Since You've Been Gone

by Allan, Christa

  CHAPTER 48

  Ruthie gave me a wipe for my bubbling nose, settled my bedhead hair, and held my face in her hands. “I’m not going to tell you that it’s going to be okay. I know what this is like. I had miscarriages before and after your mom, and I’ve never forgotten those babies. You’re going to have to let yourself grieve for this baby. Eventually you’ll tuck it away in your heart, and it’s going to be with you always. And when, one day, you hold a baby you’ve given birth to, you’ll see this baby,” she said as she patted my stomach, “in your heart, in the eyes of the one in your arms.” She leaned over and hugged me.

  “But this baby is Wyatt’s baby. And I’ll never have the chance to have his baby ever again. I guess it wasn’t enough for God that I lost Wyatt. And I don’t know what I did to deserve all of this. I’m not even going to ask how much more He can punish me, because I don’t want to know.”

  Dr. Schneider whooshed through the curtains.

  “This is never the way I want to see my patients early.” She pulled down the side bed rail, perched on the bed, and patted my leg. “Olivia, I want you to listen to me. Even though I know you’re going to question yourself for too long, you did not, did not, do anything to make this happen. Nothing. You didn’t say anything to make it happen; you didn’t think anything to make it happen. Nothing.”

  She stopped and looked at my grandmother, then back at me. “I’m glad your grandmother is here to remind you later what I’m telling you right now. And she will have to remind you because it’s going to take you a while to believe it.”

  She went on to tell me the reasons for miscarriages, and that she’d know in a week or so if there were any chromosomal abnormalities. “This doesn’t mean you can’t get pregnant again or go full-term or that you’re destined to miscarry.”

  “The baby . . . Was it a boy or a girl?”

  “I can’t tell from the ultrasound. You’re about twenty-two weeks, but it looks like the baby stopped developing maybe two weeks ago or even before then. We’ll know when the other tests come back.”

  “My baby’s been dead for weeks? Is that what you’re telling me?” It was as if she walked in with a glass full of a vile and putrid liquid, and she dumped it on me completely unaware. “How is it I didn’t realize that?” I covered my face with my hands. The guilt felt worse than any of the cramps I’d had since this started.

  “You had no way of knowing. Possibly if you’d been pregnant before, you might’ve noticed that you weren’t growing or hadn’t felt the baby move, but it’s not unusual.”

  Another cramp. I held my stomach and winced, knowing it would get worse before it got better.

  Dr. Schneider stood and waited for the pain to subside. “We need to talk about your options. I can release you to go home, and you can do this naturally. Or there’s a drug I can give you to induce a natural delivery. The third option is a D&C, which stands for dilation and curettage. The procedure takes about twenty minutes, requires a general anesthesia, and you’d be released in less than four hours.”

  I wanted option four. The one where she waved her magic wand and it all went away.

  “Can she have some time to think this through?” my grandmother asked.

  The doctor nodded, but I said, “I don’t need time. I want this to be over. I’ve had enough of dying. When can you do the procedure?”

  “I could do it sooner with a local. You have to wait at least another two hours for the general.”

  “I’d rather wait and be totally knocked out.”

  She then explained that someone would be coming in with papers for me to sign, outlining all the risks and giving the hospital permission to do the procedure. She said the anesthesiologist would probably stop by to introduce herself.

  “I’m going back to my office to see patients while I’m waiting. I’ll let them know when I’m on my way, so the nurse can give you a little happy shot in your IV before we roll you in.”

  She left, and I closed my eyes. If only I could sleep.

  It’s not enough, God, that my baby has to die. Do you have to make it so painful and difficult for it to leave my body?

  “Livvy, do you want to call your mother, or do you want me to talk to her? Laura could drop her off here, and she’d still have time to see you before everything starts.”

  I didn’t open my eyes. I shook my head. “No. She told me that my being pregnant was a sin. I’m only living with her now because of her surgery. She won’t have to worry anymore about what everyone at her church will say. I guess God hears her voice before mine. She’s getting what she wanted.”

