“What?!”
I exploded out of my seat, practically tackling her. She let out peals of laughter as I picked her up and swung her around, burying my face in her neck.
Oh my God, I thought dizzily. I’m going to be a father.
A father.
To a baby.
My baby.
I spun her and spun her until we fell onto the couch with her on top of me, me making sure that her fall was gentle and safe. She raised up on her arms and looked down at me.
“I love you,” I said and I meant it more than I ever had before.
“I love you,” she said back with a huge grin. But then that grin faltered. “I know I’ve been…difficult these last two weeks. And I’m sorry. I am also sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“You’ve known?” I didn’t want to sound accusatory or make her feel badly, but this seemed like the kind of thing I should have known about seconds after she did.
She sighed and pushed herself back so that she was sitting in between my legs. “I found out the Monday before Thanksgiving. My period was a week late, and I remembered that I’d had the stomach flu the month before, and I thought maybe that had affected my birth control. So I took a drugstore test while I was at work and it was positive.”
The Monday before Thanksgiving. The text message she’d sent me flashed through my mind.
Come home early tonight. I am excited to tell you about my day!
I thought she’d had a great day at work or something like that. Guilt crushed into me as I realized she’d been about to tell me that night. And then I’d been late.
“I wanted to tell you in person,” she continued. “And I wanted it to be the right moment, you know? Just the two of us, here in our home. And then it kept not happening, and then I began to suspect that it would never happen. And then I began to think, ‘Oh my God. If he isn’t even around for me to tell him, how the hell is he going to be around to raise a child?’”
My eyes burned hot and I squeezed them shut. “Poppy…”
“And then the gala happened and you were late, and I panicked. It wasn’t even about the gala itself, it wasn’t about the reason you were late, it was just about how I didn’t know if I could trust you to help me with this. To be there for me.”
The entire conversation replayed in my mind. “But Anton knew,” I said quietly.
“Anton knew. He went down to the deli and bought me Sprites and ran interference for me while I napped in the office. He’s been great.”
I couldn’t be angry about that. I couldn’t be angry about Anton when the only one I had to blame was myself. But it still stung. It still scratched and scrabbled at the thin skin of my heart.
“But after Millie’s funeral and your eulogy about knowing people and how sweet you’ve been to me this weekend, I realized something. That it wasn’t you that made me scared. It was me.”
I opened my eyes.
She rubbed self-consciously at her arms, hugging herself. “I’m scared, Tyler. I’m scared of being a mother. I’m scared of the baby taking time away from my foundation or my foundation taking time away from the baby. I’m scared of the baby changing us and the way we love each other.” Her tears started falling, hard and fast now. “I mean, look at us! This baby has already changed us and hurt us! What if I’ve ruined everything by becoming pregnant?”
I sat up, crushing her to my chest. Her tears began to still as we sat together, her heartbeat slowly matching to mine. “Everything is going to change,” I said. “And some of those changes are going to be hard. But there are going to be good things too, beautiful things, and I will be right here with you. I will be right here loving you and raising this child. And we will fuck up inevitably, with our child and with each other, but as long as we hold each other as close as God holds us to His heart, we will make it. I promise.”
She sniffled. “Okay.”
I kissed the top of her head, and we stayed there the rest of the night, cuddling and apologizing and promising and teasing, eventually stripping each other bare and sharing our joy the way we knew best.
“Are you Tyler Bell?”
I glanced over to the person standing next to me. I’d promised Poppy a peppermint steamer while we did the rest of our Christmas decorating together, and so I’d gone out to the local cafe to get one, not expecting to be recognized. I’d half-expected the person to be another Tylerette (sadly, the Hot Priest memes had not lost momentum after I left the clergy,) but it was an older Hispanic woman instead, possibly in her late fifties, with a sharply fashionable suit and leather laptop bag.
“I am Tyler,” I answered warily. “How can I help?”
