CHAPTER TWELVE

I’d never been one to remember my dreams but I know that I was dreaming that my head was under water, a hand holding me down in the warm silent bath, drowning me. I couldn’t breathe, yet I wasn’t scared. I was warm and focused, curious. I could see Kylie’s reflection in the porcelain of the tub . . .

Waking up with a jerk, I sucked in a breath and tried to focus in the dark.

“Jonathon.” Kylie was turned toward me, shaking me.

“What? What’s wrong?” I couldn’t see well, between the lack of light and lack of glasses, but her voice sounded urgent.

“I think I’m bleeding.”

Even as she said it, I became aware of a hot sticky feeling on the sheet beneath my thigh and her. I scrambled up, grabbing for my glasses and the light switch on the lamp. “I’m turning the light on.”

I did, and before I could even turn back around and see, she gave a cry of dismay.

“Oh, God!” Then she started crying.

Shit.

When I faced her and stared down below her waist, it was worse than I expected. “Holy fuck . . .”

There was blood everywhere. It formed a dark circle underneath her and was smeared over her legs, my knee, her hands where she had obviously reached down to feel between her thighs. It was shocking red on her pale pink floral sheets, and the air smelled tinny and sharp. My stomach turned when I saw that there were clots in the puddle. Since Kylie had been sleeping naked, it was clear to me what I was looking at.

For a second, I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. It was gruesome. It was obvious.

She was trying to sit up, weeping, her nose running. When she wiped it she got blood on herself. The sight of that, the sharp red on her petite nose jerked me out of my frozen horror. “Shh, shh, okay.” I helped her up, scooting her back out of the mess. “Do you have any of those, um, what are they called?” Damn, my mind was like river mud. I couldn’t think of the word I was searching for. “Those things with wings when you have your period.”

Kylie shook her head. “No. I just have tampons.”

“I don’t think you should use one of those. We can stop at the store on the way to the ER.”

“You think I should go to the ER?”

“Yes, definitely.” I was already out of bed and getting dressed.

“I had a miscarriage, didn’t I?” she asked.

The look on her face, holy shit. It cut me. She looked devastated, raw, her eyes huge, shiny with her tears that hadn’t fallen yet. “I don’t know, sweetheart, but it doesn’t look so good. But we’ll have to see what the doctor says.” Though I couldn’t imagine the doctor was going to say anything other than that she’d miscarried. There was just so much blood. “Do you have any cramps or anything?”

She shook her head. “My back hurts, but that’s it.”

Tearing through her dresser I found her panties and yoga pants plus a T-shirt and sweatshirt. Screw the bra. She pulled everything on with shaking fingers while I crammed my feet in my shoes and yanked on my coat. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. When she had said she was spotting earlier, I honestly hadn’t thought that it was a big deal. This was a big deal.

I took her hand and led her to the door. She walked tentatively, her legs clamped together. I put her coat over her shoulders like a cape and she shuffled to my car, her hand squeezing mine tightly.

Then it was a tense two hours, a blur of the drugstore, the waiting room, the bed where she removed her pants at the nurse’s request and I saw the rust-colored stains all over her thighs, the fresh red spot on her panties. The moment when the technician had shook her head, ultrasound wand going, and murmured, “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I can’t find a heartbeat.”

So that was that. No heartbeat. No baby. The baby was back on the bedsheet.

I wasn’t sure what I felt. Numb. In shock. I murmured to Kylie words I didn’t remember later, words that I meant to be comforting, and I ran my hand over the back of her hair when she turned her head into my chest to cry. I held her while the doctor came in and there was a discussion of whether or not to conduct a D&C to ensure all tissue had been removed from her uterus, but I didn’t feel anything. It was like I was still trapped in my dream, under water, head moving slowly, oxygen gone from my lungs.

I heard Kylie ask if we shouldn’t have been having sex and the nurse assuring her that intercourse never caused a miscarriage.

I spoke. I had a whole conversation with the doctor where I discussed that Kylie was otherwise healthy, that she’d been ten weeks along, that it was the first time she’d had bleeding, but I wasn’t sure how I spoke because I didn’t feel like I was there. “I think that would be better,” I agreed, when he said he would prefer to just give her medication to evacuate her uterus as opposed to the more invasive D&C. That he suspected she was mostly cleaned out given the volume of blood we had described.

Cleaned out.

