by June Gray
“No, no, no,” I whispered as I locked the stall and pulled down my pants, wondering why I hadn’t noticed the dampness before. The breath caught in my throat when I saw the blood—not a lot, but enough to send an arrow of fear straight through my heart. “No.”
I grabbed handfuls of toilet paper and wiped, horrified to find even more blood. I kept wiping with fresh toilet paper, willing away the blood.
“Elsie!” Kari yelled, her voice echoing in the small space of the bathroom. “You in here?”
“I’m here,” I said in a shaky voice.
“What the hell happened?” she asked, her voice much closer and quieter. “Are you okay?”
“C-c-could you please get me a pad?” I stammered, the tears welling up in my eyes.
“So you do have your period,” she said, and a second later, I heard the quarter clink as she turned the knob on the wall dispenser.
“I—I guess.” I grabbed the pad she held over the door and said, “Thanks. I think I’m good.”
When I walked out, Kari gasped. “You’re white as a sheet.”
I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, trying hard not to sniff. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”
“What? Why?” She touched my arm, looking me over for any obvious signs of injury.
“I think . . .” I swallowed hard, finding it difficult to say the words aloud. “I think I’m having a miscarriage.”
—
“I can’t believe you never told me!” Kari yelled as she drove to the Denver Health Medical Center in her truck.
I looked down at my phone, willing it to ring. I’d called Henry several times and left nearly twenty text messages but all I’d gotten was radio silence. “I’m sorry,” I said to my friend. “We were waiting until we were past the twelve-week point.”
“And how far along are you?”
I wiped at my cheeks. “Eleven.”
Kari shook her head, swerving around a driver. “Get out of the way, shithead!” she cried, flipping him off.
It took us twenty-one excruciating minutes to get to the hospital. Kari dropped me off at the ER door and went to park the truck, and I hobbled inside, trying to quell the panic that had taken hold of my muscles.
While in the waiting room, I tried calling Henry again but received no answer. “Fuck, Henry, answer your fucking phone,” I said under my breath. I needed my husband beside me during this critical time and he was nowhere to be found.
Kari sat beside me, holding my hand, trying her best to be Henry’s substitute.
Another round of cramps racked my insides, and I doubled over, trying not to cry out.
Kari stood up and stalked over to the front desk. “My friend over there could be losing her baby. Is there any way we can hurry up and get her seen already?”
The nurse shook her head and motioned to the several other people in the waiting room.
Dr. Harmon finally called me back on my cell, telling me that she couldn’t get out of the office. “I’ve already called the hospital. They’ll test the HCG in your blood levels and do an ultrasound.”
“Am I going to lose the baby?” I asked, trying to sound strong and not sure I’d succeeded.
“I don’t know, Elsie,” she said gently. “But bleeding during pregnancy is actually quite common. Many go on to carry full term. It could be a number of things, so don’t worry yet.”
That wasn’t really comforting to me; in fact it had quite the opposite effect.
“Are you filling more than one pad an hour?” she asked. “Pain?”
“No. I don’t think so. The bleeding just started. But the pain is intensifying.”
“I don’t know if they’ll send you back home, but stay positive, Elsie. I’ll be there at six.”
“Thanks.” I hung up just as Kari came back with a few more pads in hand.
“They told me to sit tight and wait, but gave me these just in case,” she said, handing me the packages.
I stood up to go to the bathroom when I felt a gush, as if gravity had wrenched out a part of me. I looked down to find blood saturating my pants and dripping at my feet.
The last thing I remembered was my vision graying as the linoleum floor rushed at me.
3
I was disoriented when I woke, not recognizing the room or the bed I was in.
“How are you feeling?” a male voice asked. I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when I turned my head and saw that it wasn’t my husband standing by my bed but my boss. “Sherman, you gave me a fright,” Conor said, taking hold of my hand.
“What are you doing here?” I looked around the room, finding Kari in the corner and nobody else. Still no Henry.
“I called him to say we were going to be gone the rest of the day, and he demanded to know the reason,” Kari said, stepping forward. “I had to tell him, Elsie. I’m sorry.”
I nodded, tears blurring my vision once again. “And the baby?”
Kari bit her lip and looked away, not needing to say any more.
I closed my eyes but the tears fell anyway, fat drops rolling down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. “Are they sure?” I asked in a near whisper.
“They did an ultrasound and blood test,” Kari said. “If you want, I can call the nurse in and she can explain it better.”
I shook my head, unable to bear the thought of hearing in cold, medical terms exactly how my baby had died.
“They asked us to call them as soon as you’re conscious, to get your consent on performing a D and C.”
A nurse came in then, an elderly woman with dark skin and even darker circles around her eyes. “Oh good, you’re awake,” she said, grabbing the clipboard at the end of my bed. She turned to Kari and Conor. “Would you two please wait outside?”
“We’ll be right there if you need us,” Conor said and followed Kari out the door.
