They sit down in therapy together after two impossibly long weeks of tension between them. It's Jackson's idea even though he felt as if he had done nothing wrong in the situation, but he doesn't want to keep going at the rate that they've been. He's sure that if it went on for too long, there would be no coming back from it. He was just glad that she actually agreed to it.
Sitting on the couch, though, the distance between them managed to take a literal form. He leaned against one arm of the loveseat and her the other, the closest that the two of them get to each other is April's leg crossed, foot lingering close to his knee.
Betsy had been recommended to him by one of their coworkers, Mark, who had apparently saved the relationship that he had built up with Lexie. The two of them seemed happy together now, and it gave him some kind of hope. She was perhaps a decade older than the two of them, long, frizzy dark hair. From the brief conversations that they had on the phone, he could already tell that she was full of personality. There's a large tattoo of an owl that's visible on the outside of the calf from the capri length pants that she was wearing today, and he could tell that April had already begun to make a few judgments about the therapist that they were seeing based on the lack of traditional professional values that she displayed. He wasn't surprised, even if he wished for a moment that he was.
"So, I want to remind the both of you that now's a chance to be perfectly honest. Sometimes it's harder when it's just you and your partner, trust me, I know. But I'm here as a mediator, to make this easier for the both of you," Betsy started to speak, smiling politely at the both of us. "Tell me, what brings you in today?"
Jackson started, knowing that April wouldn't. "The two of us tried to have a baby for a long time, and it was… hard. Really hard on the both of us. We got a misdiagnosis at first, and uh, when it did eventually get clarified… it turned out that we were pregnant, but it was an ectopic pregnancy. We had to abort so April wouldn't die," he explained. As he spoke, a hand reached out to try and close the distance between the two of them sitting on the couch, but April actively kept her gaze forward on the wall to avoid seeing either of them directly.
"April?" Betsy said, her gaze turning directly to the redhead. "Is there anything you'd like to add?"
"No," she answered shortly. "If you want me to be honest, then I don't know why we're here."
"But you agreed to come," Jackson added in quickly. "I didn't force you here."
"To make you happy." April retorted quickly.
He couldn't help but sigh at the answer that she offered. It was one without fault, sure, but it felt like his happiness in their marriage hadn't been much of a priority lately. Not with the fact that she had shot it down so easily, that she had denied having children with him just because the going had been rough for awhile. Wasn't marriage supposed to be about for better and for worse? They had gotten through the worse, hopefully, without even opening the door for the better parts.
"April, why don't you think that you need to be here?" Betsy asked.
"I don't think that talking about any of this is going to change my mind. I've made it up. I don't want to have kids. I know that it means a lot to Jackson and I know that he'd be a great father but after everything that the two of us have been through together, I don't want to keep going through the worse. That ectopic pregnancy? That almost destroyed me. But I don't get to be upset about it because he's upset about me not wanting to try again, like he can't process the fact that I already lost a baby and I don't want to go through that again." April snapped off with much more information than what she had intended.
Before Jackson could step in with a retort, Betsy interrupted. "Now, April, Jackson's right here. This is a conversation that the two of you need to be having together, not between the two of us, okay? I'm here to guide the conversation, but it is your conversation." She clarified.
"You made up your mind without taking what I wanted into consideration," Jackson reminded her, a hint of anger in his voice despite trying to remain calm about it. "You decided. Not me. This is our life together, but you're not letting me have any kind of say in it."
"You're the one who wanted to be here!" April defended herself quickly.
"Okay, let's try and take it down a notch and stop with all of the 'you did this, you did that'," Betsy piped up, pausing the pen scribbling against her notepad and set it down. "It's important for the both of you to start taking responsibility for your action. I've been doing this for awhile and I know that these kind of issues are never a one-sided thing, trust me. So let's take a step back individually." She suggested.
Jackson took a deep breath, flattening his hands against the top of his thighs. "I feel like that I'm faulted for a lot of things and I don't get my input. I know that I'm not perfect, baby, but… I'm trying here. I don't want to have this argument for the rest of my life." He breathed out, his voice quieting slightly.
A frown twisted across April's expression before speaking. "Maybe I'm being a little bit of a control freak. I just don't want to keep going through this pain over and over again. It's eating me up. It's making me feel like a failure of a woman because I can't do something as simple as giving you a baby and I don't know how to keep feeling inadequate over and over again." The words are hard for her to express, her gaze dropping down and staring shamefully at her hands. The view is a bit outdated, that having a child was such a woman's responsibility and she was a failure of one if she wasn't capable of providing one, and yet it's one that she had been raised with. She could logic her way out of it outlaid, talk through it, yet it didn't affect the heaviness that it placed inside of her head. Sometimes knowing didn't always help.
