pain, the doubt, and the shame were just too strong.
“The boys?”
“With Mom and Dad at the farm.” She felt his hand come to rest lightly on her shoulder, then travel up and down her arm. “Zanny, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t do this. Not right now.” She closed her eyes and had to bite her lip against a scream of grief that threatened to rip her apart when she heard him sniffling wetly behind her.
“Okay. Just…I’m here.”
Zanny couldn’t answer. All she could do was focus on breathing in, breathing out, breathing in. Everything else was just too hard.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
John had never felt so utterly helpless in his life as he waited for Zanny to come back up from surgery. When a soft tap sounded on the door, he looked up. Owen stepped into the room.
“Hey.”
“Come on in.” His voice felt rusty.
“How is she?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, really. “They’re doing the procedure now. She should be back up here in a little while. Maybe an hour.”
Owen closed the door, then came over and sat on the cot beside him. “And how are you?”
All the stress and worry from the last week and a half, combined with his guilt and a heavy burden of grief, caught up with John. When he opened his mouth to answer, a choked sob escaped instead. Without a word, his father put his arms around him and held him while he cried.
After the storm passed, John excused himself and went to the bathroom. He took a few minutes to collect himself. Once he’d washed his face, he went back into the room. Owen was looking out the window over the parking lot, to the elementary school next door that Noah and Eli would attend in a few years’ time. John felt the weight of Owen’s gaze as his father assessed him, but he didn’t look in his direction.
“We’ll keep the boys at the farm until Zanny is ready for them to come home.”
“Thanks. The doctor said she might go home this evening if she isn’t running a temperature.”
“How’s she doing mentally?”
John shook his head. “Not good. She won’t look at me, won’t talk to me.”
“I imagine it hurts too much right now.” Owen shifted and moved his shoulders restlessly. “You probably don’t remember this, but after we had Emma and Ben, we lost a baby.”
John drew in a breath. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Thanks. Point is, Sarah and I have been where you are, and it takes time. Given everything else that’s been going on lately, well, I’m afraid things will probably get worse before they get better.”
“So am I. I feel like this is my fault. If I’d been there, I might have seen a warning sign or been able to do something to prevent this.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“That there’s nothing that could have been done. That it just happens this way sometimes.”
“I know how hard that is to take and to believe. But it’s true, and eventually, with any luck, you both will come to see that.”
“Did you?”
Owen touched his shoulder. “Eventually. Let’s go down the hall and get some coffee.”
John didn’t want to go far, in case they brought Zanny back up while he and Owen were gone. Plus, he wasn’t up to making small talk with anyone. They paced to the end of the hall and back a couple of times, keeping vigil.
“Emma called yesterday morning. She’s on her way home.”
That pulled John from his misery a little. He stopped at the end of the hall and leaned against the wall. “To visit?”
“Not from what she said, which wasn’t much. I guess she’s moving back.”
John frowned. “That’s pretty sudden.”
Owen agreed. “She said she’d explain everything when she gets here. She’s going to take her time, probably roll in around Thursday or Friday.”
“You’d said you thought something was going on. Looks like you were right.”
A nurse stepped out from behind the desk halfway down the hall and looked around. When she saw them, she gestured.
“She’s out of the OR, and things went very well. They’ll be bringing her up after she’s spent a few minutes in recovery, Mr. Campbell, so about twenty or thirty minutes.”
“Thanks.”
“In that case, why don’t we st
ep outside and get some fresh air?” Owen suggested. “Just walk down to the parking lot and back? We can use the steps, so we can avoid everyone.”
“Fresh air sounds good.”
As the went down the steps, John tried to think, but he was so tired, he couldn’t pull his mind together to form thoughts. He figured that was probably a blessing, a defense mechanism of sorts, and that the thoughts would rush back in soon enough.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Late Monday morning, Zanny’s doctor released her from the hospital. John took her straight home. He was solicitous and careful with her, anticipating her needs almost before Zanny knew she had them. That was fine with her. The less thinking she did, the better.
He pulled up under the carport and parked. “I’ll get the door unlocked and come back for you.”
“Okay.” She got her door open and was standing beside the car when he came back. She was sore, still cramping and bleeding, but her fever hadn’t returned.
“Wrap your arms around my shoulders.” He stooped down and, moving as though he thought she would break, he picked her up. “Good?”
“I’m fine.”
He carried her inside and stopped in the kitchen. “Where do you want to be?”
Zanny blinked. “I don’t know. The living room, I guess.”
“Yes, ma’am. Couch or chair?”
“Couch.”
As gently as he’d picked her up, he sat her down. Zanny felt him brush a kiss against her hair before he straightened. “I’ll get the bags. Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
For the rest of the day, she stayed on the couch, except when John made her get up, following doctors’ orders, and walk around a little. She felt completely disconnected from everything. Several times, she’d just tuned out while John was talking to her. She couldn’t even bring herself to apologize.
