Page 15 of Between Our Hearts

“I don’t normally fall apart in front of patients. I’m usually completely in control . . .” Her gaze unwittingly dropped to Johanna’s belly, and that pressure in her chest built again.

“You’ve lost a baby.”

A messy, choked sob was her only response. Her quads tensed as she pushed against her feet, but Johanna’s outstretched arms caught her before she could flee. That itchy impulse faded in her patient’s tight embrace, and she found herself giving in to the sorrow that haunted her, ungraciously wetting the back of Johanna’s soft cotton T-shirt.

“I’m sorry.” Sadie scrubbed at her eyes again, exhaling loudly.

“There is no need to apologize. Iunderstand.” Johanna gripped her tightly before leaning back. The look in her patient’s eyes was the same one she saw in the mirror each morning.

“How—” The breathy word escaped before she stopped herself, ashamed that she’d even begun to ask.

“Two,” she said, her gaze steady on Sadie’s. “Before Graham.”

The quiet pause that hovered between them felt ear-splitting. Klara’s shoes squeaked from the other side of the exam door, but Johanna simply waited with an accepting look softening her features.

“It was my third,” Sadie finally whispered. “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Johanna’s hand found hers for another gripping squeeze. “I can’t believe that you’re working today. I couldn’t get out of bed for several days after each of mine.”

“I—I need the distraction . . .”

Johanna nodded as silence enveloped them for a few heartbeats.

“I’d tell you it’s okay, but I know that it isn’t. For me, each time felt like I was losing a part of myself. It was devastating.” Her patient’s voice filtered in through her blurry view of the bone anatomy posters across the exam room. “It’s like my life as a before and an after. I was never the same after.”

Johanna’s words acted like a wrecking ball to the chiseled-down remnants of the concrete, steel-reinforced barrier surrounding Sadie’s heart.

“I never expected it would be this hard.” She wilted with an exhale. “It’ssohard. Each time, I think, this will be it. This will be the person who completes our family, but when I lose them”—her voice cracked—“it’s so excruciating.”

“I know,” Johanna whispered.

Sitting next to a woman who’d been where she was made her feel like the weight that had been sitting heavy on her spine lessened a tiny increment. She’d never spoken about her miscarriages, never really detailed how hard it had hit her—how each time she felt like she was being shattered from the inside.

Sadie wiped her nose. When her gaze dropped to her knees, she realized that Johanna’s orthopedic boot was only halfway unfastened. She cleared her throat and swallowed hard before leaning to reach for the last two strips of black Velcro.

Johanna’s hand on her shoulder stopped her. “I want to give you something.” She leaned back and undid the clasp of the delicate gold chain behind her neck. “A friend of mine gave this to me after my second miscarriage. Neither of us are religious, and I think it’s supposed to be for travelers, but”—she let out a little puff of air that was almost a chuckle—“I always felt likethiswas the reason for my boys. Like wearing it, I had this silent guardian protecting us.”

She turned over Sadie’s hand, and the warmed metal coiled into a small pile at the center. Within the small circular medallion, a man with a walking stick carried a child on his back.

“I can’t—” She struggled. “And you haven’t delivered. What if something goes wrong?”

Johanna’s smile was warm. “This one’s a tough guy, I can already tell, and I’m a scheduled C-section because Graham decided to wreck things on his way out last time.” She closed Sadie’s fingers around the necklace. “Take it.”

Her gaze darted between her patient’s eyes. “You’re sure?”

Johanna nodded.

Sadie opened her hand again and then closed it around the necklace, slipping it into the pocket of her white coat. “Thank you.”

A few minutes later, after she’d examined Johanna’s foot and confirmed that, thankfully, she didn’t need surgery, Sadie let herself into the single-use staff bathroom to collect herself. She pressed palms full of cold water over her red and puffy eyes. When she finally felt ready, she dug in her pocket for the necklace and ran her thumb over the picture pressed into the metal. A deep breath filled her as she clasped the chain around her neck, tucking the medallion beneath her shirt collar.

When she strode back into the busy hallway, Klara was waiting for her with another tablet. “Forty-eight year-old—”

“I need you to put the pro-bono code in Johanna’s chart. Dr. Harvill shouldn’t have sent her to me. I don’t want her insurance charged for today.” Even if Johanna had needed surgery, Sadie would have waived her surgeon’s fee.

“Of course,” the aide said before finishing the quick report on her next patient.

“Thank you.” Sadie took the tablet from Klara before striding to the next exam room. As she raised her hand to the door, she paused, laying it instead over the pendant resting just above her heart. Her eyes fluttered closed. After another deep, settling breath, she knocked, moving on with the rest of her very busy day.

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