"I don't think that you're inadequate, April." Jackson chimed in quickly.
"And you're not," Betty agreed. "You're both allowed to have your feelings, but sometimes you have to recognize that these feelings don't always line up with what's actually going on around you." She added sympathetically, knowing it was a tough issue for all couples to go through. Children frequently were a make or break point.
"Now, I'd like the both of you to take a step back," Betty started, leaning forward in her chair. "I want you to try and take the other's point of view on this issue. Jackson, why don't you go first?" She suggested.
"Okay." Jackson paused, nodding to himself and taking a deep breath. "I uh, I'm upset about the baby that we lost. I don't feel good about it. I don't have hope for the future and right now it seems easier not to explore it and play it safe, instead of going forward and trying." He tried not to be condescending with his assessment of her words, glancing over at his wife for approval or… well, anger. Either would have been appropriate depending on the accuracy. But instead, he's greeted with neither. April looked upset more than anything, and that seemed like the indicator that he had managed to hit it on the head.
Both of them were now looking at the redhead. "April, how do you feel about what Jackson just said?" Betsy asked.
"There's nothing wrong with it," April breathed out quietly, picking at a loose thread on her blouse.
"Mmhm. But how do you feel, honey?" She said with a little more emphasis.
"I…" she stuttered to get out a good start. "He's right. I'm scared of more pain and don't want to go down that path when it seems like there's this perfectly safe future in front of us." She admitted shamefully, sighing and glancing away from the both of them, tears beginning to glitter in the rim of her eyelids.
Jackson refused to take the distance between the two of them any longer, scooting closer to her on the couch and wrapping both of his hands around one of hers, giving it a squeeze. April doesn't immediately look over but her features are softened for a breath moment with a smile of recognition for what he was trying to do with her, appreciating it even if she can't vocalize that gratitude at the moment.
"You're both doing good," Betsy complimented as she watched the pair. "Now April, why don't you take a crack at it?"
April nodded her head, sniffling and blinking a few times before she can manage to find her voice. "I'm feeling hurt because I'm not getting my way. I see the outcome as worth it no matter how much pain there is between here and there." She's too upset to offer a lot more than that at the moment, mouth twisting to the side and it's clear that she's trying to hold back any tears from spilling past her lids. So far, she was holding up well, but it didn't seem as if it were going to last for very long.
"Alright, and Jackson, now you tell me how you feel about what she just said." Betsy turned it back to him.
"I feel like I'm still not being listened to," Jackson admitted with a frown, gave moving over to the therapist to not have to look at his wife when he said it. "It's not about me not getting my way. It's about me not getting any input," he clarified.
The redhead fell silent, annoyance coming forward for a moment to keep the tears at bay. For her, it wasn't that she wasn't listening. She heard what he said, she'd heard it every time that it had been brought up, but she wasn't able to absorb it and really take it to a level of comprehension. She was stuck inside of her head, the fear leaving her paralyzed in place instead of giving her the option of trying to find a way to go forward. He had been much more accurate with his assessment of what was going on inside of her head, and that same assessment was the thing currently preventing her from seeing his issues.
"I want to listen," April squeaked out. "I just… I can't." She offered with no explanation.
"I think that this is going to be something good for the two of you to work at in the coming days," Betsy offered up. "April, you're scared to go forward with having a baby. And Jackson, even though you clearly can recognize that she's scared, I don't think that you're giving her a reason not to be. Both of those things are hard. This fear is the thing that's blocking your relationship, and it's the thing that the two of you need to get past if you want to find any kind of resolution here."
The pair fell silent with her assessment, for a brief moment, the two of them coming to exist on the same page once more. April was terrified, and she hadn't been able to find a reason not to be – Betsy was certainly right about that much. All she could see was a future of more pain and disappointment, miscarriages, and D&Cs. She was no longer able to picture that curly-haired baby, the image that she had fallen in love with so many months ago when they had first discussed having a baby of their own.
And Jackson, instead, had the opposite problem. That end goal was the only thing that he was capable of seeing, not able to completely comprehend the fear that she had of what existed between now and then. The ectopic pregnancy had been dealt with in a different way in his head, able to separate himself from the condition more easily than she had. Being able to do that was the thing that had put them on such different pages. And going back on that? That seemed like it only had the potential to cause more problems for the both of them.
