An extra chapter for all you lovelies this evening because I'm bored, and feeling inspired :D
Keep the love flowing!
Month Four
"She's been like this for a few days. I can't get any sense out of her."
"I can't imagine what she's go through. I'd imagine she hasn't got a great deal to say."
"But she won't even talk to me, Meredith. I'm her husband forgodsake."
"Just be patient. I'm sure she'll talk to you when she's ready Jackson."
"I hope she be ready soon. I'm hurting knowing I have no way to make any of this ok for her."
April Kepner had felt many times that sinking, aching feeling when you have something you really want and then it slips away, silently without any warning. Maybe at times, it's something you don't even realise that you want until it's too late. Then the rug is pulled from beneath your feet and you can't fathom the empty, dull sense in your chest. It almost feels like a part of you is missing.
Now, part of her really was missing.
Thumbing the small piece of card in her hand, a single tear dripped from her left cheek and a single sniff escaped her sinuses. She didn't even really know why she was looking at her, torturing herself over and over again. The trash can was a metre or so away from where she sat. It would have been easiest to dump it. It was of pointless existence now anyway.
"April?"
The sound of her husband's voice caused her to look up suddenly, dropping the piece of card that she was cradling with her finger. "You made me jump." She murmured, scooping at the waist from her chair to retrieve it.
"Meredith told me you were in here. I just came to see if you were ok." He explained, edging into the lab with some uncertainty.
April nodded with little enthusiasm. She was still unable to take her eyes from the scratchy image that filled every inch of her vision. Jackson's being here was not something she wanted to ignore but she was finding it physically impossible to offer him any more recognition. Every time she caught his eye, a stabbing sensation rushed across her chest and her heart began to beat rapidly. Of course, her husband had been hard pressed not to notice this.
The last month had been a constant circle of this, bar the first few days from when they had been told the heart breaking news. Then she had sought comfort in him, reaming close to his chest as she sobbed every last ounce of emotion from her body. Then suddenly, with no warning or explanation, she had slipped away from his grasp and continued to remain almost mute in his presence. Every time that he stepped into a room with her, and she refused to give him anything more than a nod or a few words, he felt a piece of his heart shatter into a hundred and one irreparable fragments.
"Do you need anything? I heard you've been pretty busy in the ER." Jackson tried again, in vain hope something would spark conversation.
"No, I'm ok thanks." April replied bluntly. Still she refused to offer him even a second of a glance or an expression that might give him something, anything.
"April. Please just talk to me… say anything. It's like you can't even stand the sight of me anymore." He pleaded, as something snapped within him. It was beginning to get extremely tiresome making effort to receive no reward. She wasn't the only one hurting.
However, it seemed silence was the only thing that prevailed, even after his admission of hurt and despair. April's eyes just continued to remain trained on the picture, still fixed firmly within her grasp, more tears slipping down her cheeks hidden beneath her auburn curls. Jackson knew he was defeated.
"I'll be at home. If you decided to come home that is." He told her bluntly, turning in the doorway to exit the room. He could no longer stay here and try, when she didn't seem willing to want to give him anything in return.
"Jackson, I…" She began but her words seemed to trail gently into the silence that surrounded them. She couldn't quite bring herself to look upward but she sensed in her chest, just saying one thing would stop him from leaving and slipping further from her. She knew that just because now, she couldn't quite bring herself to use him as her emotional crutch, it was not fair to continue to keep him at arm's length like she had been doing. "Do you hate me?"
The question came as a surprise to her husband. Hate her? Where had she gotten such an idea? No that he was sure he even knew for what reason she might have been referencing such a strong term of emotion. "April, what an earth makes you think that?" He asked, turning back and taking the length of the room to her side, in a second or two.
"I have so much to answer for. Why didn't I just listen when you told me to stay home? I was sick." She mumbled, words spilling quite freely from her lips. Pain was evident as her tone peaked with the sentence end.
Gently, Jackson eased himself down onto his knees and peered beneath the mass of curls obscuring her face. It was then he noted just how much she must have been crying. "You weren't to know what was happening, April." He soothed, reaching his hand across to touch her face with sheer tenderness. It was killing him to see his wife like this.
"I just thought it was a stomach flu… like yours. I….I…"
It was clear it was too painful for her to continue on with what she had wanted to say. It was when she was upon the edge of verbally hearing the words that she broken her in two. Three Doctor's had told them to her, and Jackson had even reconfirmed them but still, she was struggling and grappling with the sound of them on her own lips. "It was all my fault."
"Hey," He started with a stern tone, ceasing the soothing strokes of her cheek and returning his fingers to her chin, tilting it with strong coaxing toward him. "Hey, this was nobody's fault April. These things just happen without any warning. It's nature's way."
The words rolled with a quickened pace within the atmosphere of the room. They seemed so loaded and so fake. Nature's way? No person should have to feel like this at the hands of nature; God was nature, he wouldn't make a person suffer in the way April currently was because it was the way things 'just happen'. This was an event of great misfortune, brought about by selfishness and her lack of ability to listen to her husband. Mainly, she was sure it was based on the reaction she had expressed a few months previous. The moment she had opened the letter containing her blood results in the ambulance bay, tearing Jackson's heart out with her jubilation.