Maybe that was an apt description for my own insides. I felt cleaned out.

“What time is it?” Kylie asked suddenly, her skin blotchy from crying, eyes swollen. She seemed calmer.

“It’s almost six.”

“I want to call my mom.”

I looked to the nurse for permission and she nodded. “Go ahead. I won’t tell.”

Kylie had left her purse at the apartment so I handed her my phone and she dialed the number manually.

It wasn’t until her mother answered that all of my emotion came roaring back to life.

“Mommy?” Kylie said, voice shaky. “I lost the baby.”

Her face crumpled and she broke down in sobs and I had to leave. I couldn’t hear her pain. I couldn’t listen to how young and heartbroken she sounded, or see the agony on her face. My own sorrow appeared out of nowhere and I felt tears in my eyes. I grabbed blindly at the curtain, desperate to escape, muttering to the nurse, “I’ll be right back.”

The look of sympathy she gave me only made it worse and I walked out of the ER and straight outside to the cold parking lot. Dawn was breaking and I paced back and forth in front of the doors, making them open and shut as I tripped the sensors. I swiped at my eyes, angry. Sad.

So there was to be no Baby Charlie.

There was to be no piece of me and Kylie.

It hurt more than I could have ever imagined.

*   *   *

I took her home to my apartment, where there was no blood. I tugged off her clothes and mine and I took her into the shower with me. I held her under the warm stream of water, taking a washcloth to her skin as gently as possible to get rid of the stains. She just stood there, against me, face swollen, fingers shaking as she covered her breasts, like she was cold. Getting out, I wrapped a towel around her and led her to my bed, holding her tight in my arms, because I didn’t know what else to do. What else to say.

She had been given a sleeping pill at the hospital, and it surprised me but within a few minutes of lying down, she had fallen into a restless sleep. I could hear Devon get up and start to move around the kitchen. I waited until I heard him leave before I carefully slipped out of bed and pulled on a clean pair of jeans. Grabbing my phone I went into the other room and dumped some coffee in the machine. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep.

I’d never given much thought to being a father until Kylie and her surprise news. Devon was right. Researchers, academics, a lot of us tended to wait until almost forty and even beyond to think about a family, children. I had relegated the thought to later, much later. But then I had warmed up to the idea, the concept of an infant alien but intriguing. I felt betrayed. Like fate had yanked my chain. What kind of a mind-fuck was that? Hey, take this, you’ll like it, and when you do . . . oh, never mind.

Except I didn’t believe in fate. I never had. Nothing happened for any particular reason other than one which could be explained by science, facts. Kylie didn’t miscarry because the joke was on me, she miscarried because there was a chromosomal abnormality in the fetus and her body had done as nature intended. But that sounded so harsh, so awful. Like we had failed somehow to create a perfect fetus and that her body was the host I had mused about, expelling the parasite. All of it sounded horrible to me, the science of procreation, and it didn’t account or explain how I could feel the way I did. Sure, I could argue that nature intended a male to bond with a female to ensure the survival of his offspring, and therefore his species. Logically, you could break it all down to DNA.

But sitting there, barefoot in the cold kitchen, coffee steaming up in front of my nose as I drank it, I couldn’t believe that the nebulous heart that everyone discussed was purely the result of animal instinct and the need to survive. This didn’t feel like instinct. This felt like pure emotion. Pain. That’s what it was.

A tight, angry despair.

Scrolling through my phone, I hit SEND on the last number that had been called.

“Kylie, honey, how are you?” her mom answered immediately, sounding anxious.

“It’s not Kylie, Mrs. Warner, it’s Jonathon Kadisch.”

“Oh! Hi, Jonathon. Is Kylie okay?”

“We’re back at my apartment and she’s sleeping. They gave her a sleeping pill at the hospital. I was wondering if you know Jessica’s phone number. We left Kylie’s phone at her place and I don’t know Jessica’s number. I wanted to call her and see if she can come here and stay with Kylie while I go take care of . . .” I wasn’t sure how to say it. “The bed and stuff at her place.”

There was no way I could take Kylie home with the bed looking like a crime scene. And I didn’t want to leave her alone in my apartment.

“I see.” Her voice was thoughtful. “I think it’s very sweet that you’re thinking about her, but maybe Kylie needs to see that, to help her process. She is stronger than she looks.”

Her response made me uncertain. She thought I was doing it wrong? She should know. She was Kylie’s mother, she knew her inside and out. I didn’t. “Are you sure?”

