dear heaven / I hope you're up to something / 'cause dear heaven / this just can't be for nothing
"Mama?"
Amanda rolled over atop her bed on Wednesday afternoon. April sunlight poured through the crack in the curtains, but otherwise the room was dim as she stayed huddled beneath a throw blanket. She squinted through her disheveled bangs to see Jesse with her arms full.
"The mailman came," the five-year-old announced.
"Yeah?" she answered her groggily. She didn't even know what time it was.
Jesse approached the bed and dropped her armful of envelopes and magazines, climbing up onto the mattress after them. "Here."
"Oh. Thanks," Amanda mumbled.
"Mama?"
"Hm?"
"D'you want me to rub your back?"
"Huh?"
"Rub your back," she repeated timidly. "Like you rub my back when I'm sick."
Amanda couldn't decide if she felt like smiling or crying. She attempted the former. "That's nice of you to offer, baby." She shifted to sit up against her pillow. "Y'wanna lay down with me?"
"Okay," Jesse agreed.
"Hand me all that stuff, too," she added, reaching for the mail. She might as well do one productive thing that day.
Jesse gathered up the letters and set them on her mother's lap before settling her head against Amanda's chest. She wrapped an arm around the little girl, the hand there toying with Jesse's long hair absently. The addition of her daughter's warm weight was reassuring. With her free fingers, Amanda started shuffling through the mail.
"Are you sick?" Jesse asked.
Amanda's hands paused. "No. I'm okay."
"Are you sad?" she tried.
"I'm a little sad," Amanda admitted cautiously.
Jesse squirmed. "Because the baby's in heaven?"
Her brow furrowed as her heart squeezed in her chest. "Who told you that?"
"Dad," she answered easily.
She nodded, relieved that Sonny had said something so she didn't have to broach the subject on her own.
"Who's gonna look after him?" Jesse wondered.
"What do you mean?" she asked her daughter.
"In heaven," the five-year-old clarified. "Who's gonna take care of him?"
Amanda swallowed over the lump forming in her throat. "I'm sure that... I'm sure there's a bunch of angels around who'll do a real good job." When the words left her mouth, for a brief second, Amanda understood why Sonny found faith so comforting. To believe in God was to know that he was taking care of things behind the scenes, even as you suffered on earth.
Her reply seemed to satisfy Jesse's curiosity, at least for the moment. Amanda was glad, because she didn't want to cry in front of her, and she could feel tears welling up in her eyes as she was struck by Jesse's innocence. While she may have had the attitude of a teenager on occasion, she was still so young, still so blissfully clueless. None of this made sense to Jesse, but in a very different way.
With a sigh, Amanda looked at the remaining mail in her lap. She opened up the next envelope with Bellevue listed as the return address, cringing as she anticipated a massive bill. Instead, Amanda found a single sheet of paper inside titled Bellevue Pathology. Her eyes anxiously scanned the laboratory report for anything she would understand.
MOTHER: Amanda Rollins Carisi
Age at the time of this delivery: 37 years old
FATHER: Dominick Carisi Jr.
Age at the time of this delivery: 37 years old
CONCLUSIONS:
Length of pregnancy: 15 completed weeks
Fetus died: x before labor _ during labor/delivery _ unknown
Time of death: Intrauterine death at approx. 13 weeks
Main disease/condition of fetus: Inconclusive
Main disease/condition of mother affecting fetus: None
Other relevant circumstances: None
Thirteen weeks.
Thirteen weeks.
Amanda felt her stomach turn, nauseated by the knowledge that somehow, she hadn't known that the child inside of her had died fourteen days prior to her miscarriage. Had he been in distress? Could she have done something to prevent such a horrible outcome? A heavy combination of guilty and anxiety pressed against her chest making her breaths painful. At least if he had been too sick to live outside of the womb, Amanda would have had some kind of peace. Now, she just felt culpable and incompetent. Mothers just sensed these things, didn't they? Like how she had simply known she was pregnant without any of the classic signs; it had been an indescribable feeling of certainty. How could her instincts have ultimately failed her so terribly?
She thought of Sonny, who was a bystander to this tragedy but no less impacted by it. They hadn't talked much over the past few days; whenever he went quiet, that's how Amanda knew he was hurting. Now she felt responsible for his pain, which only made the ache inside of her more crippling. Looking down at the pathology report, she chewed her lower lip to suppress a moan. How would she ever be able to tell him that this was her fault?
