Written in the Scars(11)

Dr. Walker sits down on the stool in front of the examining table and looks up at me through his black wire-rimmed glasses. He takes a deep breath as he sits my chart on the little table behind him. My hands find the edge of the white paper hanging off the sides and crumple it in my fists.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, my voice trembling. I’m on the cusp of breaking down, my heart beating so fast in my chest that I can barely sneak in a breath. It’s been this way since he left and I can’t take it anymore. I feel like I’m going to die, like the world is starting to crush me with its weight. It’s why I’m here. To fix it. To get something to help regain control of my emotions. But something’s wrong. I can see it in his eyes, a benefit of seeing the same doctor since I was fourteen.

The glasses are removed and he clears his throat. “Where’s Ty?”

“I don’t know,” I admit through the burn in my throat.

“Is anyone here with you today?”

“No. Why? What’s wrong, Dr. Walker?”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but your bloodwork showed you’re in the process of a miscarriage, Elin.”

My world stops yet starts a slow spin that wobbles me slightly as I take in his words. My gut churns, like I’ve drunk too many margaritas on a Thirsty Thursday with Lindsay, but something itches in the back of my psyche that tells me a margarita might be helpful right about now. I’m starting to sway in my seat, but no amount of grabbing the edges of the table helps.

“What?” I ask, trying to focus on the wrinkles in his face. “I’m not pregnant. It’s impossible,” I say, a sad laugh rolling past my lips.

Surely I misunderstood. The universe wouldn’t do this to me, wouldn’t take away the one thing Ty and I have wanted more than anything else. It wouldn’t do this to me now, when everything else is falling apart. I won’t be able to take it.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “You were just a few weeks along . . .”

The rest is muffled by a screaming only I can hear. My heart thunders so hard I think it’s going to explode as I touch my stomach and then pull back, like they’re going to be burnt by contact.

I am pregnant. I was pregnant. I . . .

My head falls forward and I barely catch it with my fingers. All the times we tried. So many negative tests. Thousands of unanswered prayers. I can’t . . .

My shoulders start to tip my body to the side, but I don’t care enough to even try to catch myself. Let me slam against the cold linoleum. Maybe it’ll wake me up out of this nightmare.

Dr. Walker’s on his feet faster than a post-sixty-year old man should be able to muster, his arm going around my shoulders to keep me from falling off the table. Tears cascade down my face like an open sieve, my wail surely landing on the ears of everyone in the building.

He pulls me to him, and it breaks me that I’m being comforted by a medical professional and not my husband.

Ty. Where are you? I need you.

I hear the doctor whisper to someone to call Lindsay Watson at Blown and I feel like I should tell him not to interrupt her day, but I can’t. All I can do is feel myself die a cell at a time.

“Elin?” Lindsay asks, shaking me out of my head.

I shrug. “What do you want me to say? Everything is peachy? My world is a bright and happy place?”

Lindsay rolls her eyes and drops her hands on the laminated countertop. “No, I don’t want you to say that. You’ve just been lost in your own head more today than usual, so I thought maybe something happened. I’m sorry.”

I look at her features and instantly regret my attitude.

“I just had a bad night,” I sigh, thinking back to the night before and how I didn’t sleep at all. Every minute that ticked off the clock, I was there to watch it.

I’ve only wanted one thing in my life—a family with the man I’m sure, even now, is my soul mate. If I can’t have that, what’s left for me? How do you replace that dream when it’s all that mattered?

“From seeing him?”

“Yeah,” I mumble. “He’s been gone for weeks and—boom! He’s back. And then he doesn’t even speak to me, Linds. Like I’m some stranger.”

“Give it time.”

“Time for what?” I look at my best friend, bewildered. She knows what I’ve been through. She picked me up that afternoon and sat with me in the middle of my bed and held me while I came to terms with losing a baby I never knew I was going to have. It was her that picked up the pieces that day. How can she tell me to give it time?

“Time to work out, Elin. He just came back. He was probably as overwhelmed as you were.”