Copley Hospital
Morrisville, VT
February 1957

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The first thing that Maria was aware of was silence. Silence, as she shifted from nothingness into awareness.

The next thing that she was aware of was pain. The deep, aching twinges in her sides, just below her ribcage, and she thought perhaps it might be something else, as well, but an odd sensation of cool liquid shot up one of her arms and all pain, wherever it was, soon began to dull.

Comprehension slowly stitching together her reality, Maria held her right arm out in front of her, staring at the needle in the crook. Everything around her was dark, and as things which were fuzzy slid into focus, she could hear the ticking of a wall clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

A figure was shrouded in the darkness of the tiny room, filled only with a hospital bed, a chair, and some medical equipment. It would surely be Georg, perhaps asleep. Her own breathing was loud in her ears, and the pounding of blood too.

Unbidden, a thought floated into her mind. Blood, there had been blood. More than she thought. Just earlier that day, she had wondered… something about Christmas. Or—was it a nightmare? A deep sensation in her gut activated, and the urge to find out more was overwhelming.

Mechanically, Maria pulled the covers from her legs and slipped out of the bed, rolling her companion the intravenous vein on its pole along with her into the tiny adjoining washroom. Somehow she had escaped the torture of a catheter, for now. Good.

Once inside the small, dark space, Maria pulled the door shut behind her and switched on the light. There was not much room to move about, so she leaned against the wall, knees trembling. She looked at her face in the mirror across from her, above the sink. She was pale as a sheet. Nothing unusual, there.

Lifting her hospital gown up to her waist in white-knuckled fistfuls, Maria stared silently as she watched warm blood trickle down her legs, staining her socks, and begin to pool at her feet. Too much, it's too much to be normal. Just beyond the opioid wall of painlessness, she could feel the stabbing of something deep inside, between her legs, seizing its chance to court agony. Separating itself from her insides, coming away, becoming nothing.

A sob began to rise in her throat, but nothing came; instead, she clutched to the pole next to her and slid to the floor, shaking so hard she broke into a cold sweat and vomited all over herself.

Breathing hard and trying to focus on any one thing, anything except the dizzying lightheadedness, Maria heard a terrified voice, as though from a distance, shout, "Oh, my God!" and suddenly, strong arms surrounded her, lifting her from the floor, carrying her, laying her down somewhere. It was soft, and she felt something cold touch her forehead. With her vision fading in and out, she wondered if she was drifting towards a taste of heaven. Impulsively, she reached for the face swimming before her.

Georg, it was Georg.

"Georg," she murmured, smile breaking over her gaunt face. Another voice, frantic, wasn't his. But the vision before her eyes was, and that was all she could recall, wishing she could hold onto his image as clearly as this—forever—and then she blacked out.

The next coming to for Maria found her bound to her bed, unable to move, and a nurse busy with something at her bedside. Her husband was at the window, his head bowed, a hand pinching the bridge of his nose. Maria turned her head toward him, unheeding of the nurse who startled, and asked in a rasping voice, "I was with child, wasn't I?"

Georg, who had turned when the nurse exclaimed in shock, hesitated as he bit his lip.

"My socks," Maria said simply, her gaze up at him imploring honesty.

He nodded. "Yes, Maria. You were. Here and gone, before we could really know."

"I only just guessed," she said, "and I wanted—I wanted to tell you—" but her throat closed in on itself, and she couldn't finish.

Closing the space between them, Georg pulled up his chair next to his wife and took her hand, the hand that had a needle in its arm's crook, giving her hydration, medicine, and relief.

"Maria," he said firmly, "this is no fault of yours."

"I know," she said, but a twisted, high pitch as her voice cracked suggested that she might think otherwise.

"It just happened, Maria," Georg said forcefully. "Sometimes, these things simply are. No rhyme or reason, no misbehavior, no anything at all. You are sick, you have been sick, and your body tried its best to do what it should, but it could not have it both ways. You see that, don't you?"

Maria stared down at his hand, the hand which covered her, and willed herself to answer. So many thoughts lay at the very tip of her tongue, but she could not make them come out.

The only thing that she could make sense of was that she was tired. So damn tired. So tired of this disease and everything it was responsible for destroying: plans, finances, her health, her marriage, and now, her family.

