by Louise Hall
Cate shifted restlessly on the bed and he realised he was in danger of disturbing her so he stepped outside into the corridor. “Are you Mr Warner?”
“What do you want?” Kian snarled. If somebody asked for his autograph right now, he was going to kick their fucking head in.
It was Cate’s doctor. “We’re going to discharge your wife this afternoon but before we do, I just wanted to talk to you about her care.”
The doctor checked his file, “it looks as though your wife was about seven weeks pregnant.”
“That’s impossible.” Kian added this clearly incompetent doctor to his growing list. “I had a vasectomy nine weeks ago.”
“Since you had the vasectomy, have you been using contraception?”
“No, that was the whole point of having it done.”
The doctor frowned, “Mr Warner, after a vasectomy you can still get your partner pregnant until your sperm count is zero. You should have been advised to use another method of birth control until your follow-up sperm count test.”
“Fuck,” Kian thumped his fists on the wall. The doctors had given him some literature but he’d stashed it in a drawer somewhere without reading it. He’d just assumed that once he’d had the vasectomy that he wouldn’t be able to make Cate pregnant again.
CHAPTER 12
When Cate woke up, Kian wasn’t there. “Where’s my husband?” she asked one of the nurses.
“He’s just talking to the doctor; he’ll be back in a minute.”
The nurse reached for Cate’s bag, “would you like me to help you get dressed, sweetheart? We’re going to be discharging you this afternoon.”
“I’ll be OK,” Cate unfastened her gown and quickly put on her bra. Her breasts felt normal again. She was just putting on her t-shirt when Kian’s voice filtered through one of the air vents. “That’s impossible.” He sounded furious. “I had a vasectomy nine weeks ago.”
Cate was stunned. Did he really just doubt her fidelity?
The door crashed open and Kian stormed into the room. “I’ll…” the nurse looked uncomfortable. She must have realised what Kian had just implied. “I’ll give you a couple of minutes to finish getting dressed.”
“I didn’t realise you were awake.”
“I am,” Cate said coldly, focusing on pulling her jeans up her legs. She wanted to thump him for how insensitive he was being.
“I’ll help you,” Kian reached for the zipper of her jeans; his thumb grazing her bare skin.
“Don’t touch me,” Cate warned. She shoved her feet into her trainers.
After she’d been discharged, Kian helped Cate into the back of the car which was waiting for them by the back door of the hospital. She scooted across the black leather seat until she was huddled up against the passenger door. It was warm outside but she couldn’t stop shivering and wrapped her cardigan tightly around her torso. She was still sore and bleeding but she was glad to be going home. She was desperate to give her three precious children big hugs and kisses.
As they walked through the airport, Cate felt faint but she was determined that she wasn’t going to ask Kian for any help. She still couldn’t believe that while she’d been lying in a hospital bed after suffering a miscarriage, he’d had the audacity to question if the baby was his. Cate didn’t know how she’d got pregnant when Kian had had a vasectomy - right now she didn’t particularly care either – but she was one hundred percent certain that the baby they’d lost had been his. Kian was the first and only man she’d ever been with.
“Excuse me,” a girl with blonde bunches toddled up to them, “please could I have your autograph?”
It took Cate a second to realise that the little girl was asking her and not Kian. She’d never been asked for her autograph before.
“Of course,” she tried hard to smile, kneeling down so she was at the same level. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Lily,” the girl suddenly became shy, clinging to her mum’s legs.
“She loves Stepping Out,” Lily’s mum said as Cate signed her name. “You’re her favourite.”
Lily looked up at Cate, “you looked like a princess last night.”
“Thank you,” Cate smiled, feeling fresh tears in her eyes.
She waited until Lily and her mum had turned the corner before she tried to get up off the floor. Her legs felt wobbly and her vision went blurry. “Kian?” She felt his strong arms wrap around her waist, holding her upright. “It’s OK, angel. I’ve got you.”
When they got to Seattle airport, Kian settled Cate down on the backseat. He’d parked his car at the airport so it would be just the two of them on the drive home. Cate had slept for most of the flight from L.A. He’d tried to get her to eat something but she’d refused. She was still shivering so he took off his jacket and wrapped it around her slender frame.
When he was certain that she’d gone back to sleep, he dialled the clinic where he’d had the vasectomy. He didn’t want Cate to know how stupid he’d been.
“I need to do the test right away,” Kian insisted. Because of football commitments, he’d kept putting off having the sperm count test.
They gave him the first appointment the following morning.
Cate could hear Kian talking above the low rumble of the engine. “If you need to contact me, I’d prefer it if you’d use this number. I don’t want my wife finding out about this.”
Who was he talking to and what didn’t he want Cate to find out about? She wondered if he’d hired a private detective to find out who she’d been whoring around with.
She pretended to wake up, doing a big performance of yawning and stretching, as they pulled into the driveway. Kian hadn’t even stopped the engine when the front door was flung open and Lola came running towards them. “Mum, you were amazing. I’m so…”
She skidded to a halt as Cate climbed out of the backseat. “You look really white. Are you sick?”
