I crawl in bed beside him, my back turned to him. I think we’re both too broken tonight to even continue the argument. He continues reading his book and I do my best to try to fall asleep. My mind runs, though. Several minutes pass and just knowing he’s right next to me prevents me from relaxing. He must realize I’m still awake because I hear him as he closes his book and places it on the nightstand. “I quit my job today.”
I don’t say anything in response to his confession. I just stare at the wall.
“I know you think I left for work this morning and that I just left you here, locked up in this bedroom.”
He’s right. That’s exactly what I thought.
“But I only left the house because I needed to quit my job. I can’t work in the place where I made the worst mistake of my life. I’ll start looking for a new job next week.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and pull the covers up to my chin. He turns out the lamp, indicating he doesn’t need a response from me. After he rolls over, I let out a quiet sigh, knowing he won’t be working around Andrea anymore. He stopped giving up. He’s trying again. He still believes there’s a possibility that our marriage will go back to how it used to be.
I feel sorry for him. What if he’s wrong?
These thoughts plague me for the next hour. Graham somehow falls asleep—or I think he’s asleep. He’s playing the part well.
But I can’t sleep. The tears keep threatening to fall and the pain in my stomach gets worse and worse. I get up and take some aspirin, but when I’m back in the bed I start to question whether emotional turmoil can actually manifest as physical pain.
Something isn’t right.
It shouldn’t hurt this much.
I feel a sharp pain. A deep pain. A pain strong enough to force me onto my side. I clench my fists around my blanket and curl my legs up to my stomach. When I do this, I feel it. Slippery and wet, all over the sheets.
“Graham.” I try to reach for him, but he’s rolling over to turn on the light. Another pain, so profound it makes me gasp for breath.
“Quinn?”
His hand is on my shoulder. He pulls the covers away. Whatever he sees sends him flying off the bed, the lights are on, he’s picking me up, telling me it’ll be okay, he’s carrying me, we’re in the car, he’s speeding, I’m sweating, I look down, I’m covered in blood. “Graham.”
I’m terrified and he takes my hand and he squeezes it and he says, “It’s okay, Quinn. We’re almost there. We’re almost there.”
Everything after that runs together.
There are glimpses of things that stick out to me. The fluorescent light over my head. Graham’s hand around mine. Words I don’t want to hear, like, miscarriage and hemorrhaging and surgery.
Words Graham is saying into the phone, probably to his mother, while he holds my hand. He whispers them because he thinks I might be asleep. Part of me is, most of me isn’t. I know these aren’t things he’s saying might happen. They’ve already happened. I’m not going into surgery. I’ve just come out of it.
Graham ends the call. His lips are against my forehead and he whispers my name. “Quinn?” I open my eyes to meet his. His eyes are red and there’s a deep wrinkle between his brows that I’ve never noticed before. It’s new, probably brought on by what’s currently happening. I wonder if I’ll think of this moment every time I look at that wrinkle.
“What happened?”
The crease between his eyes deepens. He brushes his hand over my hair and carefully releases his words. “You had a miscarriage last night,” he confirms. His eyes search mine, preparing for whatever reaction I might have.
It’s weird that my body doesn’t feel it. I know I’m probably heavily medicated, but it seems like I would know that there was a life growing inside of me that is no longer there. I put a hand on my stomach, wondering how I missed it. How long had I been pregnant? How long has it been since we last had sex? Over two months. Closer to three.
“Graham,” I whisper. He takes my hand and squeezes it. I know I should be full of so much devastation right now that not even a sliver of happiness or relief could find its way into my soul. But somehow, I don’t feel the devastation that should accompany this moment. I feel hope. “I was pregnant? We finally got pregnant?”
I don’t know how I’m focusing on the only positive thing about this entire situation, but after years of constant failure, I can’t help but take this as a sign. I got pregnant. We had a partial miracle.
A tear slips out of Graham’s eye and lands on my arm. I look down at the tear and watch it slide over my skin. My eyes flick back up to Graham’s and not a single part of him is able to see the positive in this situation.
“Quinn . . .”
Another tear falls from his eye. In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him look this sad. I shake my head, because whatever has him this terrified to speak is not something I want to hear.
Graham squeezes my hand again and looks at me with so much devastation in his eyes, I have to turn away from him when he speaks. “When we got here last night . . .”
I try to stop listening, but my ears refuse to fail me.
“You were hemorrhaging.”
The word no is repeating and I have no idea if it’s coming from my mouth or if it’s inside my head.
“You had to have a . . .”
I curl up and hug my knees, squeezing my eyes shut. As soon as I hear the word hysterectomy I start crying. Sobbing.
Graham crawls into the hospital bed and wraps himself around me, holding me as we let go of every single ounce of hope that was left between us.
Chapter Twenty-three
* * *
Then
It’s our last night at the beach house. We leave in the morning to head back to Connecticut. Graham has a meeting he has to be back for tomorrow afternoon. I have laundry to do before I go back to work on Tuesday. Neither of us is ready to leave yet. It’s been peaceful and perfect and I’m already looking forward to coming back here with him. I don’t even care if I have to kiss my mother’s ass for the next month in order to plan our next getaway. It’s a price I’ll gladly pay for another weekend of perfection.
It’s a little bit colder tonight than the last two nights we’ve been here, but I kind of like it. I have the heater turned up high in the house. We freeze our asses off for hours near the fire pit and then cuddle up in bed to thaw out. It’s a routine I would never get bored of.
I just finished making us both cups of hot chocolate. I take them outside and hand Graham his, then sit down next to him.
“Okay,” he says. “Next question.”
Graham found out this morning that, even though I love looking at it, I’ve never actually stepped foot in the ocean. He spent the majority of the day trying to figure out other things about me that he didn’t know. It’s become a game to us now and we’re alternating questions so we can find out everything there is to know about each other.
He mentioned the first night we were together that he doesn’t talk about religion or politics. But it’s been six months now and I’m curious to know his opinions. “We’ve still never discussed religion,” I say. “Or politics. Are those still topics that are off the table?”