Three words.
There were three words in the English language that when spoken together, had the ability to transcend time and place. You would forever remember exactly where you were when you heard them, even on your deathbed. Three single, simple words strung together.
Her father staring into a stained coffee mug, biting his quivering lip as the worry line etched between his brows grew deeper. Your mom left.
Ash’s mouth roaming her body, his eyes burning sapphire flames as he professed his innermost feelings with wet, wicked kisses. I love you. All the way.
The paddle from an ultrasound sliding over her bare, still flat tummy, the chilly gel coating her skin no match for the warmth invading her heart. It’s a girl.
Olivia guessed that in her thirty-some years alive, her three-word sentences hadn’t been much different than anybody else’s. A mix of wonderful and wounding, she clung to the happy three-word memories and persevered through the others, living to fight another day.
Three simple, otherwise innocent, words.
And none held the mighty power to break her, to sweep her legs and take her down, making her question heaven, hell, and everything in between, more than three words spoken to her by a nurse on a sunny spring morning in Southern California.
Face draining of color, she was a woman—and a mother—whose sole purpose in life was to aid the helpless and heal the sick, and who never signed up to say three horrible, devastating, life-changing words to another mother.
No fetal heartbeat.
Olivia had cupped her enormous belly with trembling hands as the nurse pushed the monitor back and hustled out of the room, stopping to squeeze her arm and fake a smile. “This equipment can be buggy. Let me get the doctor.”
But the doctor—and the alarming number of medical professionals crowding into the room behind him—didn’t have those three magic words Olivia held her breath and prayed to hear.
All is well. Gracie is fine. Prepare for delivery.
Instead, he’d repeated the nurse’s words with a stoic, but sorrowful face, offering no rhyme or reason as to why her child was suddenly, permanently still. Why her body had betrayed her. Why her world had gone from vibrant technicolor to desolate gray, all in the time it took to say three words.
No fetal heartbeat.
Birds chirped in a tree outside the examination room window. Sparrows, maybe. Or purple finches. Olivia felt the ridiculous need to know what species of bird dared sing their song to her.
Didn’t they know? This was no time for singing. Her baby was dead.
The room was cold and she shivered, unable to stop the violent tremors. All she wore was a thin medical gown and a doubled-over cotton blanket that smelled like moth balls. It didn’t smell like the tiny clothes she’d washed and hung on miniature pink hangers.
What would she do with all those clothes? There was a nursery decorated in pink military camouflage and nobody to sleep in the Cadillac of cribs. Her baby was dead.
How would she ever tell her husband? The Superman of men, who was faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. Who could do anything and everything better than Clark Kent himself, except hide his worry over being a first-time, long-distance father. His baby was dead.
Say her name.
Say she mattered.
Say we mattered.
“I know her name. I gave it to her.” Ash’s guttural voice broke through her haze of memories. “And since we’re hurling insults, did you forget that?”
Olivia didn’t answer him. The lump in her throat wouldn’t allow it.
“Her name was Grace.” Anguish laced his words, the emotion shocking her. “My daughter’s name was Grace, and she died almost four years ago, and I’m still mad as fucking hell about it. And while I’m at it, I’m pissed at you, too.”
Sliding to the living room floor, he leaned back against the wall and stretched his long legs out, a hand propped on a raised knee. Looking hunky in worn-out jeans and nothing else. Looking wrecked.
As wrecked as she felt.
Angry too, as he added, “Is that what you wanted from me?”
Olivia looked away, her quick temper spent, replaced by guilt and harsh reality. Seeing him immersed in a pain she knew all too well didn’t feel as good as she’d anticipated.
“Yes. It helps to know I’m not the only one.”
He smirked, disgusted. “You’re not the only one. You’d like to think you are, but you’re not. She was my baby, too.”
Wearing only his delicious smelling T-shirt, she sat in a corner of the sofa hugging a toss pillow, bare legs tucked under her. Ten feet of plush carpeting and the death of their child separated them, the truth in his words undeniable.
“I’m sorry I forced the issue. That was a shit fit four years in the making.” Smiling weakly, she felt oddly relieved.
