Page 27 of Sex. Love. Marriage.
My heart drops to my knees, quite literally. I swear if I wasn’t leaning against the wall, I would have fallen over at the sight of him. How? Why? Those are all questions I have because it’s him. Another reminder of a day, hell, a fucking year I want to forget. Nearly fourteen hundred miles away from Austin, and Mara’s pediatrician is here. In the same hospital as us.
I do my best to avoid anything about our daughter. I don’t want to be reminded of it. It hurts too much and to have him here, on a night when we’re already struggling, it’s the fucking cake topper. Just the sight of him makes me want to send my fist through his face. I know in my heart he didn’t do anything wrong, but the fact he couldn’t save her, and I couldn’t, just adds to my already bad mood.
Kelly notices him next. My eyes slowly slide to hers, and we exchange a look. My body jolts when her hand finds my good one. In this moment, she touches me, and I’m not sure I want her to. It’s one of those moments where you don’t want anything, especially not the touch of someone you love, because that’ll only break the dam you built around yourself and the flood gates will open.
I squeeze her hand, and we walk out of the room together and toward him. It’s the only way out. It’s then he notices, does a double take, then the compassion comes. He gives us the look. The one that screams I don’t know what to say to them. The one of sympathy and regret and all that messy shit that happens when a child dies. The kind of bullshit no one talks about because it’s hard. You don’t know what to say, let alone how to feel about it because it’s so unnatural. Kids aren’t supposed to die and when they do, it destroys everything.
Doctor Levi looks at my hand, thankfully disregards the problem in my pants I’d rather not discuss, and smiles at my wife. He draws her in for a hug. She lets go of my hand, and my world shakes. Everything is blurry, a reminder of that night, his words, his “There’s nothing more we can do.”
My jaw clenches at the onset of emotions and my entire frame begins to shake. I don’t offer him words, or even acknowledge anything he says to Kelly. All I can do is focus on not exploding with anger and sadness.
Kelly looks over at me when something is said to me, but I don’t comprehend any of it. My eyes burn, my head throbs, and I think at any moment, I’m going to throw up.
In the movies, this is where the sad music begins. This is also the moment in the movies when the two heroines realize their problems all stem from one incident. One moment in time when their lives were irrevocably changed forever.
Kelly and me, our problems lie deeper than either one of us wants to believe. It’s the shit you can’t even comprehend let alone tell anyone about, and it all leads back to one day. The death of our daughter.
That night it happened, I don’t want to think about it let alone take you back to it, but in order for you to understand this pain, how we got here and this void between us, you’re gonna have to go back there with me. It ain’t pretty, and it’s certainly not the outcome we saw coming.
I don’t want to tell you about the part where they took her off the machines breathing for her and finally disconnected everything. I don’t want to tell you about them letting us hold her. I don’t want to tell you that she took her last breath in my arms. I don’t want to tell you that for another hour, Kelly and I held our daughter’s lifeless body in the same hospital she was born in, on the same day we brought her into the world. I don’t want to tell you anything about our sweet little girl who smiled up until the day she died on her seventh birthday. I don’t want to tell you any of that because those are the moments that make me angry to even think about because it’s unfair, so I don’t. It’s moments like this, when reality crashes in on us that I’m forced to.
It rises and rises until I’m sure I’ll choke and suffocate if I don’t leave. I swallow. I blink. I clear my throat. I do anything to snap myself from the wicked memories of that night.
Kelly grabs my hand again and leads me out of the hospital. It’s there the two of us sit in complete silence, until Kelly bursts into tears and brings her palms to her face. I stare at her, my mouth tight, throat bobbing over emotions.
I want to comfort her. As her husband, I should. I want to reach over and offer her the warmth of my hand, but I can’t do any of that. I don’t know how to make this pain go away. I’ve been trying for over a year, and it doesn’t work.
(You build them up, over and over again until their foundation is solid.)
