Chapter 58
They say the dead rest in peace. Such isn't true for the ones left behind.
The world, it turns out, doesn't stop turning just because they've lost their baby, even though it feels as though it ought to. There are things to do. There are so many things to do that Jack doesn't quite know where to start. And he's got to be the one to do them, he knows, because Katherine's done nothing but sleep and cry for hours.
Jack doesn't sleep at all. Katherine does fall asleep at some point, lying in his arms, exhausted from the trauma. He rests his chin on the top of her head and fixes his eyes on the far wall, on the Santa Fe skyline he painted there in a fit of hope, and tries to cry as silently as possible. He doesn't know how to do any of this, but like Mayer said, there's no guidebook for being a good husband and father. Just husband, now, he supposes.
Eventually, with a strength that he didn't know he possessed, Jack slips out of the bed without waking his wife, something he hasn't done for months now, and pads downstairs. The clock in the kitchen says five am. Time doesn't feel right anymore, like it's stretching and condensing in ways that he can't understand. It seems to Jack that the ancient Romans had it right, splitting time in two on either side of the birth of Christ. B.C., A.D. He knows that the first one means before Christ, because Katherine told him that, but the second one is some complicated phrase in a language he doesn't understand. He doesn't suppose it really matters whether you understand things or not, when they just happen anyway. His life has been split in two. B.L., A.L. Before Lucy. After Lucy.
There's a plate on the kitchen table in front of him. Katherine likes to set out the breakfast things ready the night before so that she gets an extra few minutes in bed each morning. He can't believe they did something so normal just a few hours ago. Jack picks up the plate and hurls it across the room, watching as it shatters into pieces against the opposite wall, unbelievably loud in the silence of the darkened kitchen.
Edith wanders into the kitchen a few minutes later, summoned by the crash of the breaking plate, of Jack shattering. He can tell that she hasn't slept either, but neither of them say anything, sweeping together the ceramic shards and putting them in the bin. Jack realises that there are bloody towels at the bottom of their kitchen bin. He gets a little bit stuck on that, staring down into it until Edith steers him back to the kitchen table and fetches Katherine's notebook and pencil from the side.
She helps him write a list of all the things he needs to do, then writes the two letters for him, one pleading for a week off work for himself, the other for three weeks off for Katherine. The former tells the truth; the latter only tells a half-truth of 'serious illness'. Honestly, Jack isn't sure if Katherine will even want to go back to work after all this, but somebody has to do something.
Jack doesn't know what he'd do without Edith. She delivers the letters, and, when she comes back, makes him put on actual clothes and shave and do all of the things that you're supposed to do as a normal human being. Jack's grateful. He needs her there, his puppeteer, tugging on the frayed ends of broken strings, bringing him through.
Around eight am, he gets himself together enough to wake Katherine. He's had to go in a few times already, just to settle her back into an uneasy sleep, when she wakes up crying; but he wakes her properly, then, scooping her into his arms bridal-style and bringing her downstairs. He tries to get her to eat breakfast, then holds her hair back and rubs soothing circles on her palm as she throws it back up.
Edith suggests that Katherine has a bath while Jack changes the sheets and he nods, cold, broken, numb, because it's probably a good idea for Katherine to be clean and be somewhere clean. He won't risk an infection. He won't. The old bedsheets smell of blood, spoiling and metallic.
They smell like the Refuge, like iron congealing on concrete, like scrubbing brushes soaked in caustic soda, like salt-filled wounds. And beneath that, the second note of some fine wine turned to vinegar, there's a smell of decay, too, the kind that lingers in the unwashed, sickly-green crannies of vases after flowers have been left in them too long. It's the kind of smell that is indescribable in any way other than what it isn't. It isn't petrichor, isn't a healthy sort of green smell. It's a smell that lingers in the absences, in the liminal spaces, in between moments.
Jack finds a scrubbing brush, almost wishes for the sting of the cleaner they made them use in the Refuge, the one that burned their skin and cracked it open, just so that he could feel something. He's cracked open, shattered, anyway. What difference would it make?
He focuses on scrubbing the mattress as best he can. It's rather a lost cause, but they won't be able to get a new one just yet, so he does what he can and then turns it over. The fresh sheets look clean, spread across their bed, but Jack knows they aren't, that there are shadows lurking in them like the grey smear that's left on his paper after he erases a line. It feels like erasure, this.
