THE APARTMENT WAS quiet and empty when Leo came into the foyer just after nine o’clock.
‘Margo?’
He tossed his keys on the table, a sudden panic icing inside him. Had she left? Left him? He realised in that moment that he’d been bracing himself for such a thing, perhaps from the moment they’d married. Waiting for another rejection.
‘Margo?’ he called again, but the only answer was the ringing silence that seemed to reverberate through the empty rooms of the apartment.
He poked his head through the doorway of her bedroom, and saw how the lamplight cast a golden pool onto the empty bed. Her dress and shoes were discarded and crumpled on the floor and the bathroom door was ajar, light spilling from within. All was silent.
He was about to turn back when he heard a sound from the bathroom—the slosh of water. He froze for a millisecond, and then in three strides crossed to the bathroom, threw open the door, and saw Margo lying in a tub full of rose-tinted water, her head lolling back, her face drained of colour.
‘Margo—’ Her name was a cry, a plea, a prayer. Leo fumbled for his phone even as he reached for her, drew her out of the tub. ‘Margo...’ he whispered.
She glanced up at him, her face with a waxy sheen, her eyes luminous.
‘I’ve lost the baby, haven’t I?’
‘I don’t know—’ He stopped, for she’d slumped in his arms, unconscious.
* * *
Margo came to, lying on a stretcher. Two paramedics were wheeling her to an ambulance, and panic clutched at her so hard she could barely speak.
‘My baby—’
One of them reassured her that they were taking her to a hospital, and Leo reached for her hand. His hand felt cold, as cold as hers. He was scared, she realised. He knew the worst was happening.
The worst always happened.
Just hours ago she’d been buoying up her courage to tell Leo she loved him. Now everything had fallen apart. Nothing could be the same. Her relationship with Leo had been expedient at its core; without this child kicking in her womb there was no need for a marriage.
And yet she couldn’t think about losing Leo on top of losing the baby; it was too much to bear. So she forced her mind to go blank, and after a few seconds her panic was replaced by a numb, frozen feeling—a feeling she’d thought she’d never have to experience again.
It was the way she’d felt when she’d realised Annelise was gone. It was the only way she’d known how to cope. And yet she hadn’t coped at all. And she didn’t think she could cope now—except by remaining frozen. Numb.
She felt distant from the whole scene—as if she were floating above the ambulance, watching as the paramedics sat next to her, taking her vitals.
‘Blood pressure is dropping steadily.’
She barely felt a flicker of anything as they searched for the baby’s heartbeat. They found it, but from the paramedics’ mutterings it was clearly weak.
‘Baby appears to be in distress.’
In distress. It seemed such a little term for so terrible a moment.
‘Margo...Margo.’ Leo was holding her hand, his face close to hers. ‘It’s going to be okay. Agapi mou, I promise—’
My love. The words didn’t move her now, didn’t matter at all. ‘You can’t promise anything,’ she said, and turned her face away.
The next few minutes passed in a blur as the ambulance arrived, siren wailing, at a hospital on the other side of the Île de la Cité—one of Paris’s oldest hospitals, a beautiful building Margo had walked by many times but never been inside.
Now she was rushed into a room on the emergency ward, and doctors surrounded her as they took her vitals yet again. She could see Leo standing outside, demanding to be allowed in. A doctor was arguing with him.
Margo felt herself sliding into unconsciousness, one hand cradling her bump—the only connection she had to the baby she was afraid she’d never meet.
‘Madame Marakaios?’
A doctor touched her arm, bringing her back to wakefulness.
‘You have had a placental abruption. Do you know what that is?’
‘Is my baby dying?’ Margo asked. Her voice sounded slurred.
‘We need to perform an emergency Caesarean section as your baby is in distress. Do you give your consent?’
‘But I’m only twenty-seven weeks...’
‘It is your child’s only chance, madame,’ the doctor said, and wordlessly Margo nodded.
What else could she do?
They began to prep her for surgery and Margo lay there, tears silently snaking down her face; it appeared she wasn’t that frozen after all.
And yet neither was she surprised. Wasn’t this what happened? You let people in, you loved them, and they left you. Her baby. Leo.
The last thought Margo had as she was put under anaesthetic was that maybe it would have been better not to have trusted or loved at all.