Chapter 5 - The First Night She Asked Me to Stay
By the second week, Emily’s world had become numbers.
Temperature.
Platelets.
White blood cells.
Oxygen levels.
Every morning, Dr. Shah entered with new results.
Some days the numbers improved.
Other days they moved in the wrong direction and the entire room seemed to become colder.
Emily developed painful sores in her mouth. Eating became difficult.
She lost weight.
Her skin grew pale and almost translucent beneath the hospital lights.
I learned how to adjust her blankets without waking her.
I learned which mouth rinse made her nauseated.
I learned that she wanted the blinds open in the morning, even when she was too tired to look outside.
None of these things made me a good man.
They made me present.
There was a difference.
My company placed me on unpaid leave after my personal days ended.
Craig called and warned me that the Holloway account had been reassigned.
“I cannot guarantee your position indefinitely,” he said.
“I understand.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“No.”
The answer surprised him.
“I’m not sure of anything,” I continued. “I just know where I need to be.”
That afternoon, my mother appeared at the hospital.
She carried flowers, a casserole, and an apology she had probably rehearsed in the parking lot.
Emily was sleeping.
I met my mother near the elevators.
“I want to see her.”
“No.”
“I need to apologize.”
“You need to respect what she wants.”
“Did she say she would not see me?”
“She did not know you were coming.”
“Then ask her.”
“She has a fever.”
My mother’s eyes filled.
“I made a mistake.”
“You made a decision.”
“I thought your marriage was destroying you.”
“So you destroyed what was left of it?”
“That is not fair.”
“No. Fair would have been letting Emily decide whether she wanted to leave a message.”
My mother looked toward the closed hospital-room door.
“I was afraid she would pull you back into the same pain.”
“The pain was already mine.”
“I wanted you to be happy.”
“You wanted me to be comfortable.”
She flinched.
Those were not the same thing.
My mother had always expressed love through removal.
Remove the difficult conversation.
Remove the embarrassing relative.
Remove the woman whose grief made Sunday dinner uncomfortable.
She believed peace meant nobody saying the thing that might change the room.
“I wrote Emily a letter,” she said.
I did not take it.
“You may give it to Nora. Emily can decide whether to read it.”
“You won’t even carry it inside?”
“No.”
My mother nodded slowly.
For once, she accepted a boundary without making me punish her for it.
That evening, Emily’s fever rose.
She became confused.
She called me by her brother’s name.
Then she asked where the babies were.
My chest tightened.
“What babies?”
“Our babies,” she whispered. “They’ll be cold.”
I looked toward the nurse.
The nurse checked Emily’s temperature and increased the fluids.
“She may be disoriented from the fever.”
Emily gripped my wrist.
“Michael, please find them.”
I sat beside her.
“They’re safe.”
“Where?”
I did not know what to say.
We had never named either pregnancy.
The first ended at nine weeks.
The second at eleven.
The hospital forms called them products of conception.
Our relatives called them losses.
Emily called them nothing because saying more made them too real.
I placed my hand over hers.
“They’re together,” I said. “They aren’t cold.”
Her grip loosened.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She fell asleep.
I remained awake beside her for the rest of the night.
At three in the morning, I walked into the bathroom and cried with the faucet running.
Not quietly.
Not carefully.
I pressed both hands against the sink and let every sound out.
I cried for Emily.
For the children we never held.
For the nights I had sat in my car outside our apartment because I did not want to walk into her sadness.
For the man who had thought grief could be escaped by changing his address.
When I returned, Emily was awake.
“You were crying,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You never cried after the miscarriages.”
“I did. Just never where you could see.”
“Why?”
“I thought it would make things worse.”
“It made me think you did not care.”
“I know.”
She moved slightly beneath the blanket.
“Come closer.”
I pulled the chair beside the bed.
She studied my face.
“Were you relieved?” she asked.
“About what?”
“The pregnancies ending.”
The question shocked me.
“No.”
“You never talked about them.”
“I could not talk about them without feeling like I had failed to protect you.”
“They were inside me.”
“I know.”
“I saw the blood.”
“I know.”
“I heard the doctor say there was no heartbeat.”
“I know.”
“You went back to work.”
“I was a coward.”
Her eyes filled.
“I thought you were relieved because you did not want children as much as I did.”
“I wanted them.”
“Then why didn’t you grieve with me?”
“Because I thought if I started, I would never stop.”
Emily looked at me for a long time.
“Maybe we both needed to stop.”
“What?”
“Stop working. Stop pretending. Stop being useful.”
She turned her face toward the window.
“We needed to fall apart in the same room.”
I reached for her hand.
This time, she took it.
Her skin was hot from the fever.
“I’m falling apart now,” I said.
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
“I noticed.”
We remained like that until morning.
Her fever began to decrease after sunrise.
The blood cultures showed an infection that responded to antibiotics.
Dr. Shah said they had caught it early.
For the first time in three days, Emily’s numbers stabilized.
Nora arrived with clean clothes and found us sleeping.
My head rested beside Emily’s hand.
Later, she told me Emily had been awake when she entered.
“She was watching you,” Nora said.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
I learned not to turn silence into whatever answer I wanted.
Three days later, a bone marrow biopsy showed the chemotherapy had reduced the leukemia but had not eliminated it.
Dr. Shah recommended a second round of treatment.
If Emily reached remission, she might need a stem-cell transplant.
“Do you have siblings?” the doctor asked.
Emily looked down.
“One brother.”
“Would he be willing to be tested?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you last speak?”
“Twelve years ago.”
Dr. Shah explained that siblings sometimes provided the best donor match.
Emily gave them her brother’s name.
Lucas Carter.
May you like
The hospital contacted him that afternoon.
He refused the test.
