CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“MATT...”
His subconscious heard the fear in Peta’s voice even as he struggled awake. The light was on, which had to mean morning hadn’t come yet. He squinted at her. She was holding on to the doorway, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“What is it?” he asked, alarm jabbing through his mind.
“...I’m bleeding.”
Bleeding...
At six weeks!
The next few hours were a blur of pain. Matt did his best to remain calm and comforting. The trip to the hospital and dealing with the Casualty staff was a nightmare, begging for immediate help, frantically filling out forms, waiting to hear, willing everything to be all right, fearing the worst...and Peta inconsolable when told she had miscarried.
Never had Matt felt more futile. There was nothing he could do to help. Nothing. And his own disappointment and grief cut deep. Their baby had become very real to him over the past month, with all the plans they’d made for it...their son...or daughter. Suddenly, heartbreakingly, it was not to be.
“It’s nature’s way of saying something was wrong,” Peta’s doctor said, meaning it kindly, but it only made matters worse.
Peta took it personally, as though the miscarriage was somehow her fault, though the doctor assured her it wasn’t and there was no reason not to try for another baby after she’d given her body some recovery time. She was too distraught to listen to reason. She retreated inside herself, shutting Matt out, unwilling or unable to share their loss with him.
So it continued for days afterwards. She didn’t go back to work though she insisted Matt should, more because she didn’t want him with her than any caring for his business. Not that she said it. He felt it. There was very little communication from her... no desire to reach out and touch...no sharing. She was listless, lifeless, dead inside, barely recognising Matt’s presence. Or anyone else’s.
Megan tried to talk to her. No response. Her mother came to visit. It did no good. She was wrapped in sorrow and the shield was impenetrable.
For Matt it was a very black time.
His mother sympathised but had no useful advice to offer. His secretary commented that there seemed to be a high rate of miscarriages on first pregnancies these days and put it down to a lingering hormonal imbalance from many years on the pill. Matt couldn’t repeat that to Peta. She was blaming herself as it was and there was no medical proof for Rita’s theory. Nevertheless, it was an explanation that made sense to Matt and gave him more hope that time would resolve whatever problem had occurred.
Three weeks passed and Peta’s depression did not lift. She refused to seek medical help. Attempts at offering compassion, tenderness, understanding won only blank-eyed stares. In bed, she kept so rigidly to her side, the message projected was loud and clear...leave me alone. She literally shuddered away from any caress, freezing him into isolation.
In sheer desperation one evening, Matt tried to goad her into an argument, anything to spark some life back into her. He’d cooked them dinner and persuaded her to sit down to it but the way she picked carelessly at the food felt like a further rejection of him.
“It’s not the end of the world, Peta,” he jabbed, his voice sharp with frustration.
He might not have spoken for all the awareness of him she showed. No tilt of her head. No flicker of an eyelash. Her hand idly stirred a fork around her plate and there was no discernible interruption to the movement. She had blocked him out.
Matt could feel his stress level climbing and couldn’t stop it. His heartbeat accelerated. Driven to force her into paying attention, he crashed his fist down on the table.
It startled her into looking at him.
“I said...it’s not the end of the world,” he bit out fiercely.
She wearily turned her head away.
Blood pounded through his temples, drumming the need to attack on any ground, do whatever had to be done to re-establish contact. “I thought you were a fighter, Peta,” he flung at her. “I thought if something knocked you down, you’d get up, dust yourself off, and barge straight on with living.”
No response.
“This giving up...it’s defeatist and destructive. Do you think I don’t feel the loss, too? That it’s only you...bleeding?”
For Matt, the ensuing silence stretched into unbearable tension. Their entire relationship was on the line. If she couldn’t show him some shred of humanity, there was nowhere left to go.
Finally she broke it.
“If you want a divorce, just say so,” she said in a dull, flat voice.
It was a killing stroke.
Even so, Matt fought against it. “You didn’t tell me I only had one shot at a child with you, Peta. As I recall it, we made a bargain to try for four.”
Her head jerked in anguish. “I can’t go through this again.”
“Life is about taking risks. If you’re not prepared to face them, you might as well be dead.” His voice was shaking with the turbulence inside him. He scooped in a quick breath and challenged her again. “Is that what you want? To crawl into your hole and die because you lost the first round?”
She turned to him, her eyes water-bright and wounded. “I took the risk of marrying you, of trying to make a dream happen. And this is my punishment for it.”
“Punishment!” Disbelief burned into a sense of outrage. The jealousy he’d tried to suppress came pouring out in a fiery torrent. “What? Because you married me instead of the Latin lover who sucked you into giving him your heart to break?”
She flinched and he took savage satisfaction in striking her on the raw.
“I suppose if you’d lost his child, you would have sought comfort in him and there wouldn’t have been any sense of punishment at all. In fact, it’s me you’re punishing, for not being the man you really wanted.”
“Don’t!” she cried in a pained little voice.
“Don’t what?” he whipped back at her, hating the sense of being used and discarded. Offering him a divorce as though their marriage meant nothing! The frustrations she’d stirred poured into a bitter tirade. “Don’t send you roses? Don’t throw the truth in your face? Don’t touch you because your body is only a vessel for a baby which I failed to deliver on?”
“Stop it!” She clapped her hands over her ears.
It was the most inflammatory thing she could have done. Adrenalin pumped through Matt. He was on his feet so fast, his chair slammed onto the floor. He picked her up, hoisted her over his shoulder and strode for the bedroom, ignoring her wild struggle to escape from him, his whole body raging with the need for some grain of satisfaction out of all he’d given to make their marriage work.