“I think so. Kylie is resilient but she does better if she’s not allowed to bury her head in the sand. I do have Jessica’s number, though, if you have class or work. I think you’re right not to leave her alone. She’ll probably have a lot of cramping today.”

She promised to text me the number and added, “We appreciate everything you’re doing for her, Jonathon. You’re obviously a good man.”

“Thanks. Of course.” I almost added that it was the least I could do, but I stopped myself. What did I mean by that? That the whole thing was my fault? That I was obligated to her? That our relationship was one of dependency and stoicism? The thought was so unappealing, I banished it immediately.

Dropping my phone on the table after we said good-bye, I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. What now?

It was a greater question than I was prepared to answer. So I called Jessica.

Then I settled on a compromise between my own opinion and Kylie’s mother’s and I went to her apartment after Jessica showed up to sit with Kylie, who was still sleeping hard. Stepping inside, the air felt warm, hushed, an unpleasant smell in the air. The bed looked even more stark in the morning light than it had in the dark, the covers hanging half onto the floor, the pillows askew. The large dark stain.

Stripping the sheet off the bed, I carefully folded it over and over until it was the size of a piece of paper, and set it down on the counter of her kitchenette. Something told me she would want it.

Then I remade the bed methodically, with sheets I found in a little plastic storage container in the closet, whose drawers were filled with linens and towels. Under the bathroom sink I found air freshener and sprayed the shit out of the place.

With a final glance back at the room, I left quickly, needing to get out of there, convinced the smell of blood was still in my nostrils. It was merely an olfactory memory, of course, but it was giving me a headache, a pounding starting behind my eyes.

As I walked to class, I wished I had a vice. Heavy drinking. Smoking. A drawer with a secret stash of marijuana.

But my only vices were science and self-absorption.

So I went to the lab, where I felt in control, and where the numbers always added up.

Where the equation could always be solved.

*   *   *

Waking up came slowly, a groggy sensation of wanting to focus, but being unable to keep my eyes open. When I did manage to push off the need to slide back into unconsciousness, I wasn’t sure where I was. It was a bedroom I’d never seen before, and for a second, given how sluggish I felt I wondered if I were hungover, if I’d passed out in some random dude’s bed.

But then I realized that I wasn’t partying the night before, that it wasn’t last year. That I had been with Jonathon and I’d woken up bleeding. He’d taken me to the hospital. Then to his place.

I was in his bed, alone, and I was no longer pregnant.

Tears stung the back of my eyelids and I squeezed my nose, which felt swollen. Then I ran my hands down over my flat stomach, unable to comprehend that what had been there no longer was. I’d gotten used to thinking of it as a little seed inside me, growing, and while I hadn’t felt anything, obviously, I had mentally imagined it there. Now . . . nothing.

I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted Jonathon. Pushing the blankets back, I sat up and swung my legs around. I felt a little cramping, but nothing bad. Nothing like what I imagined I should feel. I could feel the sticky trickle of blood, though, down onto the pad I was wearing, and it skeeved me out. I would never take tampons for granted again. Yanking the blanket around me and tucking it under my armpits so I was wearing it like a dress I went into the other room.

And found Jessica, not Jonathon. “Jess? What are you doing here?”

She was sitting at the kitchen table, books spread out in front of her, though she was playing with her phone. “Oh, hey.” She stood up and came over, wrapping her arms around me. “I’m sorry, Kylie bug. I’m so sorry.”

I nodded, throat tight. “Where’s Jonathon?”

“He had some nerd alert uber urgent lab thing to do so he called me. He didn’t think you should be here by yourself in case the bleeding got worse.”

“He left?” I pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, surprised, then annoyed with myself for being surprised. “What time is it?”

“It’s after eleven.”

“Oh.” My stomach growled. I was hungry. Seriously, ravenously hungry. It seemed so absolutely cruel and wrong that eight hours after a trauma and suddenly my body was all over it. Almost like the baby had never happened. I wasn’t over it. Not even close. “I’m hungry.”

Jessica looked surprised. “We can either go back to my house or we can go out to eat. I don’t want to go digging through Jonathon’s fridge. Unless you’re comfortable with that.”

