January 14, 2008

Intuition was a funny thing. It liked to get one’s hopes up and then smash them into little pieces like a hammer hitting glass.

***

She fell asleep early Saturday night, after she started to come down from the joyous high that she had felt after telling Jim the good news. After she had settled under the sheets and started to drift off to sleep, the churning, twisting and cramping came again. She fell into a painful, deep sleep. She slept through two of Jim’s phone calls and she had at least three nightmares throughout the night.

When she woke up at ten on Sunday morning, she wondered how she could actually feel more tired after sleeping nearly twelve hours than she did before she went to sleep. She stumbled up out of bed, not bothering to check her phone to see if Jim called – not really checking for anything. She felt…different. Her stomach was cramping and she kind of felt like she had been hit from behind with a bus, but other than that, she felt a little better than she had the past few days.

She sleepily walked to the bathroom and started to run water for a shower as she used the toilet. When she stood up to flush though, her heart seized in her chest and her breath became quick and shallow.

Blood. There wasn’t supposed to be blood. She blinked three times, certain that this was another nightmare. She pinched herself hard on the arm – it wasn’t a dream. She looked over towards the bathroom door where she had kicked off her underwear. She tentatively picked the panties up from the floor. Blood.

She hadn’t had very many panic attacks in her life, but she was certain that if anything could qualify as one – this would. Her chest was tight, her head was pounding and she could feel her blood pumping red-hot through every inch of her body.

This couldn’t be happening, it just couldn’t! The test had said “Pregnant”, she took that test only fourteen hours ago! She quickly flushed the toilet and threw her underwear in the trash, thinking that it would make things right again. She hopped in the shower and ducked her head under the heavy stream of scalding hot water. She ignored the thin line of crimson that snaked down her leg and spiraled down the drain and she tried to ignore the cramps that were knotting in her stomach again.

When she stepped out of the shower, she grabbed the darkest towel that she could find and wrapped it around her body. She tried not to notice the red splotches all over her body from the hot water and the result from scrubbing her skin too hard with the loofah. She marched purposefully towards the bedroom and tore the comforter and top sheet off of the bed. There were only a few dark red droplets on the fitted sheet, but to Pam, they were so blaringly obvious that she tore off the sheet with a violent tug. The force from the pull knocked her backwards to the floor and the sheet gently billowed down on top of her legs. She sat up, pulled her knees to her chest and tugged the sheet around her. She gingerly touched the tiny red splotches with her fingertips and started to cry.

***

She hadn’t bothered to get dressed; she just wrapped herself up in the towel and curled up on the top of the bare bed. She simply watched the minutes tick by on the digital clock next to the bed, turning over every once in a while to grab another Kleenex to wipe at her nose or use to dab the tears away from her eyes and cheeks.

The phone startled her out of her miserable state, which she quickly returned to when she saw the caller I.D. She hadn’t actually spoken to Jim in a day. It was amazing how much things could change within no more than twenty four hours time.

“Hello.” she said softly as she answered.

“How are my babies doing?” he asked cheerfully.

She immediately choked back more tears before replying, “Not so good.”

“What’s wrong? Still feeling icky?” he asked.

“Yeah.” she mumbled.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked.

“No, not really.” she replied. She was silent for a few seconds too long and when Jim spoke again, she knew that he knew something was up.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re not upset that I wasn’t around yesterday, are you? I’m really, really sorry that I wasn’t around when you called. I was in the middle of this mind-numbingly boring meeting and…”

“Jim,” she said firmly, her voice wavering like it had the last time that she spoke with him, “I need to tell you something.”

“What?” he asked. Her heart started to race again. Why did he have to be on the other side of the country? She didn’t want to do any of this over the phone.

“I…I…” she whimpered and bit down on her bottom lip hard as she tried to prevent herself from crying.

“Seriously, Pam,” he said cautiously, “are you okay?”

“No.” she breathed.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I lost it.” she replied.

“Lost it?” he asked. “Lost what?”

“The baby.” she said in a tiny voice before she started to really cry again. She buried her face in her hands and the phone got crushed somewhere between her ear and her shoulder before it completely fell away from her and lay on the mattress.

She forgot all about Jim on the other end of the line for the few moments that she lay crying until she heard his voice again, coming through the receiver of the phone.

“Pam… Pam! What…” she heard his voice trail off, “where…” the voice trailed off again, “Pam…”

She wiped her nose with the back of her arm and picked the phone back up.

“Sorry,” she choked as she wiped tears from her cheeks, “I dropped the phone.”

“I’m coming home,” he said, “I need to come back home.”

“No, no you don’t.” she insisted as she wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.

“I need to be with you!” he insisted some more. “You didn’t want me to leave in the first place and now I see that I shouldn’t have come out here.”

“But Jim!” she exclaimed, “If you come home, you’re putting your new position of vice president in jeopardy. Please, please don’t do that just because of me!”

“I’m finding the first flight out of San Francisco to JFK, okay?” he stated firmly.

“Jim! You’re not listening to me!” she cried. “You want this position! It’s important to you!”

“Pam,” he said, “there are certain things in life that are much more important than this position...than this job. You are that certain thing.” She was silent. “I’m coming home today.”

***

She was asleep when he arrived back home. The first flight he was able to catch was a ridiculously early red-eye from San Francisco. When he walked through the front door, it looked like she hadn’t even stepped foot downstairs the couple of days he was gone. It looked exactly the same as it had before he left. As he started to walk up the stairs, he noticed the difference and he started to take note of the events that had transpired in the past day or so. There was a towel crumpled near the laundry chute – it looked like she had tried to throw it through the door, but had missed and not given it a second glance. He briefly stepped into the bathroom to set down his bag of toiletries that he had taken with him and he immediately noticed a couple of items balled up in the trash can next to the toilet – one of the items appeared to be a pair of her underwear.