She smiled. “A friend of mine was on your dissertation board. He did me the favor of letting me read a copy. It was very, very impressive.”
“Thank you,” I said, still wary. Because this was weird.
“I have to ask, have you ever thought about publishing a book?”
I blinked. “No.”
“I think your personal story is so compelling and raw. It would make an amazing memoir. But I also think that you have a gift for translating theology and religious history into something relatable, and that you should consider putting that work on a wider stage than just Princeton’s house publisher. You could change a lot of lives, Mr. Bell, if you wanted to.” She handed me her business card, which had Maureen Reyes: Executive Editor embossed in shiny black letters, and underneath it, the name of a very large New York publishing house.
I looked up at her, and she shouldered her bag with another smile. “Think about it. I’m happy to hear from you any time about any ideas you might have.”
Holy shit, I thought after she left, turning the card over and over in my fingers, as if expecting it to vanish like leprechaun gold. Holy shit.
I got my coffee and Poppy’s froufrou caffeine-free thing and headed out onto the snowy street, a giant grin stretching my face. I couldn’t wait to tell Poppy; I mean, it was sudden and unexpected, but it made so much sense now that I thought about it. Writing something—a memoir or a book about modern theology or even church history—all of those options felt exciting and possible and personal. I wouldn’t be able to hide behind anything if I wrote my memoir. Poppy would like that.
I rushed home, the cold world suddenly magical and alive and perfect, the holiday lights brighter and the garlands greener. I was having a baby and maybe I was going to publish a book and Poppy would be so excited and then I would be excited all over again and then we’d both think about the baby and get even more excited—on and on our happiness would loop, wider and stronger until we had no choice but to drop our decorating and go to the bed, where we’d spend the night making love.
I burst through the front door. “Poppy! Poppy! This crazy thing happened in the coffeeshop—”
I stopped. The miniature Christmas tree that we put on the kitchen table was half out of its box, tiny ornaments scattered on the floor around it. Her water bottle lay overturned on the table, water leaking slowly out of the open nozzle. Silence filled the townhouse, and I realized that the Christmas playlist had probably run out.
“Poppy?” I called, cautiously this time, my mind flashing to home intruders and serial killers. But then I stepped forward and saw the open door to our bedroom, and her kneeling by the bed. For a strange moment, I thought she might be praying…and then I heard the noise, the choked moan, and it was the same noise Morales had made in her office.
A pain noise.
A labor noise.
I set the drinks on the counter and jogged into the room, dropping to my knees next to her. “Lamb?” I asked, concerned, taking her hands in mine.
She looked up, her eyes distant and confused, her lips bloodless. “It hurts,” she whispered. “I think…I think something’s wrong with the baby.”
Had I ever known what real fear was until this moment? Real pain? Every other experience in my life paled in comparison to this, sepia-toned facsimiles of terror bled dry of any real meaning, because now I knew what actual fear was. The way it dug its razored claws into your stomach and refused to let go, the way it pounded through your blood with that harsh, ceaseless neediness.
I’d only felt this way once before, when I’d gone into my parents’ garage looking for batteries and instead saw my sister’s feet suspended in the air. That horrible mixture of fear and helplessness galvanized by panic. I let it take me for one second, two seconds, three seconds; I let it hold me under and drown me.
And then I surfaced, squeezing her hands and using my other hand to smooth the hair away from her face.
“We have to go to the hospital,” I said calmly, with the same confidence and possessiveness that I used with her in bed.
Her eyes cleared a little, finally focusing on me. “Okay,” she replied weakly. “Will you take me?”
The pleading, childlike way she asked that broke my heart. “Oh, lamb.” I gathered her into my arms and carefully embraced her. “I’m not leaving your side ever again.”
She stiffened as another pain—could it be called a labor pain?—took her and I gentled her back and thighs and murmured reassurances and love into her ear until it passed.
“I’m going to get your insurance card and ID and then we’ll go, okay, lamb?”
