after the hubbub of arriving at the hospital, the struggle to remove my jeans, the shock of the miscarriage. I felt drained, mentally and physically. I’d lost a lot of blood. After a while, I think I dozed a little, and Jack may have, too.
As I drifted in and out of uneasy napping, I was thinking that this was the first time I’d felt really married. It felt like a cord ran between Jack and me, an umbilical cord, pulsing with life and nutrients. Then I thought of the baby, the baby who’d been attached to me with a real umbilical cord, and I thought of Jack leaving this brilliant white cubicle to cry for our lost child. I stared at the wall, at the incomprehensible medical things attached to it, and I considered that if I had not allowed Jack into my life, none of this pain would have been mine or his. Dry eyed, I stared at the wall, from time to time stroking his dark hair, and I did not know if I was glad or miserable that I’d ever seen him.
That evening Tamsin and Cliff came to my room. It was a double, but there wasn’t another patient in there, which was a relief I was sure I owed to Carrie. Jack had left to spend a little time at the house cleaning up the disorder we’d left behind us that morning and to shower and change. I’d been dozing again, this time from the anesthesia, and I was startled to open my eyes and see the couple standing in the doorway.
“Tamsin,” I said. “Cliff.”
“I was visiting a client on my lunch hour and I saw your name on the admissions list,” Tamsin explained. She had a little arrangement of daisies and baby’s breath in her hand. “Are you feeling all right, Lily?”
“Yes, much better,” I said, being careful not to move. “Thanks for coming by.”
Tamsin placed the flowers on the broad windowsill, and Cliff came to the side of the bed and peered down at me. “We’ve had a miscarriage, too,” he said. “Tamsin lost our baby about three years ago.”
Tamsin looked away, as if the mention of the loss was a reproach.
“How are you doing?” I asked her.
“You mean, about the death of Saralynn?”
I nodded.
“I’m adjusting,” she said. “Her mother came to see me. That was bad.”
“I can well imagine,” I lied.
“I brought you some magazines.” Tamsin fumbled with a bag. “Here, maybe one of them will distract you for a while.” She arranged a stack on my rolling table. She’d been smart enough to avoid
“Thank you,” I said.
“Then, I guess, we’ll see you later. I hope you feel better.”
“Thank you.”
After they’d left the room, I was ashamed of my eagerness to have them gone. I didn’t want to see anyone, not a soul, but normally I would have expended some effort to be more polite.
Between the slit left between the curtains, I could see the late summer sun setting on one of the longest days of my life. I was seeing only a slice of the brilliant ball of glory, the briefest flare of red and orange. I looked for a long time. Then I pressed my call button.
The nurse eventually arrived to help me to the bathroom. She was a burly middle-aged woman who had no sympathy for me at all… kind of a relief after the emotional fire-walking I’d had that day.
As I shuffled back to my bed across the bright linoleum, I realized that Tamsin herself must be going through much the same difficulty. Her life was churned and risky, and she and Cliff most probably could not see any end to that risk.
In my self-protective way, I wanted to hold my counselor at arm’s length because I had too much trouble of my own to help her out of hers.
Whatever Tamsin was doing, or whatever was being done to her, I wanted no part of it. I had worked myself into a state of revulsion for my increasing entanglement in the lives of others, even Jack. This was where it led, to this hard white bed in this hard white place, where pieces of me bled out of my body.
I caught my breath, revolted by my own self-involvement.
When Jack returned, he tried to hold my hand, but I pulled my fingers away and turned my eyes to the wall.
“I’ll feel better before long,” I promised the wall. I forced myself to go on. If there was anything I hated, it was explaining myself. “I’ll just brood for a while and get it over with.”
I just couldn’t, shouldn’t, treat Jack this way. I was ashamed. I did my second least favorite thing, and began crying. My tears felt hot against my face. I bit my lips to keep from making a sound, but it didn’t work.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t hold on to our baby.”
“Move over.”
I scooted as much as I could in the narrow bed. I heard Jack’s shoes hit the floor and then the mattress took the weight of his body. He wrapped himself around me. There was not anything to say, but at least we were together.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, right after Carrie checked me over, I went home. Jack was silent for the short drive, and so was I. When we got to the house, he came around the car and opened my door. Slowly, I swung my legs out and got up, glad he’d brought me clothes to replace my ruined jeans. Trying to be modest in a hospital gown would’ve been just too much. I was a little shaky, but he let me make my own way into the house.
When I looked around the living room, I was stunned.
“Who?” I asked. Jack was focused on my face, his own dark and serious. “What…?”
A vase of pink carnations was on the table by the double recliner. Three white roses graced the top of the television. A small dried bouquet was arranged in a country basket on my small bookshelf.
“Go lie down, Lily,” he said.
I shuffled into our bedroom, saw two more little flower arrangements and two cards. I sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and eased back. I swung my legs up.
“Where’d these come from?” I was realizing that my initial idea, that Jack had gotten them all, was just plain crazy.
“Carrie and Claude. Janet, the dried arrangement, and she brought some chicken. Helen Drinkwater left a card in the door. Marshall brought you a movie to watch; a Jackie Chan. Birdie Rossiter sent flowers and included a card from her dog Durwood.” Jack’s voice was very dry. “The Winthrops sent flowers, Carlton from next door dropped by and left a card, the McCorkindales brought flowers.” Jack picked up a notepad he’d dropped on the night table. “Let’s see. Someone named Carla brought you a sweet-potato pie. Someone else named Firella called, said to tell you she’d be bringing by a ham tonight.”
People here in Shakespeare had been kind to me before, helped me out when I needed it, but this was a little overwhelming. The Drinkwaters, for example. Since when had they cared about my well-being? The McCorkindales? I’d been beaten black and blue before and they hadn’t noticed. Something about my losing a baby had struck a chord.
“How did they find out so fast?”
“You were brought up in a small town and you haven’t figured that out?” Jack tried to sound teasing, but couldn’t quite manage it.
I shook my head, not feeling smart enough to figure out how to untie my shoes.
“McCorkindale, the minister, visits at the hospital every evening. Beanie Winthrop is a volunteer Pink Lady. Raphael Roundtree’s oldest daughter is an admissions clerk, so Raphael carried the news to Body Time. I had to call your clients and tell them you couldn’t come in this week, so they knew. I arranged with the sister of the woman who does Carrie’s office for the Winthrops and the Althauses to be covered this week, and she’s best friends with Carla’s little sister.”
“You did?” I was so startled by all this that I was caught off balance. “I won’t go to work this week? But Carrie