The tragedy that preceded the end of their marriage was a festering wound. Ash putting voice to their daughter’s existence was a healing balm, in and of itself.
“I’ve been practicing what I would say during that confrontation for four years,” she added. “Had some real zingers in my back pocket. I forgot most of them in the heat of the moment.”
“You got in a few good ones,” he muttered, running a hand along his chin as if she’d landed an uppercut, shrugging off her apology. “Not your fault I’m not in touch with my feelings.”
“Feelings suck.”
He choked out a laugh. “That they do. Feel like I’m right back to that day again. Unable to fix my broken family. Six hours until I have to go back to The Unit and act as if my heart wasn’t just ripped out.”
His rawness cut Olivia to the core and spurred an admission of her own.
“I was too wrapped up in my own grief to notice yours. I was trying to get by, one breath to the next. Trying not to die one minute, desperately wanting to the next. We should’ve had this conversation a long time ago.”
“Doesn’t matter.” His hand sliced through the air, voice commanding. “We’re having it now. We’re hashing it all out tonight, once and for all. Everything’s on the table. The baby, The Unit, all of it. And the fucking vineyard, too. We’re gonna talk it out, we’re gonna feel the feelings, and you and I are gonna come to terms with each other. And then we’re gonna start fresh.”
Start fresh. With a man who’d walked away when she’d needed him the most. “Do you think we can? Do you really think we can start over with all this baggage?”
“I do, Liv.” His sincere eyes held hers. “Because there’s love here. Real love. Was from the beginning and always will be. And because as awful as losing my child was, do you know what was worse? Losing my wife.”
“My pride wants to remind you how many times I lost my husband, but I don’t have any fight left in me.”
He leaned back, thumping his head against the wall as if to punish himself, conceding her point. Staring at him, she realized the filter of hate and resentment clouding her vision had started to clear, showing her the man she’d fallen in fast, hard love with.
“Brutal honesty?” she asked, desperate to go back in time. To regain their powerful, once unbreakable connection.
His nostalgic half smile was an olive branch.
“I lost her, too. Me, I mean. Don’t know how it happened so fast, but before I knew it, she was gone.” Olivia picked at the fringe on the pillow, admitting what only she and Marie knew to be true. “Buried first in medication, then depression. Then deep, dark, wonderful anger. I’m just now finding her again.”
“That’s understandable, Liv. I understood.” He shook his head. “Could’ve done without the whole, move-out-and-never-come-back thing. But I understood why. I didn’t give you much reason to stick around.”
“God, I’m sick of feeling sorry for myself.” She blinked back tears. “I’m sick of being mad. I’m sick of avoiding playgrounds and the diaper aisle at the grocery store. I’m sick of feeling jealous when I see a woman pushing a stroller. And then mad. Just more and more mad.”
“You have a right. You’ve been through hell.”
The thickness in her throat intensified. “For a while it made me feel better. The anger. The hate. It helped me get through the day. If I stayed busy blaming you for what happened, and then hating you for deserting me, I wasn’t overwhelmed with loss. With unanswered questions.” She listed them. “Why did she die? How did she die? What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why weren’t you as devastated as I was? It nearly drove me insane.” Rolling her lips inward, she looked down. And confessed again. “For the first year, I think it actually did.”
“I was devastated, but I couldn’t show it. It would interfere with work. The Unit trains us to be robots. Don’t feel emotion, don’t show emotion, and sure as shit don’t make a decision based on emotion. That gets people killed. And there’s no reason why. It just happened. I all but waterboarded the doctor trying to get those answers myself. All I got was statistics.”
“I know.” She pressed her palm to her forehead, closing her eyes briefly. “I’ve heard them, too. I’ve researched it, read about other couple’s experiences, even joined a support group, and I’ve gotten nowhere. One in two hundred pregnancies end in stillbirth. Most occur without any identifiable risk factors or warning signs. Up to sixty percent are unexplained. None of it makes the pain go away.”
“It’s an unknown we have to learn to live with.”
She stewed on that arduous fact, inhaling the masculine scent clinging to his shirt. “You said, we’re in this together. That day, the night you came home, you said, we’re in this together. But that wasn’t true. I was alone. Before, during, and after, I was alone.” Looking at him, she patted her chest, voice shaking. “I needed to talk about it. I needed you to talk about it. I need that now. I can’t go through life with this silence. I need to tell you what happened to me. To her.”