A baby had been conceived, and this awful thing inside her body that made her so ill that she doubled over and vomited until it felt her insides were out and up was down, it had snuck below the undercurrents, stealthy and malicious, and stolen that small, new, precious thing.

Like a wisp of smoke as the ashes of an ember snuff away the light, it was gone.

This, however, she could bear. What she could not, bear, though, was the shame and guilt of just how overwhelmingly thorough her relief was. She could not carry a baby like this. She never wanted to find out how it would be. It was why she had done so much to prevent it. One slip, just one, and here lay the shattered evidence before her. She could never tell Georg, so horrible this relief felt to her.

Maria looked up at her husband, right into his eyes, and all at once he was wrapping a hand around her neck and touching his forehead to hers, bracing and supporting her, as Maria all but split apart at the seams in mourning. She did not know what the sound that came from her was called, she only knew that it was real, it was true, and that her husband was also shaking as tears rolled down his cheeks and he rocked her back and forth, back and forth, until she was too exhausted to continue.

The doctor was called, and visited briefly to explain to Maria that her cervix had indeed dilated to expel a pregnancy that he guessed was ten or twelve weeks along, according to her own meticulous notes and the baby's size. The bleeding would recede eventually, he said, probably within a week or two.

"And," the doctor hesitated, observing the red, tearstained face of his patient, who had only just sufficiently calmed herself for his visit, "I would strongly suggest considering a hysterectomy, Maria. If you were to fall pregnant again while we know so little of how to control your disease, I am quite certain you would die. You, or the child, or both." The words were gentle, but direct.

Maria swallowed, and then blinked. Then, to the surprise of both husband and physician, she said, "I will consider what you have said."

The doctor nodded, cleared his throat, and excused himself.

The next days and weeks crawled by, filled with small conversations, bits of food, large doses of antibiotics, endless walks around the grounds of Copley Hospital, and hope that the next day, the nurses might say that discharge was on the horizon, that Maria could go home.

Finally, as early March grew later, and spring had definitively arrived to impress itself upon Vermont, the doctors all agreed that it was time to send Maria home. At present, there was nothing more they could do to help her, and where she had been for the last week was where she would stay.

The deep, dull aches had lessened, and it was by now only the residual bleeding from the miscarriage that reminded Maria that anything aside from the usual had even gone completely awry.

In the car on the half-hour drive back to Stowe, Maria said in a thick voice, "I don't wish to tell the children. It just seems…"

She didn't want to say "pointless." That felt altogether too harsh, too callous, and unfeeling.

"Well, anyway, it would have happened regardless, here or there, and wasn't why I was hospitalized. You understand, don't you?"

When Georg glanced sideways at his wife, it was to see tears sparkling in her eyes. Sighing, he covered her hands, which were twisting in her lap, with his free one, and nodded.

She'd been sitting on the edge of her neatly-made bed, dressed and ready to depart, reading her discharge papers when he had walked back in to collect her. Something had given her pause, and when he gently extracted the stack from her hands, he thought he knew what it might be.

Sure enough, it was the confirmation from the laboratory that a child had, for a short time, grown inside her. The paperwork must have gotten lost in the shuffle, and the staff hadn't realized that no one had pointed this out to Maria, or forgot to pull it, or something. Either way, it had fallen between the cracks, and she was examining it now.

Looking down at his wife, who sat silently staring at her feet, Georg sighed and sat down beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She leaned in to lay her head on his chest, and sighed herself.

"I don't know how to keep doing this," she murmured. "Every day something awful."

Georg refrained from saying anything, no token words, no bright encouragement, for he knew that not only would such words ring incredibly hollow—to Maria, right now, such words would be unbearably gauche. He remembered all too well being in such a place in his own life. He had hated it, and one of their few stark similarities was that she hated it, too.

Instead, he helped her up, guided her through the hospital to the main entrance, and helped her step into the car. There was a great deal to talk about, and much that the medical staff had left them with, but the time for that was not now. Perhaps after they were home a while, then they could discuss such things.

It was not until April dawned, however, that Maria spoke even a word of her latest visit to the hospital. And even then, it was less to do with what all had been presented to her and more to do with how it would wreck their finances yet again.