“I’m just tired, baby girl,” Cate smiled weakly, giving her daughter a big hug. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t Skype last night. How did you do against Tacoma?”
Lola beamed with pride, “we won 3-2 and I scored the winning goal.”
“That’s awesome.”
Later that night, after the children were asleep, Cate walked zombie-like into the bedroom. She flopped face down on the bed. “Do you want me to undress you?” Kian asked.
“You’re such a hypocrite,” Cate turned to face him, brushing her hair away from her face.
Kian didn’t say anything which just made Cate even angrier. “It scares me how much I hate you right now.”
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Cate goaded him, sitting up. “Why don’t you just ask me instead of hiring a goddamn private detective?”
“Hiring a what?” Kian spun around. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t look so shocked,” Cate had such an urge to hit him that she had to sit on her hands. “I heard you in the hospital and in the car on the drive home from the airport. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you think there was even a chance that the baby I lost last night wasn’t yours.”
“Cate!” Kian reached out to her but she jumped off the bed. “Don’t you dare touch me. I want to hear you say it.”
Kian backed Cate up against the wall. “I have never once doubted that the baby we lost last night was mine. Never fucking once, OK?”
“Liar,” Cate spat. “I heard you, Kian. You told the doctor that it was impossible because you had a vasectomy nine weeks ago. Whoever you were talking to in the car, you asked them to call you on your mobile because you didn’t want your wife finding out about any of this.”
Kian looked as if he was barely in control of his anger. “You’re right. I said all of that. I did tell the doctor that it was impossible that you were seven weeks pregnant because I had a vasectomy nine weeks ago and do you know what he said? He said that I should have read the fucking literature that they gave me at the clinic. It would have told me tha
t even after the vasectomy, if I didn’t want to get you pregnant again I should have used condoms until I’d had the final sperm count test.”
“Oh,” Cate slumped against the wall.
“This whole fucking mess is my fault, Cate,” Kian slammed his fists on the wall above her head. “The second call was to the clinic where I had the vasectomy done. I was making an appointment to get that final sperm count test done as soon as fucking possible.”
“Why didn’t you want me to find out?”
“I got you pregnant again, Cate,” Kian turned his back, “because I was too stupid to read the fucking literature they gave me. You’re bleeding and in pain right now because of me.”
Cate thumped her fists on his back, “don’t you dare turn your back on me.”
Her eyes flashed with fire. “I was right there with you at the clinic when you had the vasectomy, Kian. If I didn’t want to get pregnant again, it was just as much my responsibility to read the literature they gave us. Each time we made love I could have asked you to wear a condom but I didn’t. What happened last night was as much my fault as it was yours.”
“I’m your husband, Cate. It’s my fucking job to protect you.”
“This isn’t the dark ages, Kian. If we didn’t want to have another baby, we should both have been more careful.”
Kian reached for the hem of Cate’s t-shirt and tugged it up. “I need to feel you against my skin.”
Cate blushed, “I’m still bleeding.”
He stripped them both down to just their underwear. “You said if – if you didn’t want to get pregnant again; if you didn’t want to have another baby. Do you want another child?”
Cate shook her head, “I don’t know. I know I struggled through each of my pregnancies but it’s hard to think that I’ll never be pregnant again.”
Kian entwined their fingers and placed them gently over her abdomen. “I should have known I was pregnant,” Cate looked up at the ceiling. “I keep thinking about all the things I’d have done differently if I’d known. The flights back and forth to L.A. All those punishing hours in the studio learning the Cha Cha and Viennese Waltz, I keep going over every single time I fell over wondering if I hadn’t done that, would I still have had the miscarriage? Every cup of black coffee. I took a couple of anti-inflammatories for my back earlier this week.”
“Angel,” Kian kissed the tears clinging to her eyelashes, “it wasn’t your fault.”
“I lost our baby, Kian,” Cate said. “It was my body.”
Kian couldn’t bear to see the pain in his wife’s beautiful black eyes. “Was it Erin’s fault when she and Ben had their miscarriages?”
“No, of course not. It’s different when it’s somebody else’s.”
Kian pulled Cate so she was lying on top of him and brushed her hair away from her face. “What if this baby just wasn’t strong enough? What if you spent nine months on complete bed rest and managed to carry the baby to full term but they spent every minute of their short life in excruciating pain?”
“Then it would be my fault for making them like that,” Cate sobbed. Even though she hadn’t known she was pregnant, she could still feel the empty space in her womb where her baby used to be. “I was that baby’s mum, just like I’m Lola, Mateo and Sierra’s.”
“I’m not asking you not to grieve,” Kian said softly, kissing her stomach. “But please don’t blame yourself for what happened, angel.”
CHAPTER 13
The next morning, when he woke up, Kian hoped it had all been a bad dream but one look at his broken wife told him it hadn’t been.
“I don’t think you should go to rehearsals today.”
Cate looked up at him, dark crescents shadowing her beautiful black eyes. “I don’t want anybody else to know what happened on Saturday night. There are so few things in my life that are private; I want this to be one of them.”
Kian shook his head, “you can’t pretend that it didn’t happen, angel.”
