It was a strange noise that had finally forced me to get out of bed. Time, much like my empty room, had frozen. I forced down a couple bites of food and some bubbly water whenever Gemma quietly left the trays for me. But there was very little I could stomach. At one point, and I couldn't be sure which day, Gemma opened the curtains to illuminate the darkness I'd been existing in. I would just go back to sleep whenever the sun started shining directly into my eyes. This evening, however, the golden rays from the setting sun had hit Luc's sweater still crumpled on the ground. The tight ball of tears I'd managed to avoid came crawling back up my throat but mercifully stopped at the noise. I forced my aching body toward the window, making sure to kick Luc's sweater out of sight as I passed.
Everything was covered in a dusting of snow. Ice hung off the ornamental loops of the metal fencing around our patio. Confusion momentarily broke through my misery as I noticed the noise had come from three ravens on the railing. They were hopping back and forth, dancing along the cold metal and chattering at each other. I had no idea why they were still here, clearly, it was too cold for them to be out. But then a fourth raven landed perfectly in line with them. They suddenly went still and quiet and I moved a step closer in curiosity. The final raven swung his head nearly all the way around to glance at me through the glass and then they all took off into the setting, crimson, sun. Startled, I flicked the curtains closed and forced myself to leave the room. I needed to find my phone. I might be ignoring everyone else, but I wanted to make sure I was still available to Anya.
I made it halfway down the hallway when a stomach cramp hit with such intensity that I stopped and held onto the wall. When it subsided I sucked in a big breath and kept moving. I turned the corner toward Stellan's office and came to a complete stop again as another cramp took over my whole midsection. It was a sharp pain below my belly button that dulled around the edges as it spread across my body, painful to the point of panic and spreading around to my back. I tried to breathe through my nose and then let out a loud groan as it slowly faded. As I caught my breath a wave of nausea spread across me, pricking my skin and making my heart thump with panic.
I darted into the office's attached powder room, barely getting the door shut before I threw up in the toilet and then doubled over from the cramps. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. I stood, flushed, limped to the sink to rinse my mouth out and tried to stand up straight but the cramps made me double over again. It felt like the worst period cramps in my life. I fumbled back toward the toilet to sit down and gasped. Blood. So much blood. The punishing nausea rose again with a sheen of sweat covering my body when I heard the office door open and Elodie's voice snap,
"Entrez là-bas."
There was a second pair of shoes stumbling across the hardwood with her clicking heels. The door closed and I tried to move, but the pain was so intense I just doubled over and tried not to groan. The last thing I needed was for Elodie, of all people, to find me like this.
"Hey," she yelled at the person. Her heels clicked across the floor some more and then she commanded again, "hey!"
There was a moment of silence and then a resounding thud of someone being hit. "Get it together!"
"Ouch!" Stellan yelled at her and then cursed in French.
I held my breath as another wave of cramps took over. Possibilities were flashing through my mind, is this what appendicitis felt like or maybe my liver was finally failing from all the booze? It was about the only consistent thing I had left in my life now, even if the stash by my bedside was getting low.
"What the fuck is going on? Tell me everything. Now." Elodie's voice was so close it sounded like she was right outside the bathroom door.
"I don't know what to do anymore," he miserably groaned.
The aching cramps came back and all I could hear was their muffled voices as the blood roared in my ears. It took a supreme amount of effort not to start swearing like a sailor. As I let out a slow, silent breath I realized it had grown quiet again. Maybe they had left, small mercies, right?
"Oh...S," Elodie replied so tenderly I almost didn't recognize her voice.
He grumbled something back in French that she stomped her foot at and then he pleaded, "what the fuck are we all going to do?"
"Idiot boy." Elodie angrily retorted.
They started arguing again but it faded out. All I could focus on was breathing through my nose trying to hold back the vomit as it bombarded me again. There wasn't even a trash can close enough to catch it.
"She'll murder you first," Elodie sassed back, loudly. " I'd call that progress."
With the nausea passing the dizziness took over and I held onto the toilet paper holder to try and keep my bearings as the room spun around me. Maybe I should actually make some noise so I didn't die on a toilet like Elvis.
"You're a king. Start acting like one." Elodie commanded of Stellan and started stomping, but I couldn't be sure which way.
I leaned forward onto my knees, everything relaxing for a moment and panted like I'd been sprinting for the past five minutes. But as soon as I could catch my breath it all swept back in right as the handle to the bathroom started to turn. The cramping was so bad I bit my lip, absolutely unable to say anything. I heard the door swing open and looked up a little to see Elodie's shoes.