And then, when it's all done, the three of them lie on the bed, Katherine sandwiched between Edith and Jack, and stare up at the stars. Jack lets Katherine cry quietly, her face turned into his shirt. Edith grips hold of Katherine's hand like she's never going to let go.
Jack's grateful for that, too, when there's a knock on the front door, that Katherine has another body to curl into while he goes to answer it. He does so in a daze, finds Mrs. Chavers and Mrs. Ross on the doorstep with an apple pie, asking what all the commotion was last night. Jack doesn't know quite what to say. Lying would take too much energy. He tells them, blunt as a lead pipe, and their mouths drop open, then spill over with stock sympathies. They press the pie into his hands and leave him be, oblivious to how reliving it over again in his mind almost doubles him over. At least he won't have to worry about breaking the news to the neighbours. Mrs. Ross will have it being discussed in every parlour on the street before lunchtime.
An hour later, there's another knock. Jack opens the door, then braces himself against the doorframe, rubbing at his eyes with a tired hand.
"Davey, shit, I forgot you was comin' over."
"Yeah, union paperwork." Davey neatly pressed and pieced together, as always, holds up a stack of paperwork, as if to illustrate his point. He looks happy. He has since Miriam, stupid puppy love. It makes Jack feel a little bit like throwing up.
"Listen, can it wait?"
Davey frowns. "Is somethin' wrong?"
Jack looks back over his shoulder then steps out of the door, pulling it closed behind him. Katherine almost certainly can't hear them, but he's taking no chances. She's gone the last ten minutes without bursting into tears, and he's not going to mess that up.
"Kath, she-" his voice cracks. How the hell are you supposed to say this shit? "We lost the baby."
"Oh my-" David's eyes widen. He has no idea what to say. What is there to say?
Jack crumbles. He just can't. He can't do this anymore. Scrubbing at his face angrily, he presses balled-up fists into his eye sockets, presses until he's flattened the teardrops against his skin and colours explode behind his eyelids.
"Jack it's okay to-"
"I ain't cryin'." Jack snaps. He knows that David means well. The kid always does. But he can't deal with this. Not today. "I's jus'…"
You just what, Kelly? You're just being a girl, huh? You're just sobbing like a kid? Leave that to the baby – oh, except you can't, because she's never going to get to cry, is she? Jack wonders why the voice inside of his head sounds like Snyder. He wonders why it's always right.
"You want me to tell the boys?" Davey finally asks, quiet. "Keep them out of the way?"
"Please." Jack heaves out a sigh, removing his hands from his face only when he's sure that his eyes, though red and puffy, are dry. "Every time I says it, 's like it happens again."
"Yeah." David nods, like he understands, even though he doesn't. Even though he can't. "Have work-"
"The Journal have given me the week off."
"Good. Jack, I- I'm so sorry."
"Yeah," Jack nods, a silent thank-you, "I is too."
It takes until eleven for Dr. Graceton to arrive, unhurried and dispassionate with one of his medical students in tow. He doesn't ask either Jack or Katherine whether it's alright for the younger man, who introduces himself only as Richardson, to be there, merely stalks up to their bedroom at the top of the house and tells Edith that she has to leave. He tries to tell Jack to vacate the room as well, but Jack puts his foot down at that. He's still numb, but he isn't stupid. If Richardson can be in there, then so can he, and he says as much. So, Jack sits next to Katherine and strokes his thumb over the back of her hand while the two men stare at her like she's in a fishbowl, not lying in a bed with a half-trained medical student poking about between her legs to check for infection. Jack thinks that Katherine must be feeling fairly numb as well, watching her looking at the ceiling through empty eyes.
Numb, at least, is one word for it. Katherine feels as though she's been carved in stone. Perhaps she is, the petrified former mother, the omphalos. There's no blood on the doctor's fingers when he pulls them away, but she knows there should be. She scrubbed herself raw in the bath this morning, but she can still feel the blood on her, covering her, flowing out between her legs, nothing she can do to stop it, to stem it.
"Everything looks well, Mrs. Kelly." The doctor finally pronounces. "I'm putting you on bedrest for a week and then reduced mobility for the week after, but once that's done you should be good as new."
Katherine looks as if she can't quite decide whether she wants to burst into tears or rip the doctor's head off for his comment. "Good as-"
Jack puts his hand on Katherine's knee, over the covers, preventing the both of them from punching his lights out. "Thank you, Doctor."