He quickly left the bathroom, and walked down towards the end of the hall – their bedroom. He pushed open the door very slightly and he smiled sadly when he looked at Pam lying, sleeping in the bed. Even without him there, she cornered herself on one side of the bed.

There were crumpled up Kleenex everywhere and as he slowly approached the bed, he started to feel like he might need them as well. He quietly set his suitcase at the end of the bed and carefully crawled under the covers alongside Pam.

He brushed some of the hair from her face and his fingertips tentatively danced along her shoulder and arm. Her eyes slowly opened and she smiled a sad, relieved smile when she saw him lying next to her.

“Hi,” he whispered, “I’m back.”

“Hey,” she mumbled. She blinked a few times to try and wake herself up and then really stared at him, “Have you been crying? Or are you just really tired?”

“Oh,” he said, wiping his eyelids with the back of his hands, “maybe a little of both. I caught an ungodly early flight out of San Francisco this morning.” His eyes were rather bloodshot and the lids were red-rimmed. The bags under his eyes were a tell-tale sign that he hadn’t slept in probably twenty four hours and simply put, he looked rather miserable.

“You didn’t have to come back.” she said quietly, allowing herself to move closer towards his body.

“Yes I did.” he responded.

***

They fell asleep for about three hours. Jim awoke first when Pam started quietly moaning and writhing back and forth in his arms. He rubbed her back a little, hoping to shake her from what he thought was a bad dream. When she started subconsciously rubbing at her stomach, he felt his heart break all over again and he decided it was time for him to get up.

He walked to the foot of the bed and sat down on the floor with his suitcase in front of him. He carefully unzipped the top and looked into the horrible mess. He had so frantically packed everything back up that he hadn’t taken any time to fold his clothing – everything had just been haphazardly stuffed inside. Piece by piece, he took out each item, folded them on his lap and carefully set them in neat piles next to him.

He did that until he reached the bottom of the suitcase. He pulled out the small plastic bag and took out the small article of clothing and smoothed it out over his knees. He had gone out to the most clichéd tourist stand that he could possibly have found in the vicinity of his hotel and bought a tiny little onesie that read, “Someone who loves me very much went to San Francisco and got me this!” Although horribly cliché and albeit rather tacky, it had made him smile and laugh and he knew that it would get the exact same reaction from Pam. At least, that was until he received the phone call from her telling him what had happened. Now, as he sat in their bedroom with the tiny outfit spread across his knees it was having the complete opposite effect.

“What are you doing?” he heard Pam’s groggy voice ask from behind him. He quickly flicked a couple of tears away from his eyelids and turned around to look at her.

“Oh, just…just unpacking.” he said, his hands covering the tiny garment in his lap.

“What’s that?” she asked, nodding towards his hands.

“It’s nothing.” he replied, unmoved.

“Well, it’s something,” she said, “I can see that there’s something there.”

His hands tentatively moved away from the onesie and he looked over his shoulder to gauge her reaction. Her face immediately fell and her bottom lip started to tremble.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I bought it the evening that I received your voicemails…I probably should have brought it back to the little shop I got it at.”

“It’s cute.” she said, biting her lip hard, and she hoped for a split second that she might be able to stop the tears that were about to fall.

“Are you upset?” he asked.

“About the onesie?” she asked in a choked reply.

“Well…” he trailed off. She took a deep breath and tried to smile.

“I think it’s an incredibly sweet gesture.” she said. She stretched forward, lowered herself onto her elbows and allowed her head to rest on Jim’s shoulder. She kissed him softly on the cheek and asked him, “How do you feel?”

He sighed, turned his head away from her quickly and turned back. She smiled weakly as she watched a tear roll down his cheek. Seeing Jim tear up in front of her broke her heart and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep her own tears bottled up for much longer. She brushed away his tear with her thumb and kissed him again.

“We’ll have other opportunities.” she said quietly as she settled her chin on her hand.

“Will we?” he cautiously asked.

“Of course we will.” she replied as bravely as she could.

“How can you be so sure?” he asked. “I just…each time this has happened I just feel like I’m hurting you and…it hurts.” He grabbed the baby onesie in one of his hands and fisted it into a small ball.

“I know,” she said, nodding. “The last time this…well, the last time, I just felt like I was…” her forehead wrinkled and a pained expression crossed her face and she couldn’t fight the tears any longer. Two tears quickly tumbled down her cheeks and settled in the corners of her mouth.

“Pam…” Jim whispered. Seeing her cry made his heart ache and before he could help himself, he had a couple more tears running down his cheeks.

“It’s just…” she shook her head twice, “I feel like I’ve disappointed you. This time, last time and…” a small, quiet cry escaped from her mouth, “I don’t want to disappoint you.” She took a deep breath and wiped a couple tears from her chin. “I want to be good enough for you.”

His breath caught as he looked at her, tears in his eyes and tears in her eyes. He brought his hand up to her and cradled her face in his palm and kissed her softly before saying, “Pam, you are more than good enough for me.” She nodded woefully and he continued, “Seriously, you are the absolute best thing in my life and…and no, you don’t disappoint me. This is just…it’s just a setback.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder and neck, “And we can’t just give up because of a couple unfortunate setbacks.” She kissed him on the jaw and closed her eyes tightly, hoping that it could stop more tears from forming. “It’ll happen,” she choked, “maybe not next month, maybe not six months, maybe not even a year or two from now, but it will happen.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. Pam could feel his arms trembling slightly underneath her own and she wrapped her arms around him even more.

“Absolutely,” she said, echoing his quiet statement. She kissed him softly again and reached forward for the balled up article of baby clothing in his hand. He unclenched his fist and she took it from him then smiled ever-so-slightly and said, “We can save this for later.”