“No. Not really. He has a roommate. I don’t know whose food is whose.” In fact, this was my first time at his apartment. It was small, but it was definitely a notch up from an average undergrad guy place. He had real furniture, a stylish white table with trendy red chairs. The sofa was low and modern, a charcoal gray, and there was a graphic print hanging on the wall over it.

“Are you up for eating out? That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

But I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I feel . . . fine.” Which was a lie. I felt empty. My stomach empty. Uterus empty. Heart empty.

But my stomach I could fill. “I’m starving. I want waffles and eggs. Let’s go to the pancake house.”

Jessica looked dubious, but she nodded. “Okay, sure. If that’s what you want.”

“Just let me go to the bathroom. Oh, and I don’t have my purse. Can I pay you back?”

“I’ll just treat you. Think of it as a birthday gift.”

I paused, standing up, pain slicing through the numbness I’d been feeling. “I’d forgotten it was my birthday. Well, I guess I’ll always remember my twenty-first. Unlike most people who will only have pictures but no memory of what happened. Mine is burned into my brain.” I gave a little laugh that sounded hollow and bitter. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Oh, honey. This sucks.”

Jessica clearly didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? “Yes. It does.” I went into the bathroom and used the toilet, surprised at how little bleeding there actually was now. Washing my hands, I stared at myself in the mirror.

A year ago I was in love with Nathan, giddy, confident that life would always offer me what I needed and wanted. I believed in happy endings and that kindness was always rewarded. Now, seeing my face pale, skin bruised under my eyes, mouth downturned, I wasn’t sure what I believed in any more. Why did I keep getting kicked in the gut? It was like every time I got back on my bike and started pedaling again, a car hit me.

This time I wasn’t sure I could get back on.

*   *   *

I sucked down the coffee greedily while I waited for the breakfast I had ordered. Waffles, eggs, bacon, orange juice, and hash browns was probably overkill but my mouth had watered as I studied the menu so I went for it.

“We had sex twice last night,” I told Jessica. “I know they say it doesn’t matter, but I feel guilty.”

Jessica was dumping sugar into her coffee. “That can’t have anything to do with it. Thousands of babies are born every day healthy and I seriously doubt all of those parents are remaining celibate. I seriously doubt any of them are. You can’t do this to yourself.”

Oh, I could. And I was. I knew Jessica was right, but I couldn’t help it. I just felt guilty, like I shouldn’t have had those cups of coffee, like I should have eaten more, shouldn’t have had sex, especially not again after that spotting. Maybe I wasn’t qualified to be a mother. Maybe I wasn’t qualified to be with Jonathon, who was smart enough to know I shouldn’t drink coffee.

“I just feel like there aren’t a lot of things I’m good at, you know? But kids I’m good with. I’ve always felt confident that I’ll be a good teacher, and a good mother. But now it’s like I’ve failed at the one thing I should be able to do.”

“You’re lucky that you just got out of the ER or I would kick your ass for saying something like that. You did not fail. And there are a lot of things you’re good at. Jesus Christ.” She threw her balled-up empty sugar packet on the table. “You will be an amaze balls mother when the time comes. If Mother Teresa had a miscarriage would you say she was a bad mother?”

That made me smile. “Mother Teresa was a nun. She wasn’t supposed to be getting preggers.”

“Whatever. You get my point.”

“I do get your point. And I know you’re right. But I need to feel sorry for myself today.”

“You’re allowed to do that. But you can’t trash-talk yourself.”

An enormous plate of food was placed in front of me. “I’m going to eat this like it’s my job.”

“And you should totally do that.”

“Don’t you have class today?” I asked her as I shoveled a forkful of hash browns into my mouth.

“Yeah, but I skipped for my best friend. She’s kind of a big deal to me.”

That made me feel a little less sucky. “Thanks. You’re a big deal to me, too.”

“I didn’t tell Rory. I thought you might want to tell her yourself. But I did tell Riley.”

“Okay.” Everyone was going to know anyway. “I’ll call her once I get my phone back. It’s at my apartment and Jonathon has the keys.”

“He’s being great, you know. In case you hadn’t noticed that,” Jessica said, pouring nine thousand pounds of syrup onto her waffle. She seemed to be on a sugar kick. Being with Riley was good for her. She didn’t worry about every single calorie that went into her mouth like she had before. “Jonathon’s a keeper.”