Dr. Graceton's eyes flick to where Jack's hand is resting, and his lip curls. He fixes Jack with a stern stare. "I would… advise restraint in regard to intimacy for at least two weeks. After that, provided there's no pain-"
"Thank you, Doctor." Jack cuts him off, his hand once again tightening on her knee in lieu of punching the man, his voice brittle.
It's almost nice to feel something other than sadness, Katherine thinks, even if it is anger. Because even if Jack hasn't put the pieces together behind Dr. Graceton's snide comment, she certainly has. Rose must have repeated that long ago conversation to her husband, must have told him about her and Jack's 'activities'. Well, he's got it all wrong. She'll be surprised if Jack can even stand to sleep in the same bed as her after all this.
"Mrs. Kelly, I want you to know there are other options now that you're infertile-"
Someone pours a bucket of ice water down her back. "What?"
Dr. Graceton's eyes flick to Jack. He shakes his head, just a little. No, he hasn't told her. Yes, he meant to. No, he couldn't get the words out. The doctor starts explaining a condition that neither of them can understand the name of. Even if she could understand it, Katherine doesn't think she would. It's as if the doctor is speaking to her through an entire ocean of water. She catches only four words in the entire encounter. You will never conceive.
The words echo around inside of her skull, bouncing off the bone, off her brain. The doctor leaves, at some point. You will never conceive. And that's it, isn't it? The end of the road. No doubt. You will never conceive.
When Jack comes back in from seeing the doctor out, those four words are still the only thing she can hear. Jack stops just inside the doorway, waits.
"Did you know?" Her voice sounds as if it hasn't been used in years. "That I-"
"He told me." Jack stares at the floor. "Last night."
Katherine feels herself start to shake, clenches her hands into fists to stop their trembling. "And you didn't think I had a right to know? That it would be better for me to hear it from you?"
"Kath-"
"No, Jack, you had no right to keep something like this from me!" She's screaming at him now, she knows, but she can't seem to stop. My fault. You will never conceive.
"Don' y'think I had a reason?" Jack shouts back. He never raises his voice at her, never. "I had to be the one to tell you our baby died, Katherine, y'think I coulda got the next lot o' words out even 'f I'd wanted to?"
"I can't ever have a baby, Jack!"
"No." Jack spits back, his voice deathly quiet now. It's like a punch to the gut. "We can't ever have a baby. We. You an' me. She was mine too, y'know." He looks away. He doesn't want her to see him start crying, even as he whispers: "She was mine too."
And Katherine can't be angry with him, not now. Not after that. She's angry still, angry at Dr. Graceton, angry at the world, angry at God. But she can't be angry at Jack. The only way they're getting through this thing is together.
"Come here." She sighs. Jack looks at her, something unsure in the dark of his eyes, but he comes anyway, sits on the side of the bed. It hurts, it hurts abominably, but she pulls herself into his lap nonetheless, the way that they sit when she reads to him, winds her fingers in his shirt. "You and me." She feels him relax beneath her, beside her, surrounding her.
"I hurtin' you?" He asks and she shakes her head.
"I don't know how you can even stand to touch me right now."
"I dunno how you can say garbage like that." Jack snarls, though there's no anger in it as he tightens his hold on her, pulling her closer and burying his face in her hair, breathing her in. "I ain't got no kid, no more. All's I's got is you, an' you's a fool 'f you thinks I's lettin' you go too."
Her eyes fill with tears. "But you always wanted children. I can't ever give you what you want."
"Kath, you's what I want." Jack pulls away, removes one arm from around her. Katherine feels the loss like a physical ache, only for him to piece her back together when he takes her chin and tilts her head up to face him. "You's the only thing I ever want." Jack doesn't lie. Not to her. They both know it. His words shatter them both, then stitch them back together stronger. "I didn't- you ain't some sorta package deal wi' future kids. You's enough for me. You's always gonna be enough."
"But-"
"No buts. We'll figure it out. You an' me."
Slowly, so slowly, she nods, her hand coming up to grasp hold of his. "You and me."
"You an' me." Jack leans his forehead against hers. "We's gonna get through this. You an' me."
...
Author's note: The omphalos, or umbilicus mundi, was a hollow stone artefact believed to be the centre of the world and that literally translates to navel. The history of it is really interesting and it has a lot of symbolic weight. I swear that my writing is actually really layered if you have a comprehensive knowledge of archaeology.