“Why would I do that?” I asked, irritated.
“Your back hurts?” he asked, as though he were scared of the answer.
I nodded.
“Low down?”
I nodded again.
“Are you late?”
“I’m never very regular. Hand me the calendar.” Jack got my bank giveaway calendar from the nail in the kitchen and I flipped back to the months before. I counted. “Well, this one is late. I don’t know why it’s so painful, my last one was just nothing. A couple of spots.”
If I was as white as a sheet, we were a matching set. Jack lost all his color.
“What did you say?” he asked.
I repeated myself.
“Lily,” he said, as if he was bracing himself. “Honey, I think you… I think we need to get you to the hospital.”
“You know I don’t have insurance,” I said. “I can’t afford a hospital bill.”
“I can,” Jack said grimly. “And you’re going.”
I was as astonished as I could be. Jack had never spoken to me that way. He said, “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
But I balked at that. It would take us only four minutes to get to the hospital in Shakespeare, and that’s even if we caught the red light.
“Just put the bath mat down over your car seat,” I suggested, “in case I leak any more.” Jack could see I wouldn’t go unless he did as I’d said, so he grabbed the bath mat and took it out to his car.
Then he returned to help me up, and we went out to the car during a moment when I wasn’t actively in pain. I got in and buckled up, and Jack hurried around to his side of the car and jammed the key into the ignition. We went backward at a tremendous rate, and Jack got out into the street as though there were never any traffic.
After a minute, I didn’t care. I was really hurting.
Suddenly, deep inside me, I felt a kind of terrible wrench. “Oh,” I said sharply, bending forward. I took a deep breath, let it out… and the pain stopped.
“Lily?” Jack asked, his voice frantic. “Lily? What’s happening?”
“It’s over,” I said in relief. I looked sideways at Jack, but he didn’t seem to think that was good news. Just when I was about to ask him if he’d heard me, I felt a gush of wet warmth, and I looked down to see blood. A lot of blood.
I felt very tired. I thought I would lean my head against the car window. It felt cool against my cheek. Jack glanced over and nearly hit the car ahead of us.
“What’s happened to me?” I asked Jack from a far distance, as we pulled into the emergency room carport and he pushed open his door.
“Stay right there!” he yelled, and disappeared inside the building. The bath mat underneath me turned red. I congratulated myself on my foresight, trying not to admit to myself that I was terrified. In seconds, a nurse came out with a wheelchair. Jack helped me out of the car, and the minute I stood up my legs were drenched in a gush of fluid. I stared down at myself, embarrassed and frightened.
“What’s happened to me?” I asked again.
“Hon, you’re miscarrying,” the nurse said briskly, as if any fool should have known that.
And I guess she was right.
Chapter Seven
Carrie was there in five minutes, and she confirmed what the nurse had said. I was so shocked I didn’t know which piece of knowledge was more stunning; the fact that I’d gotten pregnant without knowing it, or the fact that I’d lost a baby.
“Our baby,” I said to Jack, trying to absorb the loss, the impact of the facts. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I was too tired to blot them. I didn’t know if I was exactly sad or just profoundly astonished.
He was just as amazed as I was at the whole incident. He left the cubicle in the emergency room abruptly, and I was left staring after him from the gurney.
Carrie reentered. “He’s crying,” she whispered to me, and I could not imagine that. Then I remembered that when Jack’s previous lover, Karen Kingsland, had been murdered, she had been pregnant. Carrie said, “Did you really not know?”
“I never even thought of it,” I admitted. “I never put everything together. I guess I’m just dumb.”
“Lily, I am so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what she could say, either.
“I thought I had too much scar tissue,” I told Carrie. “I thought between the indications that I wouldn’t be very fertile, and the fact that we used birth control every single time, I was safe as I could be.”
“Only abstinence is a hundred percent safe,” Carrie said automatically. Her round brown eyes fixed on me from behind her big glasses. “Lily, I have to do a D and C.”
That meant operating room fees and an anesthesiologist and an overnight stay in the hospital. I began to protest.
“You don’t have an option,” she told me firmly.
Jack said, “You do what you have to do, Carrie. We’re good for it.” He’d come back through the curtains behind her. His eyes were red. He took my hand.
“You know,” Carrie said very slowly, propping her bottom against the wall and hugging a clipboard to her chest, “If this has happened once, this could happen again.” She rested her chin on the clipboard, and I could tell she was thinking of saying something she knew she ought not to say.
I looked over at Jack. His hair was hanging in tangles around his shoulders, and his scar almost gleamed in the harsh overhead light. He didn’t seem to know what to think, and I couldn’t even figure out how I felt about what had just happened to me, or at least how I fully felt. But the truth was, it was like being at the bottom of a deep pit of sorrow.
“A baby,” Jack said tentatively. “A baby.”
“Lots of work,” I said, thinking of the Althaus home.
Carrie braced herself. “Of course,” she interjected in a very low voice, looking anywhere but at us, “I think it’s always nice if a baby’s parents are married.”
“Oh, no problem,” Jack said absently. Then he snapped to, and his eyes met mine. I shrugged.
Carrie perked up. Her glasses glistened as she raised her head. “So, you guys are going to get married?”
“No,” I said. “We already are.”
After all that “parents should be married” preaching, Carrie gave us hell because we were married. I’d been her only bridesmaid, and I should’ve returned the compliment; Claude would’ve liked to have been at the ceremony; they would’ve welcomed the chance to give us a wedding present; etc.; etc. Blah, blah, blah.
“Listen, Carrie,” I told her. “I am going to say this once because I am your friend. We don’t want to talk about being married, we don’t want to change the way we are, we don’t want to put it in the papers. I haven’t even told my parents, though Jack did tell his sister, since he can’t seem to stop hinting.” I cast a look at Jack, who had the grace to look abashed. “This isn’t a good day for us anyway, right? Wait and hop on us when I feel better.”
“I’m sorry.” Carrie apologized thoroughly. “Listen, Lily, I’m going to do your D and C in…” she looked at her watch. “About an hour. The operating room’ll be free then, Dr. Howard’s in there now.”
“What can I expect afterward?”
We went over that for a while, and I began to feel better. Carrie was sure I’d be feeling physically well very soon.
When she ducked out from the curtain, Jack took my hand. He hooked a chair with his foot, drew it closer, and settled in by the bed, resting his head against it. We were still and quiet together for a while, and it was wonderful
