Shatter (True Believers #4)(40)
Author: Erin McCarthy

I was falling in love with him.

When we got back to my place he made love to me again, slowly, deliciously, and I didn’t have to ask if he was planning to spend the night. I’d never thought of sex as making love, not once, until Jonathon had referred to it that way. It seemed so retro, and while before I might have thought it was cheesy, now it seemed right. It wasn’t f**king, it wasn’t just sex, something you could do with anyone. It was intimate and warm and emotional.

Jonathon pulled the blankets up over our naked bodies and set his glasses on the nightstand. “Mm. Happy birthday, Kylie.”

“Thank you.” I kissed him and felt my heart swell knowing that my wish had already come true.

I had wished on my cupcake candle to be with Jonathon and here I was. Here we were. A couple. He had said he didn’t want to see other people. Just me.

He+Me= We.

I sighed, feeling goofy and happy and more than a little bit in love.

But then I woke up at three in the morning feeling like the sheet below me was wet, and that perfect night was over in an instant.

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 f**k . . .”

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.