She couldn't spend another second in bed. Desperate for a distraction, Amanda set herself up on a bar stool at their kitchen island with her laptop. When Sonny came home from work, she was there, pounding away at the keyboard, throwing herself back into her job as if her world hadn't been turned upside down just three short days ago. There were always e-mails to read and paperwork to be done - especially since she hadn't been into the precinct since last Friday. As a sergeant, she had other people's work to review, too. It was a convenient excuse to compartmentalize the terrible discovery she had made that afternoon - she could overwhelm herself with SVU-related tasks until she was too tired to think of anything else.
"I texted Liv. I'm going in tomorrow," Amanda told Sonny, eyes still focused on her screen. She could feel him hovering.
Sonny sighed. "Amanda, I really don't think you should."
She looked up from her laptop. "Why not? I'm fine."
"The doctor said-"
"I know what the doctor said, Sonny," she interrupted him briskly. "I have a lot of work to do that's just been sittin' on my desk..."
"The work can wait," he insisted, sounding exasperated.
Amanda snorted. "For who? I'm just gonna have to do it all later, on top of whatever else piles up."
"It doesn't matter, it's not that important."
"It is important! It's my job and I care about it."
"You always do this. When are you gonna learn to slow down?" he demanded, now visibly irate. "You always push yourself too hard and..."
There it was: the tiniest implication that maybe Sonny thought this was her fault, too. In her current state of distress, she didn't need much fuel to ignite her fire. "And what, Sonny?" She slammed the top of her computer shut and got to her feet. Icy blue eyes narrow, she glared up at him. Sonny was five inches taller than she was, his lanky frame looming over hers, but in that moment he couldn't have appeared less threatening. "Go on, just say it. You think it's my fault we lost the baby, don't you?"
His mouth fell open. "Amanda, I never said that."
"You're thinking it though," she snapped. "You've barely spoken to me in three days."
"You won't talk to me!" he exclaimed.
"Well, what do you want me to say?" she cried. "I don't know what to say!"
"You could at least try," Sonny asserted. "You aren't the only one impacted by this, you know!"
She began to stalk into the living room, desperate for space - but not necessarily wanting to be left alone, either. There was that feeling again: the crushing guilt weighing on her heart and lungs. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot you were the one who was unknowingly carrying our dead son around for two weeks. I've been so insensitive," she sneered, because it was too much to keep inside anymore. There was venom in her tone, her words biting and harsh, but it wasn't Sonny she was angry at.
"Wait, what?" Sonny sputtered, right at her heels.
Amanda whirled around. "I got the pathology report in the mail. It says that they think he died two weeks ago. They don't know why, but it was only a matter of time."
The color drained from his face. "How? Didn't you-"
"I don't know!" she attempted to shout, but instead her cry came out hoarse and strangled. "I have no idea! You think this was some big secret I was keeping from you, like I knew all along?"
He took a long stride toward her and grabbed her upper arms with each of his hands, as if he was afraid she might run away. "No, Amanda, of course I don't," he said steadily. His eyes were big and sad. "But I'm not in your head and I'm not in your body and I am tryin' really hard to understand all this, okay?" She went to yank her arms away, but he held her tighter, fighting for eye contact. "Hey, look at me."
She clenched her jaw as she studied the wall behind him, trying to keep her mouth from quivering with impending tears. I'm so sorry that I did this to you, to us. I'll never fucking forgive myself, was what she meant to say.
"I know this isn't your fault," Sonny told her firmly. "This is not your fault."
Swallowing thickly, she chewed the inside of her cheek. He said the words with enough confidence that Amanda felt the tiniest bit of relief; it grounded her just barely. She took a trembling set of fingers and hastily wiped away the hint of tears beneath her sore eyes. "I just feel so... so betrayed. Betrayed by my own body. I-I... how couldn't I know that something was wrong?" she sunk down on to the couch as she scraped tremulous fingers through her messy hair. "If I had maybe, maybe I could have done something and we wouldn't be here and..."
Sonny sat down close beside her. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't take responsibility for something even doctors aren't sure of," he urged her quietly.
She looked over at him and whispered, "but he was a part of me. I knew he was from the start, even before I should have. How could I not know this?"
He bowed his head in silence; of course he couldn't answer her question. Nobody could.
"I know that you're disappointed," she continued softly. "I didn't want to talk to you about it because, because I was too afraid you'd blame me... or that you'd ask me questions I couldn't answer, or..."
"I don't blame you. I haven't for a second," Sonny insisted. "That would never even cross my mind and I hate that it would cross yours."