When they had gone, the nurse closed the curtain and turned to me with a grave look. “I’m sorry about your loss.”
My lips quivered as I tried my damnedest to keep from bursting into angry tears. “Are you sure?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “When you’re ready, we need to talk about a D and C,” she said. “It’s a procedure where your cervix will be dilated and then the doctors will remove the contents of your uterus to make sure everything is out to prevent an infection.”
I lost control of my emotions and, despite the ache in my stomach, I sobbed hard.
She sat on the side of the bed and patted my hand, careful not to press on the IV needles, and sat quietly with me for a long while, giving me the comfort of her presence until I was ready to sign the forms.
—
In the end, the procedure was over in a blur. What I had carried inside me for eleven weeks was gone in twenty minutes, and soon I was wheeled back to the recovery room to take in my loss in private.
At nearly ten, Kari and Conor finally went home at my insistence. “Take a few days off if you need,” he said, his brows knitted with worry. “Take care of yourself, Sherman,” he added before they left.
In that dark room, with only the soft humming of medical equipment, I stared up at the ceiling and tried my hardest to keep from falling to pieces.
I’d never felt more alone in my entire life.
—
I woke up to knocking on my door. I opened my swollen eyes to find Henry standing at the door, his solid frame illuminated by the fluorescent lights behind him.
“Elsie,” he said, crossing the room in three long strides and bending down to gather me in his arms, pulling me up off the bed. He buried his face in my neck and I felt his hot tears land on my shoulder but my insides were numb and so I felt nothing but the gaping hollowness. His shoulders quaked as he held me, rocking me back and forth, holding me tight.
After what seemed like forever,
he finally pulled away. He grabbed my face and planted kisses on my lips. “I’m sorry,” he said over and over.
Unable to bear his touch, I pulled his hands away. “Where were you?”
“My phone was out of battery,” he said, stung. “Why didn’t you call the station? They could have radioed me.”
“You never told me I could.” I looked at him still in uniform, at the bags under his red eyes, and realized he hadn’t had any sleep yet. “Go home and sleep, Henry.”
He frowned as hurt and anger flew across his features. “I’m finally here. Why the hell would I leave?”
“Because you haven’t had any sleep,” I said simply, lying back again.
“I’m staying,” he said, taking my hand.
I turned away. “It’s okay. They just wanted to keep me overnight for observation. I’ll be released later today.”
“Then I’m leaving later today. With you.”
“Henry, you have to work tonight. So please, go home and get some sleep.”
He wrapped his fingers around my jaw and turned me to face him. “Why the hell are you pushing me away right now?”
I turned my eyes to the dark stubble on his cheek, unable to meet his angry gaze.
“Fuck sleep. Right now, I want to be with you,” he said in a rough voice. “I’m sorry. I should have been here when . . .”
His unspoken words undid me, and my face crumbled in on itself.
“Come here,” he said, reaching out with one hand to pull me into his chest. He curled over me and we grieved together in the dark.
—
I survived the next few weeks by tucking the hurt and the sadness inside, pasting on a fake smile in hopes that acting the part would somehow convince my heart to feel it.
Any day now, I was sure of it.
Henry seemed everywhere and nowhere at once. He still worked a lot, leaving me alone for long periods of time, but when he was at home he practically suffocated me with his presence, constantly cuddling me, offering to make me tea, anything to ease the blow of his absence that night. His constant pandering irritated me until I finally couldn’t take it anymore and just told him to back off.
“I don’t need you to treat me like an invalid, Henry,” I told him one day after the third time he suggested we go shopping or watch a movie.
He frowned at me as his nostrils flared. “I’m not. I’m just trying to get you to leave the house. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”
I gestured at my perch on the couch, the blanket over me with my e-reader and a cup of coffee nearby. “I’m fine right here.”
“Where you’ve been for the past three days.”
“If you want to go shopping so bad, why don’t you go call Sondra and make a day of it? Get a mani-pedi and talk about your poor wife who can’t even get herself up off the couch,” I said, relishing the fact that I was getting him so riled up.
His nostrils flared again. “I haven’t told her about . . . it.”
“It?”
He averted his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s easy for you, isn’t it? To just pretend the baby wasn’t real, so you can deal with it?”
“You think this is easy for me?” he asked, his features clouding over. He paced in front of me, the veins in his forehead popping. “I’m trying to be the strong one here even though it’s tearing me apart. I’m trying to be here for you.”
“You’re here for me? Where were you when it really mattered?” I asked, pushing the blanket away and rising to my feet. “I needed you, Henry, and you weren’t there. You were out there saving Denver when you should have been with me, saving our child.”
“That’s not fucking fair!” His voice boomed like thunder throughout the house, surprising me with its force.
I knew it wasn’t fair—I knew that—but it didn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. Maybe I just wanted to hurt him as much as I was hurting.