"Jackson, this means something. It hasn't just happened. I did something to make this happen… and I'm pretty sure I know what."
"April," He tried, cut deeply by the way she seemed unable to understand the simple reasoning for the terrible situation they had found themselves dealing with. "You have to understand it wasn't you. Neither of us could have stopped this from happening."
"You don't get it Jackson! I almost wished for this to happen. I was too happy, overjoyed even when I found out I wasn't going to have to be coerced into my future." She retorted. Finding her voice, she seemed to suddenly gather courage and snatch her eyes away from the sheet of card in her hand, finding them now matching Jackson's eyes. He was understandably stunned by her reaction to his soothing words. Shifting the image, she lifted it so her husband could see and pointed at the grainy imaging. "Now I want this, now we're married and happy... and my chance has been ripped away. I didn't even get the chance to experience the moment I found out… or the moment I got to tell you."
Jackson sighed, rubbing his hand across his face as he averted his eyes from the picture. He personally did not need a physical reminder of the pain that lingered within them both. "April, please. I know that you're hurting, I am too but this isn't helping anyone. What happened then, before the crazy last minute wedding and my realising what an idiot I had been… that was the past, when neither of us knew that what we wanted was this… to be together and be happy."
Jackson knew he was trying but that, seemingly, his words were failing. The pain in her eyes did not shift, nor did the silent tears cease. Not in all the time he had known her, had he seen April quite this broken. Even through the death of her grandparents, and then her own parents facing bankruptcy that could have forced them to sell their farm. April was always the tower of strength, the one people turned to… the one Jackson turned to when the going got tough. Now she was the one who needed help and he knew he was grappling to provide a substantial amount.
"I love you, April Avery. I don't blame you for a single thing, you have to believe me when I tell you that. Because I'm struggling here." He continued. Yet it was clear he was running out of breath to carry his words. It was as though his entire body was being crushed under the weight of the pain his wife seemed be torturing with.
April's eyes were still fixed on his. She was frozen to the moment, trying to will herself from the deepest corner of her being, to believe that he didn't blame her. Knowing Jackson in the way she did, she understood he was a kind man who loved her, and physically could not see past the point at which her subconscious believed he would never be able to forgive her.
Breathing outwards, drifting soft waves of hot breath across the skin on his cheek, she reached up and placed a finger on the corner of his lips. Tears were still falling.
"Jackson, I lost our baby. I willed the last time not be pregnant and then when I was… I had a miscarriage. How can you say none of that is my fault?
"She knows you love her, that's all that matters." Meredith tried once more, impressed by her own ability to comfort and support. Perhaps though, she thought quietly to herself, it may have been as a result of her own experience in this particular area.
"She does." Christina reaffirmed, although not normally one for any sort of endearments, even when it was friends concerned.
A pager broke the stillness in the room suddenly, to which Meredith and Christina responded to with sudden ferreting in their scrub pockets. "911." They said in unison, standing but not instantly stretching the leave as a mark of respect for their friend.
"Go." He told them quietly, offering both them a weak smile before they escaped into the bustle of the corridors outside the confines of the hospital room.
Jackson swallowed hard, bringing his focus back to April. She had not moved the entire time Meredith and Christina had been in the room with them. Choosing instead to lay on her left side, clutching a pillow with her back facing those that may enter. Although he knew this was a coping mechanism – shutting out all those who loved and cared deeply for her – it didn't make him any less determined to try.
Taking to his feet, he crossed the room and climbed into the position in the few inches provided on the mattress against the curve his wife's spine. For a moment or two, she chose not to acknowledge this, until her reached his arm around her and eased her body into the familiar curve of his own. It was only then, did he feel a few of her muscles release and her back collapse against his chest. He could feel the wetness of the pillow against his hand from where she had quite obviously been crying.
"I love you." He murmured, pressing his lips into the shaft of her lank hair. Even without her daily wash and style, her hair still provided a comforting familiar smell to him. "And I am so sorry about everything you have had to go through this week."
"I-I-I-" She stumbled in a quiet tone, unable barely speak for fear of a fresh sob racking her entire body once more. "I lost our baby, Jackson. A baby I didn't even know we had, and now I wish we had more than anything…. It was just supposed to be a stomach flu."
"Ssh." He soothed, reaching a hand beneath the sheets and stroking her bare arm. It was a sight to break even the hardest of hearts.
"I just want all of this to be over."
The memory of those few days hung still fresh with the young surgeon. Right from the moment they had been told there no foetal heart beat, right through to tonight, here in the office with his broken wife and his equally broken heart. It didn't seem based on all of that, that it would safe to feel anything but grief and devastation ever again. And still.
"April, I get it ok? You're hurting. You're allowed to hurt." He told her, his hand still on her chin and their eyes still transfixed against the other person's. "But whatever happens, no matter how long it takes for things to get better, I'm here… I'm not going anywhere… we're gonna make it, I promise."