  Gran held my hand. “Honey, your mother loves you. I don’t think she would ever ask God to send you this kind of pain.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Patches of light crisscrossed the white ceiling under the fluorescent lamps. “I don’t want Mom here. You and Dad can tell her whatever you want. That the procedure would almost be over by the time she’d get here. That it would be uncomfortable for her in the waiting room. Whatever. But I can’t do it.”

  When did I move to the North Pole?

  I shook so violently, I must have been on a full-body vibrator. Someone kept repeating my name, but I couldn’t answer because my teeth chattered as if they were trying to keep pace with my shaking. I whispered, “I’mmmmmm c-c-c-c-cold.” I would have said it again, but my throat burned.

  “Olivia, wake up. Olivia . . . There you are.”

  I opened my eyes. A stranger’s face, mustached and bearded. Who is this?

  Whoever he was, he could read minds, because he introduced himself as Mason, my nurse. I already liked him because he was layering me with warm blankets and tucking them in around me.

  “We need you to come all the way back to us, and then your family can take you home.”

  I felt crampy. Baby. Miscarriage. D&C.

  I didn’t think I liked Mason anymore. He kept waking me up to face a reality I wanted to ignore.

  I went home in fresh clothes, made possible by Evan, who’d driven to my house to pick them up from Laura, then dropped them off at the hospital before he went back to work.

  My father drove while Ruthie sat in the backseat with me, holding a container the hospital had given her in case I vomited on the way home. I didn’t. She told me later she was more relieved than I was.

  Time is funny. When you don’t pay attention to it, it speeds by. When you’re watching it, it’s like sixty seconds takes five minutes. Over the next two days, I didn’t even know two days passed. Days and people and conversations and meals were all different color finger paints I dipped in. I swirled them around and up and down, and by the time I was fairly lucid, it was a canvas of confusion.

  The flower arrangement Bryce and Mia sent staged a coup and took over my entire dresser. I couldn’t see myself in the mirror without moving it or standing on my tiptoes. Laura said there was so much candy stuffed in there, the American Dental Association would have awarded it first place for their Most Likely to Bring in New Patients Award.

  “Where’d it go?” I poked through the flowers and came back with pinpricks of blood from the thorns, but no candy.

  “We put some in the refrigerator, we gave some to your grandmother, and . . .”

  “Y’all ate the rest?” I sounded like Lily.

  “We gave some to Evan when he stopped by,” she said, like I should applaud them for their generosity.

  “When was Evan here?”

  “The day after you came home. You don’t remember? You kept asking him how the boys were doing, and none of us could figure out who you were talking about. At one point you told him you weren’t going out on dates with him anymore. He said that was no problem; he wouldn’t ask you to go on dates anymore.”

  “Did I respond to that? Do I want to know how I responded to that?”

  “You did, but I couldn’t hear you. Whatever it was, it made him laugh.”

  “Please tell me now if there is anyone else I should be embarrassed
to talk to.”

  She shook her head. “You had a few phone calls, and I think you talked to Mia for a few minutes. Those pain pills were taking you someplace.”

  I nodded. “It was an easier place to be.”

  CHAPTER 49

  I overheard Laura and my father talking in the den when I was on my way to the kitchen. I stopped to listen. Eavesdrop. I stopped to eavesdrop.

  “Scarlett is doing great. And while I don’t think she’s ready to go back to work, I do think she’s going to be okay here by herself,” said Laura.

  “I agree. If only there was a way you could help Olivia as much as you’ve helped her mother. It’s been over two weeks, and she still doesn’t want to leave the house and spends almost all of her time sleeping.”

  “I wish I could, too, believe me. But broken hearts have to heal themselves. She’s experienced more grief in less than a year than most people do in a lifetime.”

  “I’m afraid that until she solves the mystery about Wyatt, she’s not going to be able to move forward. Evan left this morning, so he won’t be around to entertain her or—Olivia, hey, Laura and I . . .”