She nodded, as if she wasn’t really hearing me, but I knew that she understood because she braced both hands on the bed and slowly got to her feet. I ran out to the kitchen and found her purse, rummaging through her wallet to find what we’d need, and then going back into the room for her. And what I saw ripped a hole right through me.
She stood with her legs slightly spread and her pants tugged down past her crotch. I could see the blood smeared across her thighs, glistening almost black on the fabric of her panties, but more horrifying was the expression on her face as she held her bloody fingers up to the light.
A blank expression.
An empty expression.
An achingly confused expression.
Blood. Blood is bad.
That terror came again, that panic, because something unspeakably awful was happening or about to happen and I was so helpless in the face of it. I started chanting the same mental prayer over and over again.
Please, Lord. Please no.
Please no.
Please no.
I knew my face must have looked the same as hers as I went to her, but I schooled my features with as much bravery as I could muster. I cleaned up the blood, found her new underwear and a pad, helped her pull on a fresh pair of pants. And then I picked her up and carried her to the truck, where she sat completely still and numb-looking while I raced us to the emergency room. Sometimes the pain would come and she would whimper, but that was the most she reacted to anything. Even when we made it to the triage room and the nurse started asking her questions, she answered in a dull, flat voice and mostly with one-word answers.
And I kept praying:
Please no.
Not this.
Please.
And then we were in the real ER room, Poppy clad in the hospital gown and hooked up to an IV, sipping a cup of water the nurses gave her to fill her bladder for the inevitable ultrasound. She said nothing, but every once and a while she would squirm and bury her face into the bed, her body stiff and arched with pain. Sometimes she curled into a ball, sometimes she doubled over, and towards the end, she got off the bed and started pacing, back and forth, back and forth.
Which was how the doctor found her when she entered. The doctor was a pretty woman in her thirties wearing a vivid blue dress and a gauzy patterned hijab, and the moment she walked in, she went right to Poppy and placed a soothing hand on her shoulder. Poppy stilled under her touch.
“I’m Dr. Khader,” the doctor said. “I’m here to help you today.”
She looked at Dr. Khader. “Okay,” she said.
“I understand the nurses gave you a small dose of Tylenol to help with the pain. Do you feel like it’s helped?”
Poppy’s red lips pressed together and she swallowed, trying to muster her composure. “The pain still feels significant,” she said. She managed this in steady, firm voice, the kind of voice she used discussing financial forecasts at work, and I realized how strong she was trying to appear, how in control. That was how Poppy liked to present herself to the world—collected and gathered and bulletproof.
Even when her entire world was bleeding out between her legs.
Dr. Khader nodded. “I thought so. Here’s what we are going to do, Ms. Bell. We are going to do a quick examination and ultrasound to see exactly what’s happening. Once we figure that out, we can more properly manage your pain. Do you have any questions or concerns before we get started?”
Poppy shook her head, still trying to be polite and put together, even though another pain was gripping her.
“Okay,” Dr. Khader said. “I’m going to do a quick pelvic exam, followed by an ultrasound. May I help you onto the bed?”
Poppy nodded, white-faced, and Dr. Khader helped her settle on the bed, directed her how to position her legs. Dr. Khader spread a disposable sheet over Poppy’s lap and pulled on a blue glove. “This will be uncomfortable,” the doctor warned. “I will try to be as fast as I can.”
The gloved hand went under the sheet while Dr. Khader’s other hand pressed down on Poppy’s abdomen from the outside.
I could tell the moment the examining began because Poppy sucked in a tight breath, closing her eyes. She was trying not to moan, I could tell, trying not to complain. Poppy had grown up in a world where emotions were pressed back, hidden behind a composed facade, and I could see how humiliating this was for her, this pain that kept breaking through the surface of her control.