"Maria," Georg said softly, "I understand your worries, but I think we should set that aside and discuss the recommendation to go to Boston. And I do not find a hysterectomy to be out of the realm of reason, either."

She did not say anything, but Georg could see something about her countenance harden, and her jaw set. Had he left her alone too long, worried for her fragility? Should he have started this conversation sooner, not let her get too far entrenched in what she thought and felt about the present crisis without outside input?

"Maria, please say something."

She was standing over the kitchen sink, washing tea cups and her favourite tea kettle. Slowly, she drew her hands from the soapy water and rested them on the edge of the sink, bowing her head. The muscles in her neck were strained with tightness, and he could feel in the space between them just how unwilling she was to have this conversation.

"Why did you let me?" she asked, her voice harsh. "Why, Georg, did you let me persuade you?"

Not expecting this, Georg looked upon his wife with bewilderment and replied, "Let you what, Maria?"

"Why," she choked out angrily, "on Christmas—why did you—"

Taken aback and hurt by the implication of his wife's choked words, Georg's response was sharper than he intended. "Say it. Say it, Maria. Almost twenty years now, and somehow you cannot say that a man and wife might occasionally enjoy sexual union together?"

At this, Maria whipped around. The gleam in her eye was perilous, and her voice dangerously low. "Don't you dare accuse me of such callous indifference. I came on to you!"

"Exactly!" Georg roared. "Isn't that how it is, now, if I am ever so lucky—if we are ever so lucky? It was solace, to me, and I thought it was for you! A gift, even! Serendipitous!"

If Maria had ever looked at her husband with any measure of contempt before, it was nothing to the thunderous expression on her face, now.

"Unbelievable," she spat. "Truly incomprehensible. I have had the worst attack I've had in years, and miscarried, and both could have been avoided if only you had tried just a bit harder to put me off. You did not try very hard, and only said that the rubbers were no good. I have a diaphragm! You could have reminded me and, considering the things you know how to do to a woman, I daresay you could have helped!"

In anger, she turned back around to face the sink, shoving a fist into her eyes, which were threatening to leak angry tears. "God," she rumbled, "I am an idiot."

Her husband, she realized suddenly, was swiftly upon her, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders, spinning her around. With a slight shake, he demanded of her, "What in God's name was I supposed to think, Maria?"

Staring up into the face of this man who she had loved, whose face was filled with anger and yet of whom she was not afraid, this man who had risked everything to keep the family safe, this man who she had been loved by and made love to, borne children with, her hardened gaze softened, and her eyes grew sad, and she shook her head, and said softly, her voice cracking, "We do it all the same. Turn out the lights. Sometimes even lock the door. Kiss each other good night. Talk about important things or not so important things. But we don't make love… not anymore."

At these words, Georg thought he felt something inside him split in two. Had his wife, standing right here, just broken his heart? This woman, for whom he would give anything, endure everything? Had she just said the thing he had never known, a truth unbidden? Was their marriage over, washed away by this thing that was their lives now?

Before he could think of the impact his words would have, he sneered, "Did you even want that baby?"

He might as well have lashed his wife with a whip. Maria's eyes grew wide, her face hardened again, and she wrenched herself away from his grasp as though burned.

"Don't you dare ask me such a thing, Georg von Trapp. And don't touch me. Don't come near me," she hissed, backing away. "Just leave me alone. I need to space, space where you don't hover. I cannot keep doing this. It is the same damn thing every time. I can play the reel in my mind, like the news reels during the war, day after day, year after year. It does not change, it is always the same outcome. I am ill, you are my caretaker, it is well for a while, we live on borrowed time, I am sick again. I am sick of it!"

"Maria, if you don't think for a second that if there were anything in my power to change that—"

She held up a hand, shaking her head tightly. "No, don't say another word. Please."

"Maria…" Georg said, voice rasping now.

"I want to go," she said, voice quavering. "I have phoned Brigitta and she has agreed that I can stay with her in Cambridge, with her family. They have that little garden cottage where I can rest in peace and quiet, and she says they have just installed a phone inside it. I can help with the baby, spend time alone, perhaps gain some clarity about this all."