  My father saw over Laura’s shoulder that I’d walked into the room. She turned around, a flicker of surprise in her widened eyes, and smiled. Guarded, the kind of smile you flash at people when you’re unsure if they like you.

  I rubbed my arms with my hands to stem the wave of tiny chill bumps that flowed down them. “Where did Evan go?” My question came off as rude as my interruption of them.

  “He said he was going out of town for a few days, but he wasn’t very specific about why. Said something about having some business to take care of,” my dad informed me.

  “Okay. Whatever,” I said with a voice as flat as I felt. Why didn’t he tell me he was leaving?

  I shuffled past them to the one thing lately that filled the void, the constant emptiness that defined me. Food. It was only a temporary fix, but I could count on it at least three times a day, more if I stayed up late. No more wedding diet, no more pregnancy restrictions. Being ten pounds thinner didn’t save Wyatt, and not drinking martinis didn’t save our baby, so what was the point of all that deprivation?

  My head was in the refrigerator when Laura told me she was leaving for the day. Still holding the door open, I turned around and said, “See you tomorrow,” with the enthusiasm of a woman who had been given a dust mop for Christmas.

  Since I couldn’t decide between the leftover mushroom pizza and the spinach-and-artichoke casserole, I grabbed them both and kicked the refrigerator door closed.

  “Want some?” I asked my dad, who stood at the island, watching me load my plate with two slices of pizza and a generous serving of casserole.

  “No,” he said, staring at my hefty portions, not even trying to hide the look of surprise on his face. “Um, if you want to save that for some other time, you can join your mother and me for dinner tonight. After your mom wakes up, we’re going to that new Italian restaurant that opened a few months ago. Some of our friends have eaten there and really enjoyed it. Why don’t you come with us?”

  I licked the spoon I’d served myself with, closed the pizza box, pulled out a fork, and stood at the island to eat. “Thanks, but I’m just going to eat this now. I thought about picking Ruthie up later, and we could go to Dairy Queen.”

  “Olivia, look at me.” His voice was a plea as much as a command. “I know two weeks isn’t a long time for you to process what happened to you. But you need to start taking some steps to making a life for yourself. Laura isn’t going to be here much longer, but I know it’s not fair of me to expect you to stay here indefinitely. In fact, I plan to ask Laura if she wants to work at the office. That would free you to go back to Virtual Strategies or, even though I would miss you, find that place in Houston you talked about.”

  He was right, of course. But I wasn’t ready for him to be right. Especially after hearing what he said about Wyatt. The remark about Evan, though, made me wonder if it was my dad who was behind the times Evan and I had spent together. Had he asked Evan to “entertain” me? Might as well get that question answered now, Olivia, before Evan comes back and you make a fool out of yourself.

  I focused on picking all the mushrooms off my pizza slices so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact. “Sure, especially since Evan’s not around to ‘entertain’ me. Was he doing that for me or for you? I’m guessing, since he didn’t make an effort to tell me he was going out of town, he needed to let you know he wouldn’t be around to keep me busy.”

  Dad stood on the other side of the island going through his mail that he’d brought home from the office. When he didn’t answer right away, I looked up, wondering if he had heard me at all. He grinned as he continued to flip through the stack of envelopes.

  He had to have heard me. It’s not like I was whispering. Why wasn’t he answering me? “Something funny in the mail?”

  “I don’t know if I should be flattered that you think I had the wherewithal to make a man like Evan do something he doesn’t want to do. Or insulted because you think I’m capable of such a thing.”

  He turned the last envelope over, straightened the pile, then wrapped a rubber band around it before he looked at me with disappointment deep in his eyes. “You might want to check your phone. Evan called every day for a week before leaving. He left voicemails. I’d say that’s making an effort, but you never called him back. I told him I thought you were on some self-imposed phone deprivation, but the way it seemed to Evan was that you weren’t interested in talking to him. And, for the record, I’m sure Evan had plenty of options when it came to people he might entertain. He chose you.”

