“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and Sully’s grip on my hand tightened.
Rain splashed against the window, and I watched thick droplets roll down the glass.
“Please don’t say that, either,” he said, his tone softer, matching mine.
He must be exhausted. When I’d returned from my leg ultrasound—which had thankfully been clear, along with the D-dimer, meaning no clots—he’d been pacing. And when I searched his face, all I saw was a younger version of him, a Sully who’d burst into the emergency room in a flurry of desperate movement seven years ago.
A Sully who I was realizing had maybe never healed from that, maybe just as much as I never had.
Another reason to murmur seemingly useless apologies.
“But Iam. I’m so sorry.”
Theo slowed the car to a stop, and I assumed we were home, but I was staring out at the other side of the street. At my old house, where my mom was probably still sleeping. My gaze flicked to my bedroom window, the one the neighbor boy used to throw pebbles at from my front yard. The one I’d sit in and wait to see a glimpse of him through his own window across the street.
A car door creaked open, and I knew it must be Theo since my ex-boyfriend was still glued to my side, his body pressing into mine. There was a low murmur, something about going inside, and I nodded absently.
We should go inside, too, but I couldn’t get myself to move.
I never expected that the first image we’d see of our child would be our last.
I never expected to hug that image so tightly in my mind.
I never expected that after I told Sully he could come to my later doctor appointments…there wouldn’t be any.
There was just an overcrowded emergency department. The beeping monotony of machines. The low murmur of voices that haunted me. The echoes of footsteps on linoleum. The invasiveness of a wand and the turn of a screen as it mirrored our loss back to us. The drop of Sully’s forehead against my shoulder as though it was too much to process. The tight clasp of his hand in mine.
And when it was just the two of us again, alone in that somewhat sterile room, there was his quiet request.
“Can I—can I touch you?”
I’d blinked up at him through my tears, followed the droop of his shoulders to his extended arm and the hand that was flat on my stomach, atop a thick hospital blanket.
Nodding, I’d wished I couldn’t see the streaks on Sully’s face as he slipped his hand beneath the covers and tugged my gown out from beneath me so he could sneak under that, too.
His fingers had crawled over my skin, warming parts of me that suddenly felt so cold, and he’d palmed my bare stomach with a reverence that cut me to my core. Because it’d felt like he was saying goodbye.
When he’d realized goose bumps covered my body, he began rubbing my skin in soothing circles, and for just a few minutes, in the dead of the night, I let myself close my eyes. Let myself sleep with his hands on me.
“I’m sorry, too,” Sully’s low voice said, pulling me back to the present, where it was still just the two of us. “I’m so sorry that you’ve had to go through this. I’m so fucking sorry that I didn’t stay yesterday morning?—”
“I told you to go.”
“And I shouldn’t have listened,” he said forcefully, but I knew it wasn’t me he was mad at. “I should have stayed.”
Something about those final words put me over the edge, and a sob broke from my lips as I wrapped my arms around my middle, where pain continued to pierce through me, a physical reminder of what was happening inside of my body. Ofwhyit was happening. Of everything that had led to this moment, beginning years ago.
“I should have stayed, too,” I said on gasping breaths, my hands balling into fists in Sully’s old shirt that I never planned to give back. “OhGod, I should have?—”
“Eleanor.”
Reaching over my lap, Sully unbuckled my seat belt, and then I was in his lap, curling into his embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I cried because I didn’t know how to stop saying it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sor?—”
“You came back,” Sully breathed, but his throat caught on the words. He lowered his head to mine as he cradled me in his arms, and I felt his tears. I felt them wet my hair, trickle from my temple, cascade down my cheek, mixing with mine. “You came back.”
“I should have?—”