“We are in this together. I felt that way, Liv. I just—” He shrugged mile-wide shoulders, defeat in his voice. “I thought the words would be good enough until I could make it back home again. Until I could manage some time off. It wasn’t bullshit. It’s how I felt then and how I feel now.”
“It wasn’t good enough. Not even close.”
“I know. I left because I had to, not because I wanted to. My hands were tied.”
“Didn’t even skim the surface,” she added, ignoring his cop-out.
“You’re right.” He accepted her retort without excuses.
“I am right.” And why wasn’t he putting up the protest she’d expected? It weakened her resolve.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, voice faint, as if hearing the heinous events of that day could possibly be as hard as living them.
“Are you sure? Because it doesn’t have a happy ending,” she quipped, joking her way through the pain. “Spoiler alert, it’s a real tearjerker.”
“Talk to me, Livvy. You’re right. I need to hear it.”
Wrapping her arms around the pillow, she huddled inward, gathering strength.
“It was a Friday. I overslept, and when I finally woke up, I sat straight up in bed. I knew something was wrong. It took me a minute to realize I wasn’t feeling her move. Macy had stayed over, and she broke a land-speed record rushing to the doctor’s office. By the time we got there, Rosa was already waiting for us. She had warm muffins in her purse and a rosary in her hand.” Half laughing, she looked at him in amazement. “To this day, I have no idea how she got there so fast.”
His mouth quirked. “Probably made Marshall call for a helicopter.”
They shared a smile, delaying the inevitable. Biting her lip, she tasted metal, but continued.
“They weren’t worried. I was just a new mother with pre-delivery jitters. The nurse joked that, if this was my second baby, I’d be grateful the soccer game in my tummy was rained out, so I could enjoy the extra sleep. She pushed me from the lobby to the examination room in a wheelchair because I was a patient. After the ultrasound confirmed there was no heartbeat, I had to walk into the doctor’s personal office to discuss the next step. She didn’t push me in a wheelchair then. I was no longer a patient. I was a victim. I wanted to wait for you, but the doctor insisted I deliver right away. My blood pressure was elevated, and his focus wasn’t on the baby anymore, but on me. I didn’t care. I wanted to lie down and die right there.”
“That would’ve killed me for sure, Liv. They could’ve buried us together.”
“When they sent me to the hospital, I had to leave through a side door. They said it was so I wouldn’t have to see the pregnant women in the waiting room, but I—” Her breath hitched. “I knew that wasn’t why. It was so they wouldn’t see me. I would scare them.”
“Jesus,” he whispered, blowing out a deep breath.
“Macy was so mad about that, she told them she was hiring a lawyer on my behalf and suing them for mental anguish. She also said they must not know who I was married to or they wouldn’t treat me like that, and they’d be lucky there wasn’t a dirty bomb planted underneath the building before sundown. They threatened to have her arrested for domestic terrorism, and she threatened a bad Yelp review in addition to her lawsuit.”
The memory was so ridiculous, it brought a grin to her lips.
“Dirty bombs are bush-league,” he said casually. “I have better options at my disposal.”
Raising her knees, she pulled the large T-shirt over her bare legs and wrapped her arms around them, needing his warmth any way she could get it.
“You already know what horror came next. At my follow-up appointment, Dr. Merrill told me he had a lengthy and rather intimidating conversation with you. He said his receptionist had to call security.”
“I’d like to hear it from you. If you wanna tell me,” he murmured, when she hesitated. “And I never threatened his life, just his limbs.”
Her short laugh was watery. Only Ash would classify a vow to rip someone’s head off and shove it up their ass a non-life-threatening injury.
“I don’t remember much after that. Once I got to the hospital, it was all sort of a pain-filled blur. They wheeled me into a delivery room, doctors and nurses I’d never met before hovering over me, masks covering all but their eyes. They pitied me, I could see it. This poor woman giving birth, with no baby to show for it and no husband to speak of. I watched them whisper to each other as if I couldn’t hear. Words like soldier and overseas, and disposal and cremation buzzed around me. Sentences like active fetal expulsion floated in the air. A resident came in and said, ‘Oh, she’s an IUD case,’ like I was a science experiment.”