Cate turned on him, “I’m well aware of that.” She put a hand on her empty stomach, “every twinge… every drop of blood in my underwear reminds me that I had a miscarriage.”
“If you’re feeling like that, you shouldn’t be dancing for fuck’s sake!”
“What else am I supposed to do?” Cate said angrily. “I’m in a dancing competition on national TV. If I don’t go to rehearsals today, rumours will spread about why I’m not there.”
“I don’t fucking care what anybody else thinks.”
Cate laughed bitterly, “I’ve spoken publicly about my battle with prenatal depression. I’ve talked about how I seriously considered drowning myself in Puget Sound when I was pregnant with Sierra. If I don’t go to rehearsals today, people are going to think that I’m depressed again. I don’t care what anybody else thinks but what if Lola hears those rumours? I don’t want our daughter to worry that I might do something stupid.”
Kian reached out to hold her, “we’ll talk to her.”
Cate dodged out of his way, “no, she’s still so young and innocent. I want her to stay like that for as long as possible. I don’t want her to know about bleak things like depression and miscarriages.”
When she walked into training with her usual tray of coffees, she hated the look of pity in Declan’s eyes. “Are you OK?” he spoke out of the side of his mouth so he couldn’t be overheard by the camera crew.
Cate plastered on another fake smile, “I’m fine. What dance have we got this week?”
“The Foxtrot and the song we’ve been given is “Them There Eyes” by Peggy Lee.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that song before.”
It didn’t matter what had happened on the previous Saturday night, every Monday morning it was like somebody had hit the restart button.
The training was tough, Cate was still sore, but it was exactly what she needed. After Sierra was born, she’d taken up running to try and stop her depression from coming back. There was something so freeing about having nothing else to think about apart from putting one foot in front of the other. She was starting to get the same comfort from learning to dance. It was so all-encompassing that everything outside the four walls of the chilly dance studio just disappeared. The only thing that mattered was the Foxtrot.
“Let’s call it a night,” Declan handed Cate a towel. Cate looked out of the large windows; the sky was already starting to go black.
She loved Kian and the children but tonight, she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to stay forever in this perfect, little dance bubble. “I still don’t feel like I’m getting it. Can we try it one more time?”
The camera crew had gone so it was just Declan and Cate in the studio.
“You’re exhausted, chara.”
“I’m fine,” Cate fumed. She was fed up with being told how she should be feeling.
“After what happened on Saturday night…” Just like that, Declan’s words popped Cate’s perfect, little bubble. “I’m worried about you.”
Although it was genuine, his concern prickled against her skin. “It isn’t your job to worry about me. You’re just here to teach me how to dance.”
Declan looked hurt for a moment, “yeah well, it wasn’t my job to sit by your hospital bed all night either. I thought we were friends, Cate.”
Before she could say anything else, Declan had stormed out of the studio.
She was completely alone for the first time since she’d had the miscarriage. She prised her dance shoes off her sore and blistered feet and padded barefoot across the cold floor to turn off the harsh lights. In the dark, she lay in the middle of the floor and wept silently for the child she would never get to meet.
Would this baby have been like Lola? Sensitive and kind, she was a bookworm like her mum and football-crazy like her dad. Or would they have been more like Mateo; endlessly curious, he hated mushrooms but loved anything to do with boats and the water? Maybe they would have been most like Sierra? Even though she was still a baby; Cate c
ould already tell that she was going to be a feisty little thing. She absolutely hated baths, she would kick her legs so much that most of the water would end up on the floor but she had the most infectious giggle.
She slid the tips of her fingers up her t-shirt and touched the warmth of her abdomen. She could imagine what it would have felt like as it began to swell with pregnancy.
It was hard to think that at an age where most women were only just starting their families that Cate’s was already complete. She would never be pregnant again.
The studio door opened, sending a shaft of light across the floor. “Cate?”
“Are you OK?” Kevin, the owner of the gym, asked.
Cate quickly wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, “yeah, sorry. I’m fine. I was just thinking about this week’s dance.”
When she got home, it was late. Kian had already put the children to bed and he’d cooked dinner for them both. Cate felt so guilty looking at all his hard work; he’d even lit candles. It looked so romantic but she felt anything but; all she really wanted to do was have a shower and climb into bed but she’d already been a bitch once today with Declan. She didn’t have the energy to do it again.
She grabbed a quick shower and changed into one of her feel-good outfits; a black dress with purple lightning bolts and a pair of super-comfy black leggings. She gave her hair a quick blast of the hairdryer and braided it to one side.
“You look beautiful,” Kian kissed her cheek. “Sit down and I’ll bring it through.”
Cate took a seat at the long dining table; it felt too formal for just the two of them.
“How was training today?” Kian asked, looking down at his plate. Cate told him a bit about the Foxtrot but conversation between them which usually flowed freely now felt stilted and awkward.
“So… I, um, had that test today.”
Cate swallowed. She really didn’t want to talk about this tonight. If the test had shown that there was no sperm left that meant that it was absolute, she would never be pregnant again. She didn’t know if she wanted to be but the results of this test would be the final death knell.