CHAPTER 11

 

Cate felt the first drop of blood between her legs as she and Declan started their pivots on Saturday night. She knew something was very wrong but she couldn’t run off the dance floor in the middle of their Viennese Waltz. Their routine was only supposed to be ninety seconds but it felt like forever. When they finally stopped, she clung to Declan not knowing if she could remain upright without him. He must have sensed that something was wrong. He stealthily covered his microphone so they couldn’t be overheard.

“Are you OK?”

Cate shook her head. What she was thinking just wasn’t possible.

Declan kept his arm around her waist as they walked across to the judges. Cate couldn’t hear their comments for the sound of her deafening heartbeat.

As they walked up the steps, she noticed that her breasts didn’t hurt anymore.

Charlene gave them a nine while Bruce and Rich both gave them eight. Their total score of twenty five was ten points better than the previous week and put them joint second on the leader board.

Annie gave Cate a big hug, “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.”

“That’s a great score from the judges,” Tom asked. “How are you feeling about that, Cate?”

“I think I’m in shock,” she mumbled.

After they’d been interviewed, Cate ran to the ladies’ toilets. She checked her underwear and there were thick streaks of blood. Just looking at the stark contrast between her white knickers and the dark red blood made her dry heave.

“It’s just your period,” Cate struggled to prise open the tampon packet with her shaky hands.

Declan’s friend, Max and his partner, Sarah were the second couple to be voted off Stepping Out. After they’d had their last dance, the remaining couples swarmed on to the dance floor to commiserate with them.

Cate held back from the rest of the group. She desperately wished that Kian was there in the audience tonight to support her. She self-consciously checked the back of her beautiful white dress to see if she had leaked at all. After she and Declan had been in the first batch of couples to find out that they were through to next week’s show, she’d run to the ladies’ toilets. She’d had to change her tampon again because even though it was for the heaviest flow, it was already soaked through with blood. She didn’t normally have such heavy periods.

When the cameras stopped rolling, Declan found her leaning against the wall, looking pale and sweaty. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

Cate was too weak to protest.

 

The sun was just coming up when Kian walked into the hospital room. After he’d got Declan’s call, he’d got the last flight from Seattle to L.A.

“Angel?” Kian gently stroked his wife’s inky-black hair; she still looked far too pale. He could see the tracks of her tears glistening on her cheeks. She must have cried herself to sleep; it killed him that he hadn’t been there.

The doctors had told him that she’d had a miscarriage.

Kian shrugged off his jacket and tossed it on the sofa by the window. He kicked off his trainers and lay down beside his wife in the narrow hospital bed. She was still asleep but as though she could sense that he was there, she turned over, wrapping her fragile body around him.

Although he was exhausted, he couldn’t sleep. How could Cate have been pregnant when he’d had a vasectomy? Even in the months after Sierra was born and before he’d had the surgery, when they’d made love, Kian had always used a condom. They’d both agreed that they didn’t want any more children. All he could think was that one of the condoms must have broken and they hadn’t noticed. Fuck, he felt like he’d failed; it was his job as Cate’s husband to protect her from getting pregnant again.

He felt like the biggest idiot for not realising that she was pregnant sooner. She’d complained about her breasts being sore and she’d been sick several times. He’d thought that since they’d used condoms and he’d had the vasectomy that it was impossible. He should have insisted that she go to the doctors. Maybe there was something they could have done?

But what would they have done if they’d found out that Cate was pregnant again? It would have been an impossible situation. He’d had the vasectomy so he didn’t have to watch her struggle through another pregnancy. She’d suffered so badly with prenatal depression when she was pregnant with Sierra that she’d thought about killing herself. Kian couldn’t, wouldn’t risk that happening again.

But would they have decided on an abortion? Although he had always been pro-choice; it was impossible for him to think about that word without thinking about their three children; Lola, Mateo and Sierra. None of them had been planned. There were reasons why they could have had an abortion with each of them. Lola was conceived when Cate was only eighteen and Kian was grieving the death of his dad. She’d had to have an emergency C-section and almost died giving birth.

When Cate blinked open her eyes, she was wrapped up in Kian’s arms. “Hey.”