“Fight as much as you like, but you will listen to me!”
He hurled her down on the bed, pinned her body there with his own, lifted her arms above her head and held them with a steely grip. “Cheat!” he snarled, revelling in the shock on her face.
“No...” she moaned.
“Yes! You made a lifelong commitment to me and here you are welshing on it within three months! Wanting to take off my wedding ring and walk away!”
She rolled her head in protest. “I didn’t say that!”
“It wasn’t me who brought up divorce, Peta.”
“I only meant...”
“What?”
“I might not be able to carry a baby full term. You want a family...” Tears welled into her eyes. “It’s what you married me for.”
“I married you for you,” he cried vehemently.
“Please don’t make me,” she sobbed, trying to squirm out from under him. “It would be rape, Matt.”
Rape! If she’d smashed a fist into his face it couldn’t have jolted him more. Yet the next instant he realised he was hard, his body having reacted to the volatile energy coursing through him. She was squirming away because she was frightened of his erection, recoiling from his supposed lust for her, the lust she had once said was mutual.
He picked himself off her and rolled onto the other side of the bed, deflated, defeated, drained of any will to fight on, horrified by the reaction he had unwittingly drawn from her. She moved into a scrunched-up huddle, shaking and weeping.
For a while he felt dazed, guilt, regret, shame, chasing through his mind. He was not a violent man. He’d only wanted her to talk to him. Physical force was anathema to him. For her to actually fear him, accuse him...it was the blackest hole Matt had ever fallen into.
Gradually reasoning returned, telling him he’d been driven by some survival instinct, natural enough in the circumstances. He’d fought...and he’d lost. Peta didn’t want him anymore. Not for anything.
He was conscious of his heartbeat slowing to a sluggish rate. His interest in life was reduced to zero. Nevertheless, life would go on. For both of them. Though it was clear it could only be in separate ways. Touching was impossible now.
Her sobs quietened and eventually stopped. She lay still, apart from him. The apartness hurt. He wondered if it would ever stop hurting. She didn’t know—never would know—how much she’d meant to him.
“I wouldn’t have taken you. Not in anger,” he said in justice to himself.
No reply.
He forced himself to swing his legs off the bed and stand up. “I guess you’d prefer to be alone.”
No response to that, either.
There was nothing left to say.
Matt quietly collected his travel bag which was kept packed with essentials for business trips, slung a couple of clean shirts over his arm, determinedly denied himself one last look at the woman he’d married with such impetuous faith in their future together, and walked out of the bedroom. He couldn’t bear to be near her anymore. She was too painful a reminder of what was beyond his reach.
In the living room he picked up his keys and wallet from the telephone table. He was at the door before it occurred to him it might not be a good idea to leave Peta alone in what he could only think of as a traumatised state, even though it seemed to have become her refuge from realities she didn’t want to deal with. He shied away from the thought she might be suicidal. He was the problem. Remove the problem, let her feel free of it and the pressure on her would ease.
Still...concern for her drove him back to the telephone table. He rang Megan. The two sisters were close. If anyone could do anything for Peta, it would be Megan.
She answered the call.
“It’s Matt.” He heaved a sigh to ease the constriction in his chest. “I’d appreciate it if you’d call Peta in half an hour or so. Check that she’s all right.”
“Why? Aren’t you there?” she asked sharply.
“I’m about to leave, Megan. She doesn’t want me with her.”
“Matt, please...hold on.”
The plea echoed the words she’d spoken when he’d danced with her at the wedding reception... You will hold on to her...no matter what?
He shook his head over the blind confidence he’d carried this far. Megan must have known what shaky ground he’d embarked on with Peta...known and worried about it, hoping for the best. If the miscarriage hadn’t happened...but it had...and the ground had crumbled... irreparably.
“There isn’t anything to hold on to, Megan,” he said, acutely aware of the hollow ache inside him.
“Can’t you...” The half-spoken plea fell into a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Matt. I guess it’s gone too far,” she added sadly. “I did try to pull her out of it.”
“I know. Thank you. If you’d check on her...”
“Yes, I’ll do that. Don’t worry. And Matt, for what it’s worth, I think you’re the best guy she could ever have got.”
His mouth twisted in irony. “Not good enough where it really counted. ’Bye, Megan. I’ll be in touch.”
He left the apartment and drove off into the night with no clear idea of where to go. The future was a blank to him...a huge black blank...his wife, the family they had planned, their home...all gone. Matt had never felt so lost and alone, not even when his father had died.
He thought of the baby whom nature had ordained shouldn’t live...his and Peta’s baby...perhaps as wrongly formed as their marriage...though it would have been loved—was loved—by both of them. A dream that wasn’t to be.
But it had only been part of the dream for him. He’d loved the extra closeness it had brought with Peta...the way her eyes had shone with happiness, including him in their warm glow, the impulsive affection she’d shown when he’d suggested plans that pleased her, even her pleasure in the flowers he’d sent.
He’d come to believe she did feel he was special... her husband in every sense...and they were building towards what his parents had once shared...a deep and abiding love for each other...
An understanding of what his mother had felt when his father had died flooded through him. The loss...the pain...the gut-wrenching bereft feeling. He shouldn’t have criticised her for losing interest in life. He hadn’t had the experience to measure her grief. All those years together. He’d only had a taste of it, yet...
Tears welled into his eyes and blurred his vision. Grown men don’t cry, he told himself, furiously blinking the wetness away. He pulled the car to the side of the road and parked, struggling to regain the composure to drive on. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter.
He wept.
The bleeding went on.