Grateful my mouth was crammed full of eggs, I just nodded. I knew that Jonathon was a keeper but I also wasn’t sure what this would do to our relationship. We were together because of the baby and now there was no baby. Would he still want to be with me? I was a burden to him. I had been from the beginning. It was an unequal relationship, with him being responsible for caring for me. He had been the giver, me the taker.

“Speak of the devil.” Jessica picked up her phone. “He’s calling me.”

“Why is Jonathon calling you?”

“Let me ask my spirit guides for psychic direction.” She made a face at me. “I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s because he wants to talk to you.” She swiped her phone and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

I held my hand out automatically but she sat still, listening to whatever he was saying. Finally she said, “We’re at the pancake house. She was hungry. Sorry, I didn’t think to text you. I thought you were going to be gone for a while still.”

He obviously said something else because she said, “Uh-huh,” but then mouthed to me, “talk to him?”

I shook my head rapidly, having a sudden adverse reaction to the thought. I didn’t want to talk to him. He would ask me how I was feeling and I would tell him fine and then what? I had nothing to say right now and I didn’t want to come across like an asshole by being blah when he had been so amazing the last five weeks.

“Oh, sorry, she’s in the restroom. I’ll have her call you a little later.”

Her eyes widened as he responded. “I think she can go the john by herself. It’s okay. I’ll have her call you later. Bye.” Jessica hung up the phone, looking horrified.

I wasn’t that surprised actually. He was hands-on and usually that was a good thing. But at the moment I was feeling a little too helpless, like I needed to reassert my independence.

“WTF. Does he think your uterus is going to drop into the toilet? I’m not accompanying you to the bathroom.”

“For which I thank you.”

“I guess I can’t fault the guy for caring, especially since I live with a guy who refuses to buy my tampons when he goes grocery shopping.”

“He is a nice guy.” I sighed as I cut my waffle. “He’s going to stay with me because he feels guilty,” I told her. “Then eventually he’ll get sick of me and he’ll dump me and it will all be a waste of time that utterly breaks my heart.”

Her fork paused halfway to her mouth. “Honestly, I have never heard you talk like this. It’s freaking me out. When did you become such a pessimist?”

Was that what had happened? “I’m having a bad day,” I said pathetically, tears springing up.

Her face softened. “Of course you are. Do you want me to sing ‘The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow’ to you? That’s what you always do to me when I’m upset and I end up so annoyed with your cheerfulness that I forget to be sad.”

I gave a watery laugh. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

She did. It was off-key and she had the words almost completely wrong, but she sang her heart out to me, until I was laughing, amazed and grateful that I could.

“Thanks,” I told her. “That was the best thing I’ve heard since I saw a video of Kermit the Frog covering a Bee Gees song.”

“I aim to please.” Then she started laughing, too, when she held up her phone to show me the screen. It said “Kylie’s john.” “OMG, your boyfriend is calling again. I guess he figures that was sufficient time to pee.”

“I can’t believe you saved his number as my john. That does not sound okay.”

She shrugged. “It’s funny. Now you better answer or he might show up here with a medical team.”

Jessica had a point. I took the phone. “Hello?”

“Kylie?”

“Yes. Hi. Sorry I missed your call before.” Lie. Total lie.

“That’s okay. I just stopped back home to check on you between classes and you weren’t there and I started to worry.”

“I got hungry so Jess is buying me brunch.”

“Okay. That’s good that you’re eating.”

“Yeah.”

Awkward silence.

“So you’re okay?”

No. “Yeah. How are you? With everything?” I asked, because it wasn’t like this, the big this, had happened to just me.

“Me? I’m okay.” He sounded surprised by the question.

“Can you pick me up later at Jessica’s?” I didn’t want to go back to his apartment. It was too unfamiliar. “I can text you her address.”

“Sure. What time?”

“Whenever you’re done for the day. I don’t want to interfere with your schedule.”

“That will probably be about seven. I have to tutor a student at five.”

Why did that suddenly make me completely and irrationally jealous? Had he ever slept with any of his other tutoring students? “Okay, that sounds fine.”

“Unless you want me there sooner. I can cancel the tutoring.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” My God, we were being so fucking polite and courteous with each other. It felt weird and it sounded even weirder. Given the expression on Jessica’s face, she agreed.

There was a pause and he made a sound, like he was about to say something, but then changed his mind. “Okay, see you later.”

“Bye.” I handed the phone to Jessica.

“There has to be an ecard for this moment,” she said.

Ack. “If there is, please don’t send it to me.”