filled her. It was the final insult. It shouldn’t hurt to lose something she had never known she had, but that didn’t stop the pain. Maybe it was fitting that she felt the same way about her baby’s father. She had never had him either, but that didn’t make losing him any easier.
She looked around the room, surrounded by glass and curtains and monitors that would show everything about her. She didn’t want to be here.
“I want to go home, Erin. I need to go home.” She couldn’t be here—not in public, not where she worked, not where Tate worked. Not knowing he was so close and wanting him to be with her at this moment so very badly and knowing he wouldn’t be coming.
“Chloe, you are barely twenty-four hours post-op. You know you are in no condition to go home. You just started breathing on your own and haven’t even sat up yet.”
She tried to push herself up, to prove that she could do it, but her body betrayed her. Between the physical exertion the act required and the sense of dizziness that swept over her she barely lifted herself for a few seconds before collapsing.
“Chloe, please let me handle this. I am going to have you transferred to Obstetrics, where no one knows you and you can have some privacy.”
She knew she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t leave even if she wanted to. The obstetrics ward … Pregnant woman and babies … Could she do that? Now? On the other hand Erin was right—it was a ward where no one would know her.
“Okay,” she assented, before closing her eyes, exhausted physically and emotionally. She felt Erin pull the blankets over her. “Thank you for everything,” she managed, right before sleep overtook her.
Chloe stirred, the pain in her abdomen still sharp and making her restless. She felt a hand sweep her hair from her face. Kate. She had told her best friend to go home but apparently she hadn’t listened.
Pain coursed through her as she tried in vain to find a comfortable position and a soft moan escaped her.
A hand fell onto her arm and she instantly knew that it was not Kate beside her. The hand was heavy and large and she recognized Tate’s touch. She didn’t open her eyes. She wasn’t ready to face him. She heard her call bell go off and Tate asking for a nurse.
The exchange was brief, and within five minutes Chloe felt some of the pain dissipate from her body—but not her heart.
“I know you are not sleeping, Chloe.”
Tate’s voice broke through her thoughts. She opened her eyes to meet his. Each of them was trying to decipher the other. He looked tired, with new shadowing along his face and a redness in his eyes that served to heighten the light green irises. Despite her need for him she felt overwhelmed by his presence.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“Because I’ve watched you sleep,” he answered, as though the statement held no intimacy.
“No, I mean how did you know I was here?” she asked, not wanting to betray any of the information she had barely had time to digest.
“I’m on nights this week and saw you in the operating room.”
She grimaced at the thought of him seeing her exposed—not one she enjoyed.
“Is the morphine not enough? Do you need something else?” he asked, misreading her cue.
“No, I’m fine.” A complete overstatement, but she felt vulnerable and not ready for this conversation.
“You scared me.”
The honesty in his face and his statement humbled her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is there a reason you didn’t tell me?” His voice had quietened.
“What do you mean?” He was searching for an answer but she didn’t understand the question.
Tate stared at her as though he could learn the answer if he just looked hard enough. She looked back at him, equally searching for an answer. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell me about the pregnancy?”
He knew. She didn’t know how, but he did. He probably had known before she did. Just one more insult in what was already an untenable situation. He was asking her if he was the father of her baby. What must he think of her if he thought there might be more than one possibility?
She blinked hard, trying to calm herself against the ugliness she felt inside. When she opened her eyes he was still staring at her, waiting.
“Does it matter, Tate?” The hurt in her voice was apparent even to her own ears.
“Yes, it matters.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“It just does, Chloe.”
“Because if you were the father then, what? You would take pity on me? Feel guilty? But if you weren’t then everything people say about me must be right and you can walk away and count your blessings for your near miss? I’m sorry, Tate, but neither of those options works for me. I think you should go.”
“We’re not done, Chloe.”
She wanted to cry and tried hard to keep in her tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “Be honest with yourself, Tate. We never started. I need you to go.”
“What if I want to stay, Chloe?”
“Then you should have stayed six weeks ago. Or at least listened to me when I tried to talk to you afterward. But you wanted nothing to do with me then, and you don’t get to change your mind now. I want you to leave.” She could hear the pleading in her voice but she didn’t care. She couldn’t do this—not now, when she had already depleted every physical and emotional resource she had.
“But the baby …?” His voice was hushed but still she heard the small crack that betrayed him.
“There is no baby,” she told them both, and the words hurt as much as anything she had felt. Tate blurred before her eyes and she couldn’t read him as tears formed. She watched him get up and walk away from her and felt both relieved and wounded by his departure.
She heard the curtains close and the sliding door of her intensive care room slide shut and she closed her eyes, willing the tears to stop. She couldn’t do this—not here.
She barely had time to process the sound of the guard rail going down, or the weight on her bed, before she felt herself being picked up as strongly, and yet as gently as possible, and held tightly within a strong embrace. She felt pain tear through her abdomen, but it was nothing compared to what was going on in her heart. She shouldn’t do this—she shouldn’t feel better in Tate’s arms. But she did.
Her complete loss of control over her life overwhelmed her and she gave in to the urge she had been fighting since she woke up. For some reason she knew she didn’t have to be brave right now—she didn’t need to put on the funny, reassuring front she had for Kate. Right now she could just hurt and it didn’t matter. She had nothing to lose with Tate; she had lost everything already.
She