IUD meant Intra-Uterine death. She’d looked it up afterward.
“I wanted to scream at them to shut up, but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have the energy. The nurses had to remind me. It just felt so surreal, like it couldn’t possibly be happening to me. And even though Rosa was on one side and Macy on the other, coaching and crying along with me, I felt alone. A dozen medical personnel were in the room, and still, I felt so alone.”
“Jesus,” he repeated, cupping a hand over his head. “Why the fuck would they make you endure such a thing? Why the fuck would I? That’s straight-up torture.”
“They didn’t give me a choice. Rosa was frantic, trying to reach your superiors. Macy kept getting your play phone’s voice mail. I wanted to wait, but Dr. Merrill said it was too risky. Nobody knew how long it would take you to arrive. He said all the natural mechanisms employed by the body to enable birth start regressing once a fetus is no longer viable. The longer he waited, the harder the birth would be for me, and a C-section is more dangerous physically and would affect future deliveries. They weren’t thinking about my mental state or your geographical location. They just wanted her out.”
Ash’s voice was steely. “I’m gonna find Dr. Merrill and put him in some physical danger. Once I’m done, he’ll regret not choosing beauty school over medical school. Our conversation entailed him laying out a bullshit line of medical mumbo jumbo and giving me a brochure titled, What to do after Stillbirth. I consider myself a fairly intelligent guy, but I had no goddamn idea what to do, and that brochure wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.”
“He never gave me a brochure. Maybe it would’ve helped.” Her grin was ironic. “Maybe it would’ve said, don’t contemplate jumping off the roof of your high-rise condo, or don’t eat your body weight in chocolate. It could’ve said, don’t wash down your Prozac with a bottle of chardonnay, or don’t leave your husband until you’ve had time to process this.”
His smile was sad.
“You wanna know what it really said? There were two things that stood out. One,” he said, holding up a finger, “you won’t know what to say or do, and even if you did, it probably won’t help, so the best option is to just be there for her.” He turned that finger toward himself. “That was an epic fail.”
She barked out a laugh. “I can’t disagree. What was the other thing?”
“Your marriage may not survive.” He tipped his head back, banging it against the wall again. “It said, your marriage may not survive this. And you know what, Liv? I didn’t believe it. I read that warning and thought to myself, ‘No way. No way in hell will that happen to us.’”
“But it did.”
“I’m hoping it didn’t,” he countered. “I’m still hoping it didn’t.”
“After four years, you still have hope?” Even after she’d left him, abandoning their marriage in much the same way she’d accused him of doing.
“It’s all I have.”
She nodded, staring at her wedding ring, twisting it around and around. Minutes passed while he stared at her, waiting patiently for the rest of the story.
“I held her.” Unable to look at him, her gaze flickered to the windows, black beyond the glass. “She was born at eight minutes to midnight, and they let me hold her for an hour. They had her swaddled in a white blanket and she looked—” Her voice caught on a shudder. “She looked beautiful. Fully developed, all her parts in place, all fingers and toes, and a head of soft dark hair. And ruby red lips,” she added, tapping her mouth. “Macy said she would’ve grown into one of those lucky women who never needed lipstick, and what a damn shame it was. I remember smiling at that, and it hurt. It actually hurt my whole body. Rosa had the chaplain come in and perform a blessing over her. It felt right to do that. I thought you would’ve wanted that, too.”
He made a sound that could’ve been a sob. Olivia didn’t look. “When he asked me if I wanted to join him in prayer, I told him God and I weren’t on speaking terms.”
Ash was blurry when she lifted her head, but even through tears, she could see his face twisted in pain. “That little chin dimple you have? She had it, too.”
Quick to his feet, he dug his fingers into his eyes, flashing her a stop sign when she reached for him. “Ash? I’m sorry. Are you—”
“I’m fine.” He slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.
And that’s when it occurred to her. Rosa was right.
Even knights on white horses could bleed. They just preferred to do it alone.