Disclaimer: the characters are not mine
Chapter One
"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds."- Laurell K. Hamilton
She was fierce, strong, and beautiful, he thought as he watched her break down. She was wondrous to watch, a true sight to behold in the depths of her grief. She had held out long as she could, he knew, but he also knew that there was only so much a person could take no matter how strong. Wounds this emotional were difficult to handle no matter the age you were, or circumstance, or even how much time had passed, and many times so much more devastating than a knife or a bullet wound.
He watched the love of his life as she railed at the world, as her world crumbled around her. He watched as she mourned him, as though the love and devotion he himself had shown her were inconsequential. He could feel no pain over that, no jealousy or regret. His choices, his personal decisions landed him in this position. He felt only the bone deep pain that came with knowing there was nothing you could do to make it better, to make the wounds heal faster. Nothing you could do to help her heal emotionally.
It was beyond difficult to watch as she broke down. As she cried over her loss, and keening sobs escaped her wracking frame. She was rocking back and forth, and all he could do was sit next to her and hold her as much as she would allow. She was independent, and she would hate that he was here to even witness this.
He waited her out, and it was several hours before she calmed. He handed her a bottle of water and she drank it gratefully.
"Why did it have to be him?" she finally asked him, as her sobs quieted. "Why couldn't this have happened to someone else?"
He didn't know the answer to that question, and as he pondered how best to answer her, he stroked his hand down her arm. It was comforting to him to know that she still wanted him to be there, that the first words out of her mouth hadn't been "I want you to leave." They very well could have been with the way he had acted before. He had been callous and uncomfortable with the way he behaved even as he did it. He knew what he had said, what he had done was wrong. It didn't change the fact it had happened, and now he had to deal with it.
"I don't know, Stephanie. I truly don't. It shouldn't have happened to him. It should have been someone else, even me. God knows that he never deserved it. You didn't deserve it after everything else you have been through the past two years."
She had been through the wringer the past two years, since he had walked out of her life without a backward glance. At least he had wanted it to seem like there hadn't been a backwards glance. There had been, but he would never have let her know it until now. In the past two years he had kept tabs on her loosely, and it seemed like every time he found out some bit of news about her it was horrible.
First, barely a week after he let her go, her Grandma Mazur had died. That woman had been the guiding light for Stephanie. She was her biggest supporter, and the world was better place for having known Edna Mazur. Stephanie had been so close to Edna that everyone who knew Stephanie ended up knowing something about her grandmother, and although many of the stories were crazy - because the older woman was crazy - it had been the good kind. The woman had been a hoot, and Stephanie was devastated at the loss.
About eight months after Edna passed away, Stephanie's entire family got into a car accident on a trip to Disney. Her sister Valerie, brother-in-law Albert, their four daughters, and her parents had all been gravely injured. Stephanie had to make a life altering and heartbreaking decision for everyone. While Albert, Valerie, and Stephanie's mother Helen had passed away immediately upon impact, her father Frank and her four nieces were all in critical condition. She had had to pull the plug on two of her nieces, and the other two went to live with Albert's mother.
Frank had survived. He was in a nursing care facility because of the damage to his legs. He was able to get around fairly well on a single level, but the old Plum house was not ideal for his new injuries. So Stephanie had moved her father into a care facility and facilitated the sale of the Plum house. Watching as someone else bought the home she had grown up in, that her family had been in for her entire life… for someone like Stephanie that had to be wretched.
No matter her relationship with her mother and sister, he knew their deaths had hit her hard. She was a family oriented person, regardless of how much she denied it. How much she insisted she was not interested in a family, in raising the next generation. No matter how much she complained about her mother and how Helen nagged, or compared her to other women, Stephanie had love for her mother. Same with Valerie, although Stephanie frequently had felt inferior to the woman, because of how she followed in their mothers footsteps.
That wasn't Stephanie.
Perhaps, he thought, the biggest tragedy of the past two years was the one that Stephanie had born silently. She had married him and within a few months they had announced they were expecting a child. Unfortunately, Stephanie had gone into labor way too early and the baby had been stillborn at twenty-three weeks gestation. Although she had always insisted she was not mother material, she had loved that child, he knew with absolute certainty. So far as he knew, Stephanie never talked about what had happened to the child she had born. She never spoke of the loss, as though it had never occurred. She was unwilling, or unable, to cope with the community's sympathies. She walked away from anyone who even brought the incident up.
Now, this. No, it was not a good year for Stephanie.
He didn't know how to help her, only that he must. That if nothing else, he must stand by her through this newest tragedy. She didn't have anyone else, anymore. Not anyone close enough. Her so-called friends had all abandoned her in the midst of her overwhelming depression and grief, and he felt badly that he had been one of them, for his own purely selfish reasons.
It was time to be a man, to be the man she needed right then.
A/N: This is not going to be the most comfortable story. In fact, I have debated for months whether or not to post this first chapter (I never got any further, because I didn't want to publish something this... well, this). However, I think it is finally time to give this some voice. I want it to delve into the losses that Stephanie experienced, the different ways she might grieve each situation, and the love of a friend/former lover that can bring her some peace eventually. I'm sure many of you know that October is stillborn/pregnancy loss month. It's not comfortable, its not pleasant, and in this month, I decided it was time to share this. As many of you know, I am 1 in 4. I had a miscarriage. It was horrible. It clouded my entire pregnancy with my twins - who I am so thankful for. They turn 1 at the end of this month. When I first found out I was pregnant with them I was fearful and ecstatic. When I went for my first visit, I was fearful. No heartbeats. They told me I had less than 30% chance of either twin making it. In fact, my younger twin they said was not viable at all. I later found out they based this on the growth of the sacs, the heartbeats not being there, and the triplet that was already being reabsorbed. I had first trimester bleeding for eight or nine weeks. It was terrifying. But they are one. And they were born in the month that honors babies like their sister, and the stillborn that Stephanie has in this story. So this story is dedicated to all the babies that were born sleeping, gone too soon, the ones we never got to hold. 3
P.S. I haven't designated this as a Cupcake or a Babe because I am not sure where I want it to go.