Part 12

I hear my own voice calling out before I'm awake.

"Mom?"

In a bleary haze of confused discomfort, I don't know that I've been actively avoiding her for months. I only know that I'm hurt and disoriented and I want my mother.

"I'm right here, Baby."

Good. I don't know where I am or how I got here but I know that she can fix everything. Hearing her voice, for whatever reason, makes me think that I'm seven years old and we're living in Francophone Africa where my Grandpa Bill runs a hospital. That's where we must be. The hospital. "Où sommes-nous?"

"Nowhere that we need to speak French, Baby." There's a slightly hysterical edge to her voice.

I'm starting to come back to myself, at least enough to understand without help that French was the wrong language. In fact, French is always the wrong language for me because I stopped studying it after high school. My Spanish is much better.

I open my eyes and they meet my mother's. Hers are strained and red; she's been crying. "I thought we were in Africa," I tell her. "Remember when we first got there? We were so happy, you and me and Daddy."

"We were very happy, Baby," she says. "What's the last thing you remember?"

In my blurry mind, I think she's asking about my last memory of Africa. "You basically rushing us out of there in the middle of the night because Collin Murphy left for Ireland. I was screaming that Daddy would come back to us and we couldn't leave."

Then it hits me like a fresh new wound that my father is dead. He died saving me, but that wasn't the end. No, so many things have happened since then.

"EJ's wedding." I try to piece it together out loud. "EJ and Sami's wedding. I couldn't decide whether to go, and I was afraid she knew…"

Sami's voice echoes in my head. "If he'll cheat with you, he'll cheat on you."

"She did know," I correct myself aloud.

"Sami Brady is the last thing you need to worry about," she says, with more than a little edge to her tone. "If she lays a finger on you again, she'll be the one lying down in traffic. And all of Salem will stand up and cheer."

My mother's rant about Sami goes on a little longer as she helps me sit up and take a drink of water. I'm still trying to take stock of the situation, but I half-listen. "… You'd think she'd have the grace not to have weddings any more… if she was surprised that it didn't go well, she was the only one… even Sami can't be that much of an idiot, can she?... Why your father was so fond of her I'll never understand…"

My breath catches in my throat, again, at the reminder that my father used to be alive and now he's dead.

Her whole body snaps to attention at the sound. "I'm sorry, Baby," she whispers, stroking my hair with one hand. "Listen to me, going on like that. I was really, really scared when I got the call, Abigail."

"I know. I'm sorry, Mom."

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

I can't help but smile at the irony. "Did you even hear why Sami was mad at me?"

"That's not important."

I try to sit up straighter, but I hurt too much.

"Don't do that, Baby," she soothes. "You have a broken wrist and a broken ankle and enough bruises to keep you in bed all by themselves. And…" She trails off, both foreboding and momentous.

"And what?"

"Abigail. Baby. Did you know that you were pregnant?"

The world stops spinning.

No, I hadn't known, but everything suddenly makes sense. The nausea. The tiredness. The signs I missed while I was patting myself on the back for being so clever when I had to handle EJ and Nick.

And EJ didn't marry Sami. Surely that was because of me, and of course starting our life together with a baby on the way is getting things a bit out of order but the child will still be a blessing and EJ and I should start discussing names right away—

"I'm pregnant?" I breathe.

Tears fill her eyes and she squeezes my hand tightly. She shakes her head. "No. The baby didn't make it. The trauma of the accident caused a miscarriage."

"My baby's dead?"

The child I had cherished for all of five seconds is gone and I start to sob.

My mother says all the right things. She says that nothing else will ever be this hard. She says that the pain will never go away but that I will learn to live with it. She says that none of this was my fault and that babies who are strong enough to be born usually outlast whatever the world throws at their mothers. She says that I will see the goodness of this child when I have more children, later, as the doctor has already promised that I can. She says the child is in a warm, beautiful place where she will never feel any pain.

"She? It was a little girl?"

"She was." This tiny fragment of information about my child, the only thing I will ever know about her, is both painful and comforting.

"Alexandra," I muse. "I think EJ would have wanted to name her after his sister."

EJ. EJ has lost children before. Sami and Nicole tried to keep him from grieving, tried to steal as much of the experience as possible from him. I need to see him. I need to tell him. He needs to hear about our daughter from me, and right away, whether this is destined to be the last experience we ever share or not.

"Mom, is EJ here? At the hospital?"

My mother grimaces. "No one could get him to leave."

"I want to see him."

"Abigail, you need your rest."

Energy and fury rip through me. "I am not going to rest until I see EJ! I need to talk to EJ!"

I can see the wheels turning in her head. She doesn't like the idea of me seeing EJ; she doesn't like it one bit. But she knows full well that I will drag my broken body out of the room if that's what it takes to get to him.

She wavers.

To make her decision easier, I pull myself up with my one good arm and angle my one good leg in the general direction of the floor. My head spins; the doctors did not go easy on the painkillers.

"Baby, lie down."

"If EJ won't come in here, I'm going to find him."

She swallows her sigh. "You win. I'll send EJ in."

EJ bursts through the door almost before my mother closes it. She obviously didn't have to look for him. He was waiting.

"Oh, Abigail," he breathes, my name a pained exhalation. He collapses bonelessly into the chair beside my bed. "Oh, Abigail, I am so, so sorry."