He grabbed me by the shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh. The unmasked look of resentment in his eyes filled me with regret and worry. I had never seen him look at me like that before, and it made me feel absolutely wretched. “You’re not the only one who lost something that day, Els.”
I turned away, ashamed of myself but unable to voice my regret. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we do need to get out of the house,” I said instead.
He wanted to say more, I could see it in the hard set of his jaw, but he said nothing else. He just nodded, the look still on his face.
We ended up going to a nearly-deserted matinee movie—I couldn’t even recall which one now—but it felt as if something had shifted between us. We didn’t touch, barely even acknowledged each other. We simply sat together like two strangers who just happened to be in the same place at the same time.
As we sat there in the darkened room, I looked down at our hands resting on our own laps, neither one of us even daring to use the armrest. It was as if we didn’t know how to act around each other anymore. We, who had grown up together, who had braved the death of my brother together, suddenly couldn’t figure out a way to deal with this kind of grief. Instead of drawing us closer, the loss of our baby was tearing us apart.
Unable to bear the thought of losing him too, I leaned over and reached for his hand in the dark, holding my breath as I waited for a response.
After a few tense moments, I closed my eyes in relief when his fingers curled around mine. That one gesture filled me with so much hope, my sight immediately blurred with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, bringing his hand up and kissing his knuckles.
His eyes flickered from the light of the movie screen as he gazed down at me. Then he bent down until our foreheads were touching and granted me a rueful smile.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I was out of line,” I said.
He nodded gently.
“I just . . .” I swallowed. “I’ve been carrying around all of this guilt, and I think I needed to just give it someone else to carry for a while.”
“It’s not your fault, Elsie. You heard the doctor. She said it happens to one in five women. You couldn’t have done anything differently to prevent it.”
“I could have loved it from the very beginning.” My voice broke at the end, and before I had a chance to blink, Henry lifted the armrest out of the way and gathered me into his side.
“Hey, don’t do this. Don’t even think that, okay?” he said, brushing hair away from my face.
I buried my face in his neck. “Sometimes I feel so weak, like I’ve fallen to my knees and can’t get back up.”
He touched my chin and lifted my face up to meet his. “Then lean on me, Elsie,” he said, determination and love in his eyes. “I’ll hold you up until you’re strong enough to stand on your own again.”
4
Time heals all wounds, but only because the brain is a forgetful thing. We forget on purpose in order to leave the past behind and move on; it’s human nature. And since I’m only human, the hurt subsided with each day that passed.
After a month, I had almost completely convinced myself that the miscarriage was for the best, that there was a valid medical reason why my body decided to terminate the pregnancy. Whenever I felt myself spiraling into sadness, I’d remind myself that there was nothing I could have done to change what happened, that it wasn’t my fault.
When you tell yourself something enough times, eventually, you start to believe it.
—
Conor came by my cubicle one day, hanging his arms over the low wall. “How are you, Sherman?”
I smiled up at him. “Logan. And I’m doing fine.”
“I noticed you’ve been keeping your head down and working hard on the presentation.”
I nodded, glancing back at my screen, hoping he wouldn’t come farther into my cubicle and see that I
was actually just looking at funny pictures on the Internet.
“I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate your work ethic, that you didn’t bring your personal issues with you to work.”
I felt my face warm up, from the compliment and from the fact that he had seen me at my worst. “Thanks for not telling anyone.”
“It’s not mine to tell.” His eyes assessed me quietly for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I’m sorry it happened.”
“Me too.”
“Anyway, if you wanted to get out of here early today, then go ahead.”
I glanced at the stack of folders on my desk and the to-do list pinned to my wall. “That might not be possible.”
“Do it Monday,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. Something caught his attention across the wall of cubicles for a moment and he straightened. “Seems you have a visitor,” he said, his mood changing.
I stood up and found Henry walking down my row, making the breath catch in my throat. He looked intimidatingly gorgeous in his black leather jacket and jeans, with day-old stubble on his face and sunglasses covering his eyes. He walked toward us with long, comfortable strides, ignoring looks from my coworkers, his attention aimed directly at me as if I was his prey and he had all the time in the world to catch me.
I had to admit, seeing him like that rekindled the fires that had once burned low in my belly. I hadn’t seen him much the past few days, except when he was asleep, and seeing him this way was like a punch to the gut. Sometimes even I forgot how magnetic and beautiful my husband was.
“Hi,” he said, coming to a stop at the entrance to my cubicle.
Conor gave him a slap on the back. “Nice to see you again.”
“Same to you.” Henry took off his sunglasses and aimed his attention to me. “Hey.” He reached out and touched the small of my back and gave me a quick, warm kiss.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my lips tingling. It had been over two months since we’d last had sex, and all of a sudden, it was as if he was sending out pheromones that my body was picking up.
“It’s a nice day. I wanted to see if you were available to go for a ride on the Harley with me.” He glanced down at his watch. “Just for a while.”
