This Man Confessed(89)

I glance down. “Where?” I can’t feel anything. I pull at my dress, hitching it higher, but there is no sign of any cut. Higher it goes; still more blood but no cut. I look at Jesse in confusion, but he’s frozen as he watches me searching for the source of the blood. His eyes lift to mine. They are wide and uneasy. It doesn’t sit well. I start shaking my head as he moves forward, taking my dress up as far as it can go.

There is no cut.

The blood is coming from my knickers.

“No!” I cry out, realization crashing into me like a tornado.

“Oh Jesus.” He yanks the hem of my dress back down and jumps up to the ambulance, engulfing me in his arms. “Fucking hell, no.”

“Sir?”

“Hospital. Now!”

I’m placed on a gurney gently and hear the slamming of metal doors, making me jump. I turn into his chest, clutching at his T-shirt and hiding my face from him. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up, Ava.” He grabs the back of my hair and pulls me out. His eyes are a cloud of green. “Please, just shut up.” His thumb drags under my eye, collecting some tears. “I love you.”

This is my punishment. This is my penance for having such toxic thoughts. I deserve it, but Jesse doesn’t. He deserves the happiness I know this baby would’ve given him. It’s an extension of me. I’ve destroyed his dream. I should have seen things clearer sooner. I should have changed my address at the surgery. I should have let John take me to work. I shouldn’t have gone to Matt’s office. There are so many things I have and haven’t done that could have changed how things are playing out.

My shame is eating away at me and it will for the rest of my life. It hasn’t happened how I had stupidly first thought, but the end result is the same. I’ve killed our baby.





Chapter Nineteen



The silence surrounding us is painful. The whole way in the ambulance I sobbed and Jesse constantly told me how much he loves me. I can’t help but think it’s simply because he doesn’t know what else to say. There’s no comfort or reassurance coming from those three words. He hasn’t said it doesn’t matter because I know it does. He hasn’t said it’s not my fault because I know it is. He hasn’t said that we’ll be fine, either, and I don’t know if we will be. Just when I was beginning to see light at the end of the never-ending tunnel of issues, we’re hit with the worst kind of devastation—a damage that can’t be fixed. He’ll resent me forever.

He carries me from the ambulance, rejecting the wheelchair that’s brought out by a nurse, and silently follows the doctor down the busy corridor, all of the time looking straight ahead and flipping one-word answers to anyone who asks him questions. I can’t feel anything except Jesse’s thundering heartbeat pulsing into me.

After what seems like an eternity of gently bobbing up and down in Jesse’s arms, I’m lowered onto a huge hospital bed in a private room. He’s gentle and all of his actions are tender and loving as he strokes my hair, props my head up slightly, and covers my legs with the thin sheet that’s lying at the foot of the bed. But there are still no comforting or reassuring words.

We’re closed in from every direction by machines and medical equipment. A nurse stays, but the ambulance men leave after giving a brief rundown on me, what has happened, and the observations they have already performed on the way to the hospital. The nurse takes notes, sticks things in my ear, and holds thing to my chest. She asks questions, and I answer quietly, but the whole time, I keep my eyes on Jesse, who’s sitting in a chair with his face in his palms.

The nurse pulls my reluctant eyes away from my grieving husband when she hands me a gown. She smiles. It’s a sympathetic smile. Then she leaves the room. I just hold it for a while, until so much time has passed, I think it could be next week, or even next year. I want it to be next year. Will this crippling pain and guilt be gone by next year?

I finally slide myself to the side of the bed, my back to Jesse, and reach around to unzip my dress and stand. In the quiet, I hear him move.

“Let me,” he says softly. He’s in front of me, but my stinging eyes remain on the floor.

“It’s okay. I can manage.”

“You probably can.” He pulls my dress up over my head. “But it’s my job and I’d like to keep it.”

My chin starts to tremble as I fight to restrain the persistent tears. “Thank you,” I whisper, still keeping my welling eyes from his line of sight.

It’s an impossible task, especially when he bends and pushes his face up into my neck, forcing my face up to his. “Don’t thank me for looking after you, Ava. It’s what I’ve been put on this earth to do. It’s what keeps me here.”