Three Days After

Lucas walked through the front door of his home and called out for his wife, not expecting a response.

"Maya?"

It had been two days.

Lucas was left alone making arrangements that no one should ever have to make. He hadn't slept in three days. The small naps taken in the waiting room of a hospital were not filled with much rest.

Hanging his coat on the one of the hooks on the wall, he made his way through the narrow hallway into the kitchen. He had hoped to find a dish in the sink. He opened the refrigerator and noticed that none of the plastic containers full of food that had been brought to them by well-meaning neighbors were all untouched. The seal on the orange juice that he bought the night before was unbroken. Lucas ran his fingers through his hair in frustration and closed the refrigerator, a bit harder than he needed to.

Quietly, he walked out of the kitchen and into the living room to inspect it. Clean. Thanks to Riley, who had spent hours shampooing the carpets and vacuuming the furniture the night that it happened. Their wedding pictures on the wall didn't show a speck of dust. Maya's desk didn't have one pen missing, didn't have one sketchbook out of place. Something was different though.

Lucas examined the room again, leaning against the back of their couch.

The blanket.

Maya's neon green blanket that had a place of honor over the back of the couch was missing.

She had always insisted that it looked so good there because it went with the dark navy blue of the couch. Lucas would retort that it hid the ink stain that was the only reason that they could afford it.

It felt wrong to smile at such happy memories.

He walked out of the living room and into the hallway that quickly ended with the door to their bedroom. He softly rapped on the door and waited. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, he twisted the doorknob and slowly pushed the door open, as if not wanting to wake someone.

His efforts to remain quiet quickly melted away as he realized that Maya was not in bed as she had been since they returned home from the hospital. The blankets were strewn about and her phone, which she had neglected to answer for the last 3 hours, was on the floor next to her nightstand.

Panic filled Lucas as he turned in a hopeless circle, not knowing where to run or what to do. Where could she be? Why did she leave? He had searched every room in the house.

A deep grief hit him so quickly that he had to stumble backwards to sit down on the edge of the bed. The feeling one gets when they wake up suddenly from a dream that they were falling. But this feeling wasn't one that would go away after realizing that you were safe in your own home. This feeling, he knew, would follow him around for the rest of his life.

He hadn't searched every room of the house.

Taking a deep breath and wiping the sweat from his forehead, he stood up and steadied himself before leaving the bedroom. Immediately to the right of the bedroom was another room. He had to work up some courage before he could even touch the door knob. He hadn't thought about having to come into this room again.

He felt dizzy again, but knew that Maya was on the other side of the door. And even if she couldn't see it at the moment, she needed him.

Lucas opened the door and a tear streaked down his face as he saw, on the walls, a brilliant mural that Maya painted the day after she told him the news. He had never seen her so happy. Though she preferred sketching, she had gone and purchased paints of every color and spent countless hours on swirling white clouds, endless green grass, and birds of every color flying across the landscape. The grandest and most beautiful bird rested above an empty, white bassinet.

"It's gender-neutral!" She exclaimed when she brought him in to show off the final product.

He took the first step into the nursery and saw his wife sitting in the bassinet's matching white rocking chair, wrapped in the green blanket and gazing out of the window.

"Maya?" he called from the doorway.

Again, she didn't answer. Under any other circumstances, Lucas would think that she simply hadn't heard him. With a sigh, he walked up to the rocking chair, knelt down beside her and took one of her small, cold hands into his.

Seeing her more closely, with the late afternoon light dancing across her face, broke his heart even more. She had the darkest circles underneath her eyes; an outsider might have thought she had been clocked. Her hair was unwashed and hung limply around her shoulders. The tank top that Lucas knew to be white looked dingy and grey. She had been wearing it for three days now. She looked as exhausted as Lucas felt. She looked like sleep had never wrapped its loving arms around her to let her rest.

He looked down into her small hand in his; it was so small, so white, so cold. The hands that he anxiously held when they had just started to date were warm and clammy and comforting. These weren't those hands.

Lucas had held Maya's hands at all of the important moments of his life: The first date, the first kiss, their wedding day, buying their home, when she told him that she was pregnant, when their child made her way into the world… he didn't ever plan on letting go.

"Maya," he said again, giving her hands a light squeeze.

This time she blinked and slowly moved her tired eyes from the house across the street to finally make eye contact with her husband. She held his gaze for what could have been hours. With a staggering breath, she opened chapped lips and whispered, "I can't."

It was the first time he had heard her speak in days.

He knew exactly what she meant.

Lucas reached up and took brushed the hair out of her face, leaving one kiss above each eyebrow and then a final one on the tip of her nose.

"I know."

What else could he say? The following day was going to be excruciating. Lucas wished, more than anything, that he could go back a week from this moment and pause time forever when his biggest worry had been the fact that Maya had seriously considered naming their daughter Hurricane. Lucas couldn't imagine leaving this room that their baby would never see.

"I love you," she whispered, bringing him away from his thoughts.

"I love you too, Maya…" he answered, giving her hand a squeeze. "I love you so much. And we can do this, okay? You need to have something to eat and get some sleep and tomorrow we'll just power through."

She nodded her head and slowly eased herself out of the rocking chair. Lucas stood up from the place he had been kneeling on the floor and met her, letting go of her hands to pull her into a hug. They both came apart in each other's arms. Sobs wrecking Maya's small frame, Lucas could do nothing more than pull her in closer, her head fitting perfectly into his chest. Tears dripped down his face and into her messy blonde hair, the green blanket lay forgotten on the ground.

"We can do this, okay?" Lucas gasped after a few moments. "We can do anything."

This will be a multi-chaptered fic. It will not be told in chronological order. Please remember that October is Infant Loss Awareness month and please keep the reviews about the content of this story respectful to readers that may have had to go through this terrible experience. I have had this idea for a story for three years now and I am finally glad to have found characters that I believe could tell it well. Thank you, in advance, for your input.