SINCE MARA DIED, I’ve had four breakdowns where I couldn’t get out of bed. Physically could not lift my head up to function. Noah had to take care of everything. I couldn’t even feed Finley. It was like I had the flu with full body shakes and vomiting.
And now, after seeing her pediatrician, I know it’s coming and will finally hit when we’re at home.
I’m angry that he was there as a reminder on a night where everything just seemed to be falling apart. Why does that happen? Why, when everything else is going to shit, does something add to it and set you over the edge? I cry the entire way home, but the real pain, the kind you can’t get rid of, it’ll hit when I don’t have to pretend to be okay. Noah tries to comfort me, to take away the pain. He doesn’t like people touching him to begin with, so to hold me, it’s something similar to how you might imagine Hitler trying to comfort someone.
In his truck, I grip the steering wheel with every intention of driving away from the hospital, but all it does is remind me of the night we left without her. The night we sat in our car for two hours, crying, wondering where we went from there. I remember that night so vividly. The fog, the rain, the tears, the helplessness inside my chest that my daughter died and I couldn’t fix her. I couldn’t take away her pain or mine, and I certainly couldn’t take away Noah’s. That night, he held me as we sobbed together, but now, now he won’t touch me. Next to me, he looks over at me, and I swear I can I feel his pulse racing, his eyes dark and shadowed, full of feeling, his breathing just as heavy as mine.
My tears slow and I’m able to ask, “Are you okay?” Twisting in the seat, I face him and circle my hands around his neck, looking down at his splinted hand. My heart is beating so hard, so fast it feels like I can’t even draw in a breath, but here I am asking if Noah’s okay.
His eye brows are furrowed, looking like he’s in a world of pain. Not physically, but emotionally. He doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure he can. There’s tension in his guarded stare, he’s anything but okay. After a minute, he pulls away from me and finally whispers, “Let’s go home.” His eyes fall shut and he releases a heavy sigh. “I have to be at work in two hours.” His words are shaking, a tremble to each tone, as if at any second he’s going to break down.
When Mara died, that night, he sobbed. Uncontrollably. I’d never seen him like that before. Struggling to breathe, he collapsed to his knees, begging God to not take her. But since then, even at her funeral, no tears. He’s held me during my breakdowns, as awkwardly as Noah holds anyone, but never ever does he let himself slip back into the darkness of that night. His coldness takes over, and he turns into a zombie.
The drive home is completely silent aside from me sniffing and Noah’s heavy breathing. I’m afraid to say anything, let alone ask how his problem in his pants is doing. From the looks of his jeans, it’s still standing at attention. Any other night, this would be funny. And I’m sure years from now we’ll look back on it and laugh.
We walk to the house, again, in silence. The blue dawn of the sun rising over the city provides just enough light we don’t trip over Oliver’s bike he left in front of the door. Noah kicks it aside and pushes the door open.
When we’re inside the house, I immediately look for signs that everything has gone to shit since we left. In my head, I’m picturing all the children running around like lunatics, and they’ve tied Bonner up.
I don’t walk into any of that. What I do see is Bonner on the couch, asleep, with Fin on his chest and Sevi lying in the chair next to them on Ashlynn’s chest. Of course he has his head on her tits like they’re pillows. I’m actually a little jealous because he never lets me hold him like that since I stopped breastfeeding him.
Ashlynn smiles when she notices us, rubbing Sevi’s back like she’s a natural at calming children. I can still feel the anxiety building, the need to let myself break down, but for a moment, knowing a seemingly complete stranger took care of our children for us and cared for them as if they were their own, makes me feel better I think.
I don’t know for sure. Noah slides past me, says nothing to Bonner and stomps upstairs. It’s a moment later and I hear our bedroom door slam shut.
I kneel next to the chair. “Thank you for watching them,” I whisper to Ashlynn, careful not to wake Sevi or Fin.
She smiles tenderly, her perfect white teeth hidden behind a thick layer of bright pink lipstick. “I only got to spend a few minutes with this little guy before he was fast asleep.”