Tips and tricks are given to having an honest and open discussion, examples are given, and that takes up the rest of the time that the two of them had paid for. The both of them needed to get headed back to work rather quickly after the appointment, but at least they had the chance to talk to each other one-on-one in the car ride back over to the hospital.
"So, what did you think about that?" Jackson asked his wife as he reached over, finding one of her hands.
"She was nicer than I thought she'd be," April commented, taking his hand though she glanced out the window. "I guess… you were both right, about me being scared. I don't know how you can just look to the future in the way that you do. I wish I did. I really, really do. But my mind just doesn't work like that," she sighed.
"I know," he lifted up her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips against the back of her knuckles. "But I married you for you, differences and all," Jackson reminded her gently. "We'll get through this, April, I know we will. I don't want you to be living in fear about this." He sympathized gently.
Even if Jackson had gone into the therapist's office with his own intention about what he was not receiving in the marriage, he came out more worried about her coming out than he had been before. He'd never gone thinking about why she was so stuck in her way deeply enough until he'd been prompted to. It helped that he understood her now, even if he couldn't throw himself into the same mindset. He got it, but he couldn't empathize with it. Not when he'd been so instead in the idea of the future that he'd thought they were going to build together. Now he had to think about everything twice.
"I don't want to keep going like this either," April confessed, giving his hand a squeeze. "I really don't. I just don't know how to stop."
The two of them fall quiet for the remainder of the car ride, some kind of twisted relief present that they were able to be on the same page about things again, even if the page wasn't necessarily the happiest one that they had had in their relationship. It was better than nothing. Something was a start, and the kickstart was what they needed at the moment. The biggest fault was neither of them really knew where to go forward from the little kick, giant question marks instead lingering over their head with the lack of ideas. Jackson wanted to give her some kind of comfort, pull some kind of statistic or something for her – but he knew if there was a good one out there that exited, she would have already found it herself and clung onto it from the beginning. Maybe there was something in the Bible that he'd be able to fish out, his head racking itself for stories, but even the popularity of Christianity as a whole didn't give the atheist any ideas immediately.
But that night, he does take to doing a little research. Even if his brain didn't have the fable that he was looking for, there was plenty to read up on in the Bible. Maybe it was silly that he was the one doing this when she was a Christian, she was the expert on everything that it had to offer. But he was hoping that reaching out through something that she cherished and held so closely would be the key.
Falling into bed that night, they're comfortable with each other for the first time in awhile, even if sex is still momentarily off the table for them with what could potentially come from that. Other nights Jackson might have complained about it, but tonight, he doesn't mind so much. Not when he'd already outlined some of a conversation in his head.
"I was doing some reading earlier," Jackson started slowly. "About the story of Abraham and Sarah."
April rolled over, escaping from his grip, solely so that she could face him. "Really?"
"Yeah. Old couple, woman didn't believe that she'd be able to have a child even when she was told." Jackson glossed over the version, shifting forward to press a soft kiss against her lips. "And a year later, the two of them had their son. Now, I'm not a fan of the name Isaac particularly, but… this is from your Bible. Your God, baby. I know that you have faith in Him more than you do anything else. Are you doubting him?" The question is asked to his wife sincerely, wanting to check in on her, not trying to have his words being twisted.
"No, I'm not," April sighed. "This just doesn't feel like the same thing."
"Well, you're right. We're not a hundred," he said, trying to lighten her mood.
"Not what I meant," she rolled her eyes.
"I know," Jackson's arm snaked around her waist once more, pulling her tiny frame to flush up against his much larger one. "I just thought that you could use a reminder of that story, you know? Maybe we should go to church in the morning. I'll go with you," he made the suggestion casually, light green eyes seeking out her gaze.
Even if the idea caught her off guard given that she was generally the one who made church plans and the like, it's still appreciated, gratefully warming some of the heaviness that had settled in her heart from the openness of their conversation previous in the day. She hadn't expected him to make this kind of leap in her, knowing that he wasn't opening his mind to the faith that she had held precious for her entire life – no, he was being a good husband. He was doing something for her, like he always did. Maybe she needed to take a page from his book and learn how to give more selflessly to him. That was supposed to be the Christian thing to do, after all. Church might have been the exact reminder that she needed right now.
"That's a good idea," April agreed with a slight nod of her head, lifting up her chin so that she could kiss him.