He glances at her. “You’re done already? Everything OK?”
She mumbles something, turning around, the sudden urge to get out of there as quickly as possible overtaking her.
“What?” Oliver jumps up, following her.
She whips around. “It was just gas.”
Oliver’s mouth drops open and then his lips start to curl up. She raises an eyebrow and pokes a finger toward him. “Don’t,” she says, readjusting her bag strap on her shoulder. “Don’t you dare.”
* * *
It’s not until later when she’s resting in bed, Oliver halfway back to Philly, that the weight of everything she felt in the exam room comes crashing down on her.
She is going to be a mother.
And she’s not so sure she wants to be.
Chapter 22
Harrison goes through the motions of his life, waking up to his alarm, going running, heading in to work, coming home late and then getting up to do it all over again. I watch him, like I’m eyeing a caged animal, waiting—but for what, I’m not sure. It doesn’t occur to me until the third day, when I’m staring at him and it strikes me that I’m wondering where my husband went, even though he’s standing in the same room I am. I haven’t just been looking at him; I’ve been looking for him.
The dopey-grinned Harrison clutching a little knitted pink-and-blue-striped beanie he had swiped from the hospital nursery the day after my very first positive pregnancy test.
The Harrison, lips pressed to my belly, whispering how we met to our second, which still would not become our first.
The Harrison, high-pitched and laughing, as he squeals Three Little Pig voices for Finley and Griffin at bedtime.
I’ve been wondering for weeks, months, even: Where did that Harrison go? But now I know the answer. Noah isn’t the only thing he lost that day. Harrison’s brushed me off every time I’ve brought it up since his drunken confession, but I’ve latched onto it, desperate to understand what he’s going through, and how to fix it. How to bring the Harrison I know back to me.
While he’s been at work, I’ve spent hours online, researching. I Googled how doctors cope with death. A photo of a surgeon in a white coat crouched against a concrete wall, his head bowed, solemn, was the first result to pop up. It’s an image that went viral—the rare sight of raw emotion from a doctor who lost a nineteen-year-old patient in the ER. I sifted through Reddit and Quora and Tumblr, reading multiple versions of the same story—surgeons dealing with the death of patients. We’re not trained for this in medical school, says one. You learn how to save a life. Not how to lose one.
It lingers, says another, burns into your soul. You’re never quite the same.
By Wednesday, I feel confident enough from my research to broach the topic again with Harrison.
After my art class, I wait on the couch for him to get home. The key turns in the door, he steps into the house, and before he can evade me, go to the shower, mumble that he’s tired and is going to bed, I speak. “I think you have situational depression.”
“Nice to see you, too,” he says, standing in the archway between the foyer and the den where I’m seated.
“I’m serious,” I say. “Losing a patient—the way you lost Noah—is not easy.”
A puff of laughter escapes his lips, but he’s not smiling.
“I mean, I’m just saying it’s normal, what you’re going through. Accidents happen. Doctors aren’t perfect—you’re human. So many surgeons struggle like this—it’s like this invisible epidemic. Did you know that male doctors commit suicide at a rate seventy percent higher than other professionals?”
Harrison stares at me blankly. “I’m sorry. Is this supposed to be helpful?”
“I don’t know—I’m probably not saying anything right, it’s just that I thought you should know you’re not alone.”
“Right,” he says. “OK. I think I’m going to go to bed.” He takes a step toward the hallway.
“No, wait. Harrison. It takes time to get through something like this. And I think you need to go see someone. A counselor. A therapist.”
He scoffs. “Time? Time? Is time going to bring Noah back?”
“Well, no, but—”
“I KILLED A CHILD, MIA.” His hands tighten into fists. “It’s not normal. Please, just leave it alone.”
“I can’t leave it alone, Harrison! I can’t. Don’t you see? I get it. You’re upset; you feel responsible. But you can’t stop living your life. I know it’s why you don’t want to have a baby anymore. Maybe you feel like you don’t deserve one or, I don’t know, that you don’t deserve to be happy or something. But you do—”
“That’s what this is all about?” Harrison says. “Oh my god. I should have known.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU!” he roars. His body is still turned toward the hallway. A vein in his neck throbs. I almost think I can hear the blood rushing through it in the silence that follows his words.
I blink, feeling the weight of those words settle in my gut. My face burns—not from embarrassment as much as shock that Harrison thinks I’m selfish. And then the raw shame that just maybe he’s right.
* * *
Over the next few weeks, I vacillate between being angry at my husband and being overwhelmed with love and sorrow for him, wanting to wrap my arms around him, pull him close, suck the sadness out of him, like helium from a balloon.
The middle of the night is the worst, when he’s snoring lightly beside me. Sometimes I stare at his peaceful face and offer a fervent silent wish to the darkness that he could find that same peace when he’s awake. That I could wave a wand and make all of it—Noah, his guilt, his depression—just disappear.
Other times, a rage grips me so tight, every peaceful inhale and exhale of Harrison’s sleeping form is an aggressive personal affront. He thinks I’m selfish? He’s the one that’s been distracted, consumed by this for months, and couldn’t even bother telling me what it was. He let me believe it was only my health, the miscarriages, that concerned him. Fear of another that changed his mind about wanting a baby. And that’s when the future years of my life feel both interminable and wildly short. Is this how I will spend them? In a quiet house with a long-working shell of a husband and an empty womb? It’s these moments—when I’m a flailing fish on land—that I cast him as the callous fisherman, and it takes everything in me to keep from pushing his solid body off the bed and hearing it make a satisfying thud as it hits the floor.