“About eight weeks along,” Dr. Khader murmured. “Which lines up with your last menstrual cycle.” She pressed in a little deeper and Poppy gave out a little cry, and then Dr. Khader withdrew her hand, snapping off her gloves with practiced efficiency. “I’m so sorry that hurt.” She seemed to mean it too, her dark eyes expressive with sympathy.
She reached for the ultrasound machine, pressing a few buttons and then squirting a blue gel on Poppy’s stomach. She pressed the transducer into Poppy’s skin, moving it around until the black and white static on the screen resolved itself. And then I could see it so clearly. I leaned forward, my heart crashing wildly against my ribs.
In the middle of the screen, there was a little gummy bear baby. A baby with a large head and small body, with short arms and legs. It looked exactly like the parenting ebook I’d downloaded onto my phone last night said a baby at eight weeks would look.
Except.
Except.
Please no.
Not this.
Please not this.
I’ll do anything.
The gummy bear baby wasn’t moving. At all. And then Dr. Khader clicked a couple buttons and a heart rate monitor appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Nothing.
No heartbeats.
No.
NO.
How could you, Lord?
How could You?
Dr. Khader kept looking and kept searching, but after a couple minutes, she pulled the transducer off Poppy’s stomach. “I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “But it appears that the baby has passed away.”
Poppy’s lips closed and her chin trembled, but she said nothing.
“Your cervix is partially dilated, which means your body is responding to the baby’s death by attempting to expel the pregnancy. This is because you are at risk for infection if the pregnancy is not passed from your body.” Dr. Khader put a hand over Poppy’s. “Do you have any questions about what I’ve just said?”
Poppy took in a deep breath, moving her eyes to the ultrasound screen, which was now completely blank now that the transducer was put away. “What happens next?” she asked.
My stomach pitched at the sound of her voice—flat, businesslike. Her face more blank than the ultrasound screen. You don’t have to stay strong right now, I wanted to tell her. It’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to cry.
Jesus knew that I was about to.
But Dr. Khader took Poppy’s cold demeanor in stride. “Well, we can do one of three things. I can send you home with instructions to go see your obstetrician in a few days. You can let your body proceed naturally with the miscarriage, and be at home. Or I can give you some medicine that will speed the process along. We can either send you home for that, or depending on how quickly your body responds, you can be admitted to the hospital. Or, the final option is surgery—a procedure called a dilation and curettage. We will put you under general anesthesia, dilate your cervix and use a device called a curette to clear the uterine tissue, which usually takes less than thirty minutes. We’ll monitor you afterwards for a few hours, and then you can go home.” She squeezed Poppy’s hand. “I know that was a lot of options at once, but I can give you two time and privacy to talk them over.”
Poppy glanced over at me, her hazel eyes wide. Beneath the veneer of strength, I could see the fear and grief pooling inside of her, pressing up against the inside of her shell. Enough pressure and she would crack.
I just prayed she wouldn’t break to pieces when it happened.
I will be there to pick them up, lamb, I silently promised her. But what I said out loud was, “I want this to be the easiest it can possibly be for you. What do you need, lamb?”
She closed her eyes and kept them closed while she addressed the doctor. “What is the way it will be over the fastest?”
“The surgery,” Dr. Khader answered. “It does have some risks, however.”
Poppy opened her eyes, and they were once again blank. Empty. “I don’t care,” she said in a hollow voice. “Just make it be over. Make it stop hurting.”
“We can do that,” the doctor said. “And in the meantime, we will get you some real pain medicine. I’m going to go out and start the process and then I will be back in to discuss the specific risks with you.”
She gave Poppy’s hand one last pat and then left, the door closing behind her.
“Tyler?” Poppy asked, sounding tired.
“Anything, lamb. Anything you want. Just name it.”
“Hold me?” Her voice cracked on the question, and that was what finally cracked me. I climbed up on the narrow bed and pulled her into my arm, letting my tears fall into her hair as she lay motionless against me, a numb, unfeeling doll.