"Why is it," Georg said sadly, "that when you are scared, you always run?"

"You won't try to stop me?"

"It has never worked before," Georg said, feeling numb. "But at least this time, you gave me notice. You are your own woman, Maria. Go, if you think it will be anything to you."

"Will you telephone?" she asked.

Georg's eyes widened as she posed this question, and he did not know what to say. What did one say, when what was left to say was separated by an entire world? How could one bridge the chasm?

"Do you want me to?"

Maria considered the question, dropping her crossed arms to her sides, the defensiveness of the last moments draining from her. Finally, she said, "I miss you, Georg. That won't change, not here nor there."

He nodded slowly, acquiescing to the non-answer.

As Georg sat alone in his study that evening, replaying the trajectory of their row over in his mind, he found himself wondering why just that one, shining moment of intimacy, of vulnerability on a Christmas afternoon was still, in the first days of April, exacting such a high price. When had they ever agreed to such a thing? Had they ever agreed to never let things become what they had? The years had grown so long, and stretched so far beyond what he knew how to do, that he did not know anymore. He had been with Maria longer now than he had ever been with Agathe, and Maria was now almost fifteen years older than Agathe had lived to be. There was no tread left for him to follow, no experience given to him by the harshness of life before. This was all uncharted, and he and Maria, after fourteen long years of managing, of getting by, were cracking under the strain.

He supposed that if they were ever a "happily ever after" like those Disney pictures, or like fairytales, that the happily ever after had a shelf life. He had yet to see anything beyond a wedding. The pictures never showed the backbreaking work that shaped a life, the strain and stress that political upheaval created, the burden and trial that was raising children even amid the joys, the travesty that was crumbling health for the one that should live forever young?

God, if he could have it his way, he would suffer with Maria's affliction, and she would live a full and bright life. Not whatever this sham of a half-life was, snatching borrowed time and always being overtly aware that there was a limit to it all, as though a bomb with a malfunctioning timer would detonate at the slightest impact.

She would be well, and fully engaged in her life, rather than building her social circle around hospital staff and casserole trains and thank you notes.

Now there was another remarkable thing. Every time she was in hospital, someone in town found out about it and organized meal upon meal for the von Trapp family, so that the parents never had to worry if the children at home had enough food to cook and eat, and every time, Maria would coordinate what was necessary through her visitors, and every time, she would write thank you notes to every single family who helped to provide for hers. It was a less sizeable undertaking, now, than it had been in the past, and their married children who were nearest helped as much as they were able, but it was nevertheless an undertaking.

Maria never let herself be overwhelmed by the kindness of others, and accepted it graciously, even when she noticed that the kindness was laced with pity. Pity was something Georg had never had a stomach for, but his wife was and had always been a better person than he, so he had simply accepted it for what it was without thinking too hard.

Now, for the first time, Georg found himself wondering what it must cost his wife to accept so many things—not just from others, but from her husband. Not often able to give back in the same capacity any longer, the people around them seemed to understand that if she could, then she would, and it was enough.

Perhaps that was why she was so angry about what had happened between them at Christmas. Even as her disposition and her words indicated complete willingness, they both were all too aware of the magnitude of the consequences, and perhaps what she had tried to say to him in their kitchen, but did not have words for it… was that perhaps, just maybe, the offer should have been enough for him. That the gravity of the possible consequences was too heavy for what they had done, that he should have seen that, acted differently, braced her in a brief window where she had otherwise convinced herself that she could handle it, for…

Well, the consequences had come, and it was more clear to him now that Maria was not able to handle it, at least not this way.

A fist curling against the armrest of his swivel chair, Georg gritted his teeth and shook his head. She was so goddamn impossibly obstinate! Fuming to himself, he reflected on the fact that she was probably packing her things right now, and arranging for someone to bring her to the train station.

Why couldn't she see that the toll was exacted on him as badly as it was on her? That he should carry the full weight of responsibility for this last attack and the horrid miscarriage was utterly unfair, and he would refuse until his dying day so to do. If she wanted to talk like proper adults about the matter, he would do so, but he failed to see, even under the layers of her words, how he could have possibly acted any differently. He loved her, and he wanted to be with her. He would not have otherwise risked everything it meant for the children and their status in Austrian society. She had been worth the gamble, and the payoff had gone so much further than he ever could have imagined in his wildest dreams.