She slammed the door shut and locked it, her heels clicking quickly over to me. I looked up, the tears welling immediately as her panicked eyes took me in.
"How bad?" She whispered.
"Bad." I ground out.
"Nausea? Pain?" She asked and moved to the cabinets, digging around.
"Yes." I tried to sit back up and wiped at my clammy forehead.
"Clots?"
"How did you guess that?" I groaned.
"Because you're miscarrying." She quietly replied.
"What?" I looked up at her and then at her hand on the doorknob. "Don't!"
"Avery, you have to go to the hospital." She opened the door, closing it behind herself and I heard her call out to him. "Get Jack on the phone. Have him set up transport to Portland Hospital immediately."
"I'm sorry, what?" Stellan's confused voice moved toward us.
"We need a driver to take us to Portland to a private room through the private entrance," Elodie explained it to him like he was a five-year-old. Everything cramped on me and I couldn't stop the rasping breath as I contracted into myself.
"Who's in there?" Stellan's panicked voice was closer. "What's wrong?"
"Avery is miscarrying."
There was a struggle at the door and then Elodie's commanding, "stay the fuck out right now. Do what I told you to."
"How can you expect me," Stellan started but the door opened and then slammed shut, Elodie locking it behind herself.
He banged on the door, I swallowed my nausea back down and felt another wave of pain. "How do you know that's what wrong?" I groaned. Stellan's banging stopped.
"It's basic math." She replied, loud enough for both of us to hear. "Your medical record said you had the birth control shot in January. It only lasts for six months."
"Oh shit," Stellan said from the other side of the door.
"Did you call Jack?" She snarled at him. His shuffled away from the door and then barked into his phone,
"Set up a medevac to Portland for Avery." There was a pause. "Miscarriage. I know. Yes, now."
He hung up, his shadow at the door again. I finished up and braced against the wall to stand, Elodie grabbed my other side and then quietly said, "don't look."
She flushed the toilet, wrapped her arm around my waist, and started helping me to the door. As soon as she turned the lock it flew open. His hands reached for me, shaking with emotion and I looked up into his panicked face and moved into his touch. Elodie slipped away as soon as he had me, clicking through the study and into the hall yelling for Jack. There was a small moment of awkwardness, my body needing him to hold me, but my brain still wanting to recoil from his touch. Another wave of cramps made me contract and he guided me to a chair. I sat at the edge and turned Elodie's words over in my head.
"Mexico." I breathed.
"Mexico." He agreed, and then a long silence filled the study as I knew we both thought about that trip and everything after. All the drinking, the Molly, the travel. The Maldives had been particularly bad. And I had been pregnant then too? Guilt flooded me. I'd done this. I'd pumped so much poison through myself that I'd caused this miscarriage. And the guilt doubled as a wave of relief filled me.
"Let's go," Jack said as he appeared in front of us, flushed and panicky. He tried to hide his wary reaction and failed. I glanced at the mirror above the fireplace and swallowed hard. I looked sickly, sweaty, glassy-eyed, and ashen. Stellan helped me up again and led me toward the hallway and the waiting wheelchair. I wanted to protest it, but with both of them looking so panicky I knew it would fall on deaf ears. Oddly, I wanted Elodie. To my relief, she appeared,
"We have an escort. It should only take fifteen minutes. The room is ready." She looked down at me and then over at Jack, "find us some towels."
"Towels?" He paused next to Stellan's pushing down the hall.
"Now." She commanded and Jack took off toward the powder room down the hall. I relaxed back into the wheelchair, glad I had her. We moved through the house quickly and out a side door to a waiting car. Elodie grabbed the towels from a still shell-shocked Jack and threw them down on the seat. Stellan slipped me in, and I looked up at him and asked,
"Can I ride with Elodie?"
"But," he started and she pushed him toward the second car.
"Of course you can. We will all arrive at the same time." She rounded to the other side of the car and slid in, directing the driver to go as soon as her door closed.
"Thank you," I whispered and put my forehead against the glass.
"No problem," she simply replied, and then pressed her lips together before rising the partition. She quietly asked, "was there a very large clot?"
"I don't think so." I looked at her. "Is that bad?"
"It could be." She frowned. "Ectopic pregnancy. But let's not get ahead of ourselves."
"How do you know all this?" I closed my eyes as I asked. The silence filled the car and I had my answer.
"It wasn't either of theirs. If that's what you were thinking," she flatly replied.
"I was thinking about how drunk I was the entire time I was in the Maldives, and all my liquid meals since I came back," I croaked, the tears coming back. There was another long stretch of silence before I added, "how guilty I feel at my relief."