  I scraped my leftovers into the garbage disposal feeling a bit like trash myself after hearing my dad; I figured I should be grateful there wasn’t a human garbage disposal he could shove me into.

  CHAPTER 50

  The real miscarriage was in the way people talked about it.

  Whose idea was it to say, “I’m so sorry you lost the baby”? As if I didn’t know where it was? Because I put it in such a safe place I couldn’t find it again? And it was all my fault, too. Because “you” lost it. Not, “I’m so sorry your gene pool screwed up,” or “I’m so sorry that this awful thing happened to you.”

  The day I came home from the hospital, I remembered putting my phone on Silent. Anyone I needed or wanted to talk to either lived with me or showed up at my house at some point. And because I had the volume turned off, I spent more time looking for it than using it. So, after my father informed me I’d missed people who actually wanted to talk to me, I made an effort to locate it and check my messages and voicemails. And, of course, there were several missed calls and two voicemails from Evan. I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to them. What did it matter? He was already gone.

  There were two missed calls from Jim, the private investigator. He said he had big news and wanted to talk to me as soon as possible. That was two days ago. The thought of calling him appealed to me as much as eating chocolate-covered ants. I already suspected “big news” wasn’t synonymous with “good news,” and I was right.

  He’d found Wyatt’s name on a birth certificate as the father of Jacob Pierce, whose mother was Jenny Pierce. Jacob was now four years old.

  I thanked Jim but told him I couldn’t hear any more. Not now. Maybe not ever. I told him I wanted to close the case.

  Ruthie called and asked me to be her date for a fundraiser at the country club. “Your parents are going, and they invited me and my checkbook. Before you get your knickers in a knot that they didn’t invite you, they didn’t think you’d be interested. But I decided I’d take the chance to guilt you into getting out of the house. Because you wouldn’t turn down a date with your grandmother whose opportunities for dating are getting narrower and narrower.”

  “When is this lame event?” I was having a Lily afternoon and painting my toenails rainbow colors. When I wiggled my toes, my foot looked like it was waving a gay-right
s banner.

  “In about an hour. And I’ve checked your dance card, and it’s completely empty. I’m sure you’ll be able to fit this in just fine. I’m gonna pick you up in forty-five minutes. The invitations said it’s a jeans night, so don’t worry about pulling out your little black dress.”

  “If my parents are going, I can just ride over there with them. It’s close, it won’t be torturous.” Much.

  “Yes, but wouldn’t you like to have an escape plan to avoid being stuck there all night?”

  When Ruthie picked me up later, I told her that my parents, who looked shocked that I was going, said they were leaving early to get a table. “A table for what? What is this fundraiser?”

  “I was so glad you didn’t ask me that on the phone. And it’s too late now because we’re already on our way, and you can’t jump out of the car. It’s called Cards and Cocktails, and it’s to raise money for the local libraries because their funding has been almost nonexistent, thanks to the state’s emphasis on education. Also nonexistent.”

  “This is what my life has come to? Sitting in a room and watching people play poker for money or something?” I shook my head. “Could this night be any lamer?”

  I shouldn’t have asked. She explained we would actually be playing card games. “We can start out playing with your parents, but then everybody’s free to sit where they want. And believe it or not, there’s a crew of young people your age who come in with their bottles of wine and whatever they want to eat that the club doesn’t serve.” Ruthie pulled into a parking spot. “And I tell you”—she slapped me on my knee—“those kids get rowdy.”

  I’d hit the triple play of humiliation. On a date with my grandmother, to a card-playing fundraiser, at which people my own age would be, wondering if I was following my parents around because they picked me up for my first outpatient weekend.

  Ruthie trotted to the door. Dressed in her white leggings and black oversize sweater, she looked, from the back, like a woman half her age. While I walked behind her looking like a woman twice my age. She waited at the door for me to catch up with her and prodded me, saying, “Life is too short for you to be moving slower than a Sunday afternoon.”