Teammates were clustered around us, all following the code and letting us finish this on our own. I was sucking in gulps of air, the tang of blood filling my mouth.
“Enough.” It was a bark from Tyler Rich, the 40-something captain of Anton’s team. His hands dropped at the command and my body slid down the wall to the ice. I steadied myself with a hand on the wall to get up, but vertigo forced me right back down.
Two arms around my waist pulled me from the ice. It was Luke and Vic, carrying me.
“Imma kick his ass,” I muttered. “Just gimme a sec.”
“Keep your ass on the fucking bench,” Vic said. “You’re in bad shape.”
“Me?” I looked at him, confused. We’d made it to the wall where our bench was, and I howled in pain when they hauled me over it into the arms of two other teammates. Instead of helping me sit, they carried me, each wrapping an arm around my back and holding one of my legs.
“My fucking balls hurt,” I mumbled. And when I saw that it wasn’t one of our trainers, but the team doctor, Matt, leading us to the locker room, I realized I’d probably hurt in a lot of other places when the adrenaline surge wore off.
***
I’d become good at going through the motions. Or maybe I was just in denial. The counselor in me knew that was the real answer. I shoved the truth into my subconscious and pretended everything was normal. Through all my morning appointments, I’d been an engaged, professional counselor – not a frantic woman whose world was falling apart.
But now it was afternoon. I was done with clients for the day and was hanging out in Kirk’s office. Over the course of the eight months I’d been working with him, we’d become pretty good friends. We didn’t spent a lot of time together – none outside of work, but when we talked about our lives, we both dialed through the chit chat and bullshit immediately. And I trusted him.
I’d told him I was pregnant, and now he was sitting in his worn wingback counselor chair, looking at me like the world was not about to end. Several seconds of silence elapsed before I sprang up from the couch.
“Kirk! Have some sympathy! Did you hear what I just said?”
“I did. I’m waiting for you to tell me how you feel about it.”
I whirled around and glared at him. “I feel furious,” I said in a low, measured tone. “I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel cheated. I feel horrible.”
“Those are all perfectly normal feelings right now.”
“Don’t go counselor on me!” I yelled. “There’s nothing normal about me! I have a freakish ability to get pregnant and a freakish inability to stay pregnant! I’m devastated to be doing this again!”
“You’re grieving, Kate.”
His words caught me off guard and I returned to the couch and sat. “Grieving? I guess … maybe I am.”
“Yes, and you have to remember that grief is a process,” he said. “You’re up and down; two steps forward and one step back.”
“But what kind of woman mourns getting pregnant? What’s wrong with me? I’m happily married, secure … and I’m grieving for the last shred of my sanity that slipped away when I got news that should’ve made me happy. It’s crazy.”
Kirk cupped his chin in his fist and looked at me for a few seconds. “You know the answer to this, Kate, but it can be hard to apply what we know to ourselves. People don’t just grieve over physical death. We grieve over loss. A divorce means the loss of a relationship, and we grieve for that. Getting laid off from a job can mean a loss of identity and stability. Death isn’t the only form of loss.”
“And when I lost the other babies, I mourned. But I haven’t lost anything, Kirk. I’m grieving because I’m pregnant and that feels …” I searched for an office friendly word to no avail. “Fucked up.”
Kirk was in counselor mode. He waited a few seconds to let the air settle as I’d seen him do in sessions with clients.
“So I assume that after the loss of the second baby, you and Ryke discussed future plans?” he asked, leaning forward and pressing his palms to his knees.
“Yes. And the plan was never again. I knew, and Ryke knew, that I couldn’t do it again. We decided to adopt. We’re almost done with the home study process. And now …” I couldn’t even finish the sentence because it was what I wondered over and over in my head. Now what?
“Kate.” Kirk steepled his hands beneath his chin and looked at me. “It makes sense to me that you’re mourning. You’ve definitely lost something. You lost the dream of adopting a baby, at least the way you were planning it. You’ve lost control. Your plan to protect yourself from hurting after the potential loss of another baby won’t work now. This leaves you exposed when you were already fragile.”