Amanda chewed at her thumb nail as she tried to accept what he was saying without argument. "What's... how do you feel?" she asked him timidly, voice barely audible.
"I dunno," he said quietly as he leaned forward to rest elbows on his knees. "It's... it's, I don't know what it is." He studied his entwined hands intently, thinking. "I guess that it's grief that I feel. Somebody died, somebody I loved already, even though I hadn't even met him."
Her chest tightened. "Hollow."
Sonny looked over at her expectantly.
"That's what it feels like," she clarified. "An emptiness you can't really describe."
"Yeah." He nodded. "That's it."
"How am I supposed to tell people?" Amanda croaked helplessly. "Your parents... mine... everybody at work..."
Sonny sat up straight again and turned toward her. He rested a hand on Amanda's lower back and another on her knee. "I think it's gonna be hard."
His honesty was appreciated but still painful: I think it's gonna be hard. She nodded slowly. "I think so, too."
"But... it's gonna pass, like everything does," he continued quietly, giving her knee a squeeze. "We'll get through it together."
Amanda nodded again. She covered his hand with her own and hung on.
On Thursday morning, Sonny arrived at the 16th precinct before anyone else - Amanda included. He had told her that he was going to the gym, which he had done, but he hadn't been totally honest about the rest of his plan. He knew that Liv was always in early and he wanted to talk to her without an audience. After he dropped his things off at his desk, he approached the lieutenant's office, her door ajar.
"Hey, Lieu, can I talk to you?" he asked, nudging the door open a bit further.
"Sure," she replied easily from her spot behind her desk. She pulled off her reading glasses. "You're here early."
"Yeah, I know." He sunk down into the chair in front of her.
"Is Amanda here, too?" Liv asked curiously.
"No. She's, well, that's what I came in to talk to you about," he explained.
Liv gave him a pointed look. "If she sent you in to plead her case for putting her back in the field while she's pregnant-"
"No, it's not that," Sonny interrupted.
"Oh. Okay. She usually likes to do that herself anyway," she said with a little smirk. "Is she feeling better? I know something is going around."
"She wasn't sick," he admitted. "That's why I wanted to talk to you."
"What was she, then?" A look of nervous dread passed over the lieutenant's face. "Please don't say 'gambling.'"
"No. She, uh, well, this past Sunday, things kinda... took a turn," he started out awkwardly. "She had a miscarriage."
Liv's gaze widened. "What?"
"Yeah. I know she's comin' in today, she insisted. I tried to talk her out of it but she's not havin' it." He met Liv's gaze. "Don't tell her I told you this or anything, it's just... she's kinda worried about people askin' stuff and treatin' her different. Fin knows, but nobody else does."
"Carisi, I... I am so sorry," Liv said quietly, her brown eyes shining. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm okay," he answered with a shrug, not interested in elaborating on his own feelings at the moment. "Amanda's feelin' guilty even though there's nothing she could have done. But, you know her, she doesn't talk to anybody. I didn't think she'd come to you on her own and I didn't want it to come up and she'd be caught off guard and-"
"Understood," Liv told him firmly.
Sonny stood up, satisfied. "Thanks, Lieutenant," he said gratefully. "I appreciate it."
He slipped out of the office before the conversation could go any further.
A bagel wrapped in parchment paper and two small, white containers dropped onto her desk in front of Amanda. She looked up curiously to see Fin hovering beside her.
"Got you a bagel," he stated bluntly.
She quirked an eyebrow. "Cinnamon raisin?"
Fin nodded. "With extra cream cheese."
"My favorite," Amanda said with a little grin.
He walked over to his desk and sunk down into his chair. "I know."
"Thanks," she told him quietly.
"Uh huh," Fin responded casually.
This was more than breakfast - this was Fin's I'm sorry this shit happened to you gesture. Amanda had always appreciated the way her partner knew just what she needed: she didn't want to talk about her miscarriage at work, but his small act of thoughtfulness assured her that she was on his mind regardless. Looking up from the bagel, she saw Fin poking lazily at his keyboard - exactly how he started every other morning. He wasn't gazing over at her with sad, sympathetic eyes or trying to take paperwork off of her desk to lighten her load - he was normal even if Amanda wasn't.
She glanced over at Sonny, who was stirring his coffee quietly at his desk. He looked up just in time to catch her staring and offered her a wan but encouraging smile.
Sitting between the two men she trusted the most, Amanda felt some semblance of peace.
