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Upset by his lackluster answer, she hung up on him with a loud slam. He called her back and apologized profusely, saying he merely didn’t want to get his hopes up until he saw a positive test. Amy, excited enough for the both of them, demanded he come home immediately, so they could take the test together. He did, and the test was indeed positive.
She remained pregnant for five months. Dr. Carl put her on bed rest ten weeks into term, and Grady feared he might strangle himself by the time month nine came along. He hated worrying about her. He hated how she could do nothing but lie in bed all day. But Amy positively glowed.
“It’s only for a few weeks more,” she assured him. “Then the baby will be born, and everything will be fine again.”
Like a fool, he believed her.
During month five, Amy woke in the middle of the night with cramps and spotting, and Grady still believed her reassurances as he rushed her to the hospital. But she had a miscarriage as well as emergency surgery to remove one of her ovaries.
Amy was inconsolable afterward. When the doctor told her he recommended she never try to have children again, she turned her back to him and refused to speak to anyone—Grady included—for a week.
Things were never the same after that. He stuck by her side, and she eventually returned to the land of the living—or half-living, as he came to know it. But it was obvious the essence of the woman he’d married had vanished. A couple of years passed, and they fell into a new routine, not like how it was before, but Grady remained comfortable and content. He still had his wife; that was all that mattered to him.
Then his sister, Emma Leigh, turned up pregnant. He should’ve recognized that as a warning sign. But blindly, he assumed Amy was reconciled to the fact babies were not in their future unless they adopted.
She wasn’t reconciled to any such notion.
He came home from work to find a glowing, happy Amy waiting at the door with a bright smile and positive pregnancy test in her hand. Gaping at the stick, he turned livid. She’d tricked him, gone against his wishes and stopped taking her birth control.
That night, the two of them had the biggest fight of their marriage. Grady couldn’t believe she was so willing and even excited about risking her life for a baby they could just as easily adopt. And Amy didn’t understand why he didn’t want his own child, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood.
“Of course, I’d prefer that,” he argued. “But it’s just not possible for us, Amy.”
She laughed bitterly. “If it’s not possible, then why am I pregnant?”
“You know you’re just going to miscarry again,” he countered. “And then what? It’s going to crush you just as bad, if not more, than last time. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“So, what do you want me to do? Get an abortion?” She snorted. “That’s not going to happen.”
Grady gritted his teeth. “You shouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place.”
Glaring at him, she spit back, “Yeah, well, it takes two to make a baby, darling. You sure weren’t arguing like this in the bedroom the night I conceived.”
Unable to do anything but stand there and seethe, Grady stared at his soul mate, feeling so disconnected he thought he was looking at a stranger.
“If you don’t want this baby,” she hissed, “I’ll go have it somewhere by myself.” Then she turned and stomped away.
This time, they didn’t speak for two weeks. Finally, Amy approached him one evening. With a bowed head, she quietly said, “Because you feel so strongly about this, I’ll agree to look into adoption if we lose this child.”
Grady pulled her into his arms and apologized for being a butt until he started to weep.
“I’m so scared,” he admitted, burying his face in her hair. “The last miscarriage almost ruined us, Amy. I don’t. . .I can’t even breathe when I think about what would happen if we had to go through that again.”
“Shh,” she soothed and ran her fingers through his hair. “It won’t be the same, Grady. I swear it. It won’t be the same this time.”
Once again, he believed her promise. And to an extent, she was right. It didn’t end up like the time before. It was worse.
Their second child almost made it to full term. Six weeks before her due date, Amy went into labor. And Grady, like any excited, expectant father, rushed her to the hospital.
Since the baby was breech, they performed an emergency cesarean. Grady was allowed into the delivery room where he watched the entire procedure. But problems developed, complications he didn’t understand from the medical jargon the doctor and nurses used. More help rushed into the room to assist, and Grady was asked to leave. But he didn’t budge. And everyone was too busy to scoot him along.
He watched Dr. Carl pull the limp, bloody form from his wife, and he continued to watch as they tried to revive the boy through chest compressions. When one nurse shook her head, Amy opened her eyes and asked to see her son. The doctor told her to relax.
“Just take it easy, Amy,” he soothed.
Amy’s weak voice repeated, “Baby.”
Grady took her hand, but she didn’t seem to feel the pressure of his fingers gripping hers because she was too occupied looking the other way and taking in the sight of their lifeless infant.
