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“YOU AWAKE, MOUSE?” Greg’s voice was tentative as he propped open their bedroom door.
Katrina roused herself from her half stupor and muttered something.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
She responded with another mumble, which he must have taken to mean yes.
He sat on the edge of her bed and felt her forehead just like her mother used to do when she was sick. “You ok?”
She wasn’t mad at him. She wasn’t even mad at Nancy Higgins and her invasive assumptions. Nancy was right. Katrina should be well into the second trimester by now. Should be showing. Maybe if she was lucky she’d be experiencing that pregnancy glow women talked about. Not lying in bed with cramps almost as painful as the miscarriage itself.
A little baby. A tiny, precious life. What went wrong? Why had God taken him away from her? She’d never know the baby’s real gender, but secretly she had named him Peter. Strong. Mischievous, even. Like Peter and the Wolf.
“Nancy called,” Greg was saying. “She asked me to apologize again.”
Katrina didn’t reply.
“She told me she had a miscarriage, too. Sounds a lot like what you went through. End of the first trimester. No reason for it, at least not that the doctors could explain. She said the same thing the nurse told us, remember? There was probably something wrong developmentally.”
Would he ever stop talking? Didn’t he understand? Didn’t any of them understand? Her miscarriage wasn’t Mother Nature’s way to keep a sick kid from living. Didn’t they get it? Greg, of all people — didn’t he understand she’d rather have a disabled child than a dead one?
He had gotten over the entire ordeal so quickly. Did he even think about their child anymore? Their baby?
Peter.
Greg was frowning at her. Still stroking her forehead. “Maybe you should call her. It might be helpful to talk to someone who’s gone through something like this before.”
As if Greg hadn’t gone through it with her. At least, he should have. She had been practicing her violin that horrific Tuesday night when the first stitching pain stung her side. Half an hour later, the bleeding started. She called Greg into the bathroom. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
A couple hours later, after going through several pads and holding two frantic conversations with the after-hours phone nurse, they hurried to the emergency room. He held her hand. Prayed with her in the car. After the doctor told them the ultrasound didn’t show a heartbeat, they had cried together. Asked God why he would take their precious child. A child they would never name. A child Katrina could never hold.
Why, God?
The nurse handed her heavy-duty pads and told her what to expect. At least, Katrina thought she had. The nurse hadn’t mentioned how severe the cramping would be. How Katrina would sit on the toilet, watching it fill up with blood. How every five minutes her husband would ask her if she thought they should go back to the ER.
No, the nurse hadn’t prepared her at all. Moderate to severe cramping. Bleeding like a heavy period. If that was a heavy period, Katrina wondered how any woman could survive her monthly menses.
That night, they slept curled up together even though Greg usually hated if even their feet touched in the night. The next morning, he took off work and hardly let her get out of bed. They read together for the first time since moving to Washington. They were on Voyage of the Dawn Treader now. He insisted on doing all the reading and nearly made it to the last chapter.
And then, after a two-day convalescence, Katrina said she was feeling better. Said she’d like to get out of bed for a bit. The bleeding had slowed down by then, and she was sick of being cooped up with her depressing thoughts. She suggested it might be nice to get out of town for a day or two. See something outside of Orchard Grove. Weren’t the apple orchards supposed to be busy in the fall? Maybe there was a tour they could take together. Taste fresh apple cider. Pick a basket to take home. Anything to take her mind off what had happened.
But Greg had missed two and a half days of work already. He couldn’t afford any more time off. He never said so, but Katrina wondered if he was glad she had miscarried on a Tuesday so he could still work on his sermon before Sunday rolled around. The apple orchards would have to wait.
And so would Katrina. Greg must have thought that her saying she was feeling a little better meant she was perfectly healed. So he shut himself in his office at the church, working extra hours to make up for lost time. And Katrina waited. Waited for her body to return to some semblance of normalcy. Waited for her heart to stop aching. Waited for her soul to believe that all things — even this miscarriage — could work out for something good.
And in the meantime, she hadn’t played her violin. How could she?
“So, what do you think?”
She had missed the flow of their one-sided conversation. “Think about what?”
A sigh, but at least not an angry one. “I said, how would you feel about going out to The Creamery for a treat?”
“Ice cream? In the middle of winter?”
He nodded. Smiling. Would their son have inherited that same grin? Would he have one day won the heart of a young teenage girl, scared to venture off on her own, scared to follow the man she loved?
Her stomach rumbled. Her husband looked down at her expectantly. Hopefully.
Her Greg.
“You don’t want to, do you?”
“I’m sorry. I still don’t feel well.”
He pursed his lips together. “I thought you might say that.” The same smile. “So I brought a back-up plan.” He pulled a book out from under his arm. “Is this better?”
Voyage of the Dawn Treader. She looked at the clock. Nearly four. Another hour before she’d have to think about dinner. Two hours before they’d head back to church for the monthly business meeting. She winced as she sat up in bed. Greg situated himself next to her and opened the book. “Ready?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said and leaned her head against his chest, letting his voice rise and fall over the ocean of pain in her aching soul.