"I'm the one who's sorry." Nothing in my life has prepared me for this moment. Maybe EJ was right. Maybe I am a perpetual child who got in way over her head with the grown-ups.

"I tried to get to you," he tells me. "I could see that you were too close to the road, but Samantha's father thought I was trying to get to her, and of course he put himself in between us and that meant..."

"It's not your fault. I should have just let her hit me like you did."

"No, you should not have. I made a promise to Samantha and I broke it. She's right to be angry with me. You were—well, I know that you don't like to be called innocent. But you didn't owe Samantha anything."

"Any woman owes it to any other woman to respect her relationship." I've made excuses to myself and even to EJ in the past. I won't do it anymore. I'd seen Sami as someone who could have any man she wanted and so insisted on having them all. Sami had seen herself as Carrie's fat little sister. Women do these things to each other. They shouldn't.

"Are you all right? They wouldn't tell me how badly you were injured because I'm not your family. Jennifer whispered the diagnosis into Jack Junior's ear so I wouldn't overhear."

How very mature of my mother—although it actually does sound like something my father would have done.

I press my lips tightly together so I don't burst into tears again before I can get the news out. EJ thinks the worst that he has to worry about is how long I'll be on crutches before my ankle is repaired. He doesn't know that a life was lost.

"No," I tell him. "I'm not all right, and neither are you."

"I know that," he whispers. The sentiment is sweet: he's not okay because I'm in a hospital bed and he was a part of the chain of events that led me here. But he doesn't know what he's talking about.

"You don't know. I didn't know until just now, I didn't know until it was too late." The words start to fall out of me in a rush. "I'm so sorry EJ. I never would have hidden this from you. Never. I would have been more careful, I would have stayed in Europe while we decided what to do. I would have—"

He takes my hand, gently, like he's afraid that even the slightest touch could hurt me. "Abigail, in one word or less, tell me what happened."

One word or less?

"Miscarriage," I manage, and it seems like a cop-out, too technical a term even if it's a word so powerful that no one ever so much as thinks it in the presence of a pregnant woman.

He doesn't let go of my hand, but he's rocked back against his chair as if the one awful word had dealt him a physical blow.

And I make him feel worse. I don't give myself the cop-out. "I lost our baby. I didn't know I was pregnant and I let her die. You have to believe me, EJ, if I had known I would never never never never…"

He stand up, looming over me, and even though he hasn't let go of my hand I'm sure he's going to storm out of the room.

"Shh," he murmurs. With his free hand, he takes down the rails on the side of the bed and lies down beside me. He's careful not to touch me where I'm bandaged and broken, but having the heat of his body next to me still helps.

"I'm so sorry," I tell him again. "I thought I was so smart, but I didn't know why I was sick to my stomach all the time. I blamed it on stress."

"A perfectly reasonable conclusion," he whispers in my ear. "Abigail, I should have—I should have asked you if it was a possibility, especially after William told me that you fainted. As inexperienced as you were, pregnancy might not have occurred to you but it certainly should have occurred to me."

"I know where babies come from. I haven't believed in the stork since… ever. Dad tried to tell me that, and Mom wasn't having it. She told me the truth and he, well, I think he really agreed with her but he said he was glad that they didn't have a boy because then it would have been his job to explain. This is before JJ was born, obviously."

He taps me lightly on my good arm, watching me closely and letting me ramble without interrupting.

"I went to my Mom's prenatal appointments with JJ," I continue. "I was so angry with her. My father was presumed dead and I blamed her. I don't even remember why. But when I saw that first sonogram… oh, I knew how much I loved JJ right away. I wasn't going to miss a thing. I wasn't going to let Mom go alone. I told the nurse that I would be there every single time and I was. And Gabi, too. I had front row seats the whole time she was pregnant with Ari. It's not that I don't know what pregnancy is like."

"You hadn't had an opportunity to experience it yourself," he says, still trying to absolve me. "It's quite different."

"Can't you just yell at me and tell me how horrible I am?" I ask.

"No, I cannot do that, because it isn't true. This was a terrible accident, Abigail. The accident was horrible. You are wonderful."

"So wonderful that I let our daughter die."

"You didn't allow anything to happen. Something happened to you. Abigail, look at me." I don't want to, but I do. "You always know when I'm lying, correct?"

In the past I'd liked to think that, but after the day I've had I don't know if I know anything anymore.

"Of course you do," EJ completes easily for me. "You know when I'm lying and you know I'm not lying when I tell you that this is not your fault. Our… daughter?"

I nod. "It was a girl."

"She would have been loved and cherished by both of her parents. She would have been every bit as smart and beautiful as you. I'm sure of it. And more importantly, she would have been as forthright as you. Thank you for telling me about her. Thank you for letting me mourn her with you. That's not an opportunity I've had in the past."

I can't take his gratitude at the moment. "I think she would have been a lot like you," I say instead.

He doesn't answer. He kisses me on the head and tells me to close my eyes. He won't be here when I wake up, he says, because my family would never stand for it and I don't need the stress. But he promises that I should expect a daily visit as long as I'm confined to the hospital.

The promise would have made my heart soar a month ago, or a week ago, or yesterday. Now it's just a reminder that I've messed things up, and terribly.

TBC