And to my complete and utter surprise, I felt Elodie's hand squeeze my upper arm. She held it there as I failed to stop my tears streaming down my face. I wondered for the hundredth time this month if this is what my life had become - if this is what I'd have to live through. Such isolation and loneliness that a touch from my most of the time frenemy was comforting.
"While this is upsetting, it's not uncommon. Most women experience a miscarriage. If there is any comfort to be found from this, perhaps it is the knowledge that fertility will not be an issue for you in the future."
Silence filled our private room, and I looked down at my hands, twisting my diamond around my finger, over and over again. The noise of my monitors started to break through my continuing shock and I heard Stellan shift in the chair near the foot of my bed and then darkly warn the doctor,
"Leave."
She gave us both a deep nod and quickly mumbled, "Your Majesties."
Before the door could close behind her Jack and Elodie shuffled in next and I folded my hands and squeezed them as hard as I could. I kept my eyes down and tried to keep track of all the different colors my fingers were turning as I cut off all the blood to them.
"Right," Jack quietly sighed and carefully sat onto the couch to the left of me, against the far wall. Elodie moved toward my bed. From the corner of my eye, I caught her hand slide along my guard rail, but I still didn't look up.
"We should…" Elodie cautiously started next and Stellan cut over her with,
"Stop. Both of you. Just leave us alone."
"Stellan," Elodie tried to reason with him, taking a step in his direction. I released my hands, a surge of blood rushing into my strangled fingers.
"Don't," he snapped. I heard Jack stand and usher them toward the door to leave, but not before Elodie firmly said,
"What happened between you two, this loss, it can't be more important than everything we stand to lose."
The door clicked shut, shielding us from the nearly constant noise that always seemed to happen in a hospital - even at midnight. The silence between us stretched, curving around our quiet breaths. I tried to shift my aching body on my uncomfortable bed, it made the plastic mattress cover crinkle. After the blood work, ultrasound and procedure they had to perform I was supposed to stay overnight for monitoring because of my pre-existing medical conditions. Though I had a feeling that it had more to do with getting enough prep time to get me out of here without the press seeing.
He stood and moved over to the bed, checking all my monitors and peeking into my water cup. How far back had we been here before - me on a bed, terribly injured, keeping everything from each other. Out of what? Fear? There wasn't much left to be afraid of now. He reached over and carefully pulled out the blankets at my feet so they weren't pinning me to the mattress anymore. The realization made my heart ache in my chest. All those weeks I'd thought one of my nurses had been feeling merciful toward my strangled feet. It had been him. I could feel his eyes on me, holding his gaze unwaveringly on where my own should have been meeting his. But I couldn't do it. Instead, his shaky hands smoothed down the blankets on my thighs and then pulled back into tight fists as he quietly asked me,
"How are you feeling?"
"Bad," I flatly answered. Even the woozy spin of the painkillers couldn't take the edge off all this.
He sighed, as if he should have known better, and amended with, "what are you feeling?"
My shaky left hand tucked some hair behind my ear. I summoned the courage to finally look at him and exhaled the word,
"Relieved."
He sucked in a breath and tried to mask his reaction by nodding, but it was too late. I put my forehead in the palm of my right hand, the tears pooling in my eyes. With a miserable exhale they rolled down my cheek and plunked onto the awful off-white colored sheets bunched around me.
"Because you were worried about what would have happened if you'd kept the baby? Or because you're not pregnant anymore?" He pushed, unsatisfied with my silence.
I didn't want to voice it. I didn't want to admit it out loud. If I said it out loud it would mean too many things in too many ways and I was too tired to fight anymore. I held his gaze for a single moment, knowing he'd read the answer in my eyes. He swallowed hard, looked away, clenched his fists around the guard rail of my bed and shifted uncomfortably. My arm started to pinch with pain and I slid my fingers around my rough sheets, looking for my morphine button.
"Did you know?"
I glared at him through a woozy spin of vertigo to retort, "of course not."
He clenched his jaw, holding back the next thing he wanted to say. It was morbidly familiar to me, and I hoped this would be the last thing we said to each other tonight. But then he took a step back from the bed, crossing his arms over his chest, tightly, and this spike of warning went off in the back of my scrambled brain.
"Would you have told me if you did?" He demanded.
The anger burned in my chest, building with the pain in my arm. I ignored them both. We were really going to do this now? Fine.
"What kind of question is that?"
"A valid one," he carefully answered. "You didn't want to marry me. You don't want any of this."
The silence built between us again. I knew now what he was trying to do, insight me to trigger my PCS and let the truth come boiling over.
"That's not what I said," I calmly answered back.