But still, here lay everything between them before his feet, broken and shattered, and for God's sake, she had lost a child! She had barely grieved, and he could not find the root of it. The only thing he could suppose without Maria's input was the exact thing that he had hurled at her: that she hadn't wanted the child.

The thing he had not said, though he thought it, was too cruel, tucked beneath that questioning accusation: that Maria was glad the child was gone.

Though it would be wildly uncharacteristic for his wife, Georg could not help but feel that circumstances might have moulded her this way. After all, the doctors here had all supposed that she had developed her illness from having had too many children too quickly, and put herself under too much strain.

Something about this explanation had never made sense to Georg, and though he had tried a few times to talk with Maria regarding her thoughts on the subject, she had not divulged much beyond the fact that she had internalized the reasoning, and would not chance another pregnancy again. It was not an option.

In the beginning, he had accepted this, but as the years went on, Matty was weaned, and Maria had no more babies, her condition only progressed, instead of improving or staying the same. Still, doctors had no clear answers, and the feelings about attempting transplant were cautious at best and ambivalent at worst. The next best thing, they supposed, was to eat a simple diet that did not tax the overburdened organs, and to avoid anything remotely strenuous.

He found himself wondering if Maria would go through with a hysterectomy like Dr. Levin had suggested. Would she do it while in Boston, staying with Brigitta's family? It had not escaped his notice that it would be an ideal space and situation for surgical recuperation. Was she even well enough for it?

Attempts to discuss any and all of this had hit rather a dead end in the past, and now here Georg was on the other side of an argument he had never expected to have. Fully prepared to parry with her regarding the stress and exhaustion of her latest hospital stay, and the new choices laid in front of her, he had not expected to spar over one the one lone instance of intimacy they had mutually indulged in for the first time in over two years. Maybe he should have. Maria seemed to think so. She wouldn't leave otherwise—would she?

He wondered what Rosemary would say when she came home to find her mother gone. What her sister and brothers might say. What he would say to them. What could he say? What would be appropriate? Georg did not know, and he could not ask his wife her thoughts, as he was accustomed to doing.

"I'll be going, now."

Georg looked up to see his wife, smartly dressed in a suit that matched the fashion of the day, a deep burgundy red, a black cloche hat covering her red-gold hair, hair which she kept pageboy short, even now. It was most practical, he supposed. She was clutching her battered little valise with both hands in front of her, as though it were a shield.

When he didn't say anything, she stepped forward, setting her valise down in the doorway. Drawing something out of her pocket, she drew up to his desk and laid five envelopes upon it.

"I shan't make the same mistake twice," she said simply.

If he leaned forward just the slightest bit, Georg could make out his name and the names of their children scrawled in her signature hasty loop upon each one.

"I trust you'll see they read them," she said.

He nodded.

The tension in the air was thick between them. If he so desired, Georg thought he could slice it with a knife. It took him back so many years—twenty!—to when that tension had contained heat and passion. If it were up to him, that heat and passion, that crackle between them—it need only be ignited again. One simple spark. One strike of flint against stone. But she would not have it. There was only anger, regret, and bitterness there now. He recognized now, what she recognized already: just as before, she had to work it through herself.

So, he let her go. Though his heart cried out for her, and wanted to seize her, stop her, and make everything right, he could see that there was too much he could not fix. He should not fix. It was not within his power.

When she was ready, she would know. That much, he could trust. Though when she was young, she had needed the help and direction of another, the woman she was now made her choices in full awareness of herself.

"Please say something," Maria whispered.

He almost did not catch it.

"Pleasant travels," he said levelly, not betraying his emotion. "Have Brigitta phone when you've arrived."

That is what he did say. What he wanted to say died on his lips, steadily and surely as the fading footfall of his wife as she walked away from him, through the hall, to the front of the house, and through the front door.

Please stay. It echoed in his mind, mocking him.

Perhaps if he were a better man, he would have had the courage to drive Maria to the station himself.

Alas, it was not so.