Cate buried her face in his chest. She couldn’t look him in the eye. She felt like she’d failed him and their family. She’d got pregnant again when she wasn’t supposed to and then she’d lost the baby. Cate pressed a hand against her abdomen; she still couldn’t believe that yesterday she’d had a baby in there, a part of her and Kian. It would have been a brother or sister to Lola, Mateo and Sierra. Fresh tears trickled down her cheeks, staining Kian’s t-shirt.

She heard the door open. “What are you doing? You can’t be lying in bed like that?”

Kian gritted his teeth. He made a mental note of the nurse’s name so he could get the insensitive bitch sacked later. “My wife…” Kian tightened his arms around Cate, who was still sobbing quietly against him, “needs me. I’m not going anywhere.”

After the nurse had gone, Cate lifted her head up from Kian’s chest. “I’m sorry.”

She still wouldn’t look at him. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“I need the bathroom,” Cate freed herself from his arms.

Before her feet could touch the cold floor, Kian swept her up in his arms and carried her into the bathroom. “Kian,” Cate protested, “put me down.” If they had any chance of their marriage surviving this, Kian couldn’t see the remains of their baby trickling down her legs.

She walked unsteadily towards the toilet. Kian put his hands on her hips. “I meant what I said, Cate,” he grunted. “You can try to fight me on this but I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t want you to see it,” Cate croaked. “It’s bad enough that I have to see it.”

Kian helped her pull down her knickers; her inner thighs were still stained with blood.

As Cate sank down on to the cold toilet seat, Kian turned his back. His rejection when she felt so broken and vulnerable felt like a knife cutting through layers of her skin.

She closed her eyes but there were no more tears left for her to cry.

She jumped as she felt Kian’s warm hands on her knees, parting them. “What… are you doing?”

Kian pressed the warm, damp cloth against her skin, gently washing her. “I’m taking care of you, angel.” When she was clean, he found her a fresh sanitary towel and attached it to her knickers before helping her stand up. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

Cate looked down at the swirl of red in the toilet bowl. That was her baby.

Kian put his hand on hers and guided it to the handle. “I know it’s bullshit, angel and it doesn’t help one fucking bit but it wasn’t meant to be.”

Cate shook her head, “you’re right, it doesn’t help at all.”

“I can’t do it,” Cate said, looking at the handle. “I can’t wash it away like it’s nothing.”

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know,” Cate gripped the handle so tightly, her knuckles turned white. “No, I can do it. I need to do it.” She flicked her wrist and the toilet flush sounded deafening in the small bathroom.

Kian held her as she sank to the floor, keening like a wounded animal.

When she eventually passed out, he carried her battered and broken body back to bed. He couldn’t stop thinking about the blood on her skin and in the toilet bowl. His own grief and the helplessness he felt watching his wife in so much pain made him so fucking angry.

He paced back and forth in the quiet hospital room, making a list of everything he wanted to destroy. At the top of the list was the company which had manufactured the broken fucking condom. Then there was Seattle F.C for making him fly back to Seattle on Friday morning which meant he wasn’t with Cate in L.A. when she’d had the miscarriage. That bitch of a nurse who’d tried to get him to leave his wife’s bed earlier when she’d needed him.

Cate shifted restlessly on the bed and he realised he was in danger of disturbing her so he stepped outside into the corridor. “Are you Mr Warner?”

“What do you want?” Kian snarled. If somebody asked for his autograph right now, he was going to kick their fucking head in.

It was Cate’s doctor. “We’re going to discharge your wife this afternoon but before we do, I just wanted to talk to you about her care.”

The doctor checked his file, “it looks as though your wife was about seven weeks pregnant.”

“That’s impossible.” Kian added this clearly incompetent doctor to his growing list. “I had a vasectomy nine weeks ago.”

“Since you had the vasectomy, have you been using contraception?”

“No, that was the whole point of having it done.”

The doctor frowned, “Mr Warner, after a vasectomy you can still get your partner pregnant until your sperm count is zero. You should have been advised to use another method of birth control until your follow-up sperm count test.”

“Fuck,” Kian thumped his fists on the wall. The doctors had given him some literature but he’d stashed it in a drawer somewhere without reading it. He’d just assumed that once he’d had the vasectomy that he wouldn’t be able to make Cate pregnant again.