His arms tightened across his chest, surprised, and he shifted in his dress shoes. I'm sure he didn't like his own tactics getting thrown back in his face. I looked back down at my blankets for the morphine button again, following one of the lines back toward my IV stand.
"Fine," he snapped. "You want me but not children? A family?"
"We already have one," I answered, pointing towards the closed door. "You sent them out into the hallway like they were staff. You drew that line, not me."
He took a furious breath. "It's not the same and you know it. This is about us."
"You're telling me you want to have children right now?" I implored him. "You are barely 21. I am 17."
"I already have one. She is seven," he said his voice softening, rubbing his left hand across his forehead, his ring catching in all the fluorescent lights. "She asked me how long it takes to have a baby after you get married. You are the only one who doesn't want this."
"Ready," I corrected, shaking my head, "I'm not ready for this."
He dropped the tight hold on his arms and moved back toward the bed, exhaling, "you have always thought too little of yourself."
Reaching over the guardrail he trailed his warm palm down my arm toward my hand. His fingers slipped between my own and he gave me a light squeeze.
"Maybe," I conceded. Relief filled his face, and it stabbed right into the very heart of me. I retracted my hand from his hold and looked up into his eyes to say, "but this was never your choice to make."
I watched, with detached horror, as something broke in his eyes. He kept completely still in front of me for two full breaths before he seemed to shake back awake into his body, the anger and desperation quickly replaced with fear in his face.
"Don't say that," he whispered. "This was my mistake too."
"But it is my body," I calmly added.
"What are you…" he started to say but I cut over him.
"I am not having a baby in three years or however long the Circle thinks it should be. It'll be when I want it to be. All the rules I changed on marriage and inheritance also applied to me."
He let out this barking, mirthless, laugh, his eyes sweeping over me to take me in but also looking through me somehow. I realized he still had nothing to say to that.
"So what now?" He leaned his forearms onto my bedrail, appraising me with cold eyes. "Everything I ask you is wrong, everything I say insights you, you won't let me get close enough to touch you. How can you say you want me? That you want this family. You don't."
"You're right," I simply answered. "I want Anya and Jack and Elodie and Luc and Colette. They're my family. I don't want whoever this is." I waved my hand up and down surveying him, "I thought I made that perfectly clear to you."
Even through the painkillers and sedatives, my arm started a quick descent into agony. I viced my right hand over my bicep, making the IV tug a little with the motion. When I realized it wasn't going to help, and they'd probably hidden my morphine button from me, I looked back up to beg him to let up on the both of us. But he was already backing away from the bed again, shaking out his left fist so fast it was a blur.
"What does that even mean?" He asked, his shoulders and neck started to tense as well as he started shaking out the other fist simultaneously.
A long groan of pain rattled through my teeth, followed by my infuriated huff. I tried my best to stay calm, not be the one to escalate this situation. But now he wasn't playing fair and there was only so much pain one person could be put through. The truth came barreling out of my mouth,
"You manipulated my feelings for you to make me stay. You forced my compliance through the threat of violence against everyone I care about. You buried me in a web of lies to trap me here. That is not love."
"For Christ's sake," he growled back. I ignored him.
"I know you think you loved me. But you never respected me. You can't have trust without respect. And I can't love someone I don't trust."
Instantly, my arm felt like it had been blown off the pain was so intense. I looked over at it just to make sure it was still there. The scream tore free from my throat, the pain flooding through the shock at the same moment he let out this feral sounding noise. The machines were blinking and stuttering around us, the air so electrified I could taste the ozone. A pulse pushed through the room frying all the electronics around us, making the lights blink above us, shattering the glass in all the windows. I could hear Jack and Elodie trying to break into the room from the other side, unable to because the electronic locks were fried from his EMP.
"Stellan calm down! Calm down!" I shrieked at him. I grabbed the rail of my bed to move toward him realizing within the next moment everything around me was metal.
The lightning sparked around his fists, growing with every horrifying second. I leapt from the bed, the IV tearing out of my arm, blood splattering everywhere, the world closing in around the edges. I was going to pass out. The pain was too much. And his eyes had glazed over like he was in some kind of trance. My heart was pounding in my chest, too fast and hard. My breaths grew tight and difficult and the terror doubled for me.
"Stellan!" I feebly tried to yell toward him, my voice weak. It was no use. I curled around my broken body. The pain was making everything shut down in my panic. I was sobbing on the ground unable to move toward him, unsure if I even should.
The pain peaked. My body seemed to recall the sensation, the worst thing I'd ever experienced. My consciousness quickly started slipping away from me, his eyes taking me in, bleeding and gasping, prone on the dirty hospital floor and then there was nothing but blinding white light.