Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(49)

“Yes, Monica. We can try again. Right away. Once you’re better.”

Another groan, and she started the “Star-Spangled Banner” again.

I put my hands on the door as if that was at all soothing to the woman on the other side. The song passed, and silence followed, interrupted by a few sniffs, a few breaths, a few hummed bars of something I couldn’t identify. I sat at the door and listened. I didn’t know how else to care for her but to make that door into my love, touching the wood as if it was skin, comforting her through it, making her safe with space and matter between us. I didn’t know how much time passed before she spoke.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t flush. I just… I can’t.”

“Do you want me to do it?”

A long pause followed.

chapter 36.

MONICA

This was ridiculous. Everything about it. Me on the toilet for over an hour, cramping as though it was my job. The crime-scene-worthy mess. My compassionate and gorgeous husband standing outside, asking me if I’d like him to flush the baby.

I should just do it. Then I could run into the shower, do a quick clean up of the floor and outside of the bowl, and exit looking fresh. I knew this would continue for a few days, but not like this. Not to the point of non-functionality. I felt finished. I felt as if the worst was over. I felt empty.

“Monica?”

I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a baby. It was tissue that had formed because my body had fooled itself into thinking there was a baby, but it was a terminated mission. My uterus just hadn’t gotten the memo. So I should just flush instead of being a cliché of a woman who’d just had a miscarriage.

“I’m unlocking the door,” I said. “Just wait until I call you to come in okay?”

“All right.”

“And I’m warning you, ahead of time, it’s not pretty.”

“Consider me warned.”

The bathroom was huge, and it had a separate bath and shower. Blood dripped on the edges of the toilet from when I’d cramped so badly I’d moved away from the seat. Otherwise, the room was as pristine as Jonathan’s staff could make it.

I unlocked the door and turned on the shower. It was hot in half a second. I didn’t know how he did that, but money got rid of even the smallest inconveniences of thermodynamics. I stripped, stepped in, and clicked the door shut.

The water flowed over my face, scalding hot. I wanted it hotter. Second-degree burn hot. I wanted to sterilize myself from the baby that wasn’t a baby. I wanted to forget the feeling of something real and human dropping from me to its death.

When the water flowed over me fully, a stream of red-stain went down the drain. It was too much. I didn’t think I could stand it. I was broken and useless. What had felt real, wasn’t. And now I was expected to—

The door clicked open, and Jonathan stood in the shower entrance, fully dressed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot to call you.”

He stepped into the shower, water slapping onto his shirt, sticking it to his skin. Darkening and flattening his hair. He put his arms around me and pressed me to him. His lips brushed my shoulder, and his hands pressed against me as if he wanted as much of himself touching as much of me as possible.

“I love you,” he said.

“I—” I choked up the rest of the sentence, because I felt lost and empty, and he was still there. He was my sky. Through blood and breath, sin and sorrow, I was his sea, and wherever the horizon was and the world ended, we were there, together.

What had I done to deserve this? Repeatedly and often, I’d failed to deserve him. I’d resisted him, tried to deny him a family, then I’d failed to carry his child. I wasn’t worth him getting his clothes wet, but I needed him. I needed him so badly. To fail for him and to try again, because having been pregnant for those hours, I couldn’t see any future past giving him children.

I clawed at his back and pressed my face to his shoulder. He rocked me under the hot water, sodden and strong, even after my legs couldn’t hold me.

“Come on,” he said, shutting off the shower, “before I flood the floor.”

He carried me for the third time, his feet squishing on the marble tiles. The bath was running, and the lights were dimmed. He laid me in the tub.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?” He leaned over the tub, his clothes still soaked, and submerged a sponge. He didn’t even roll up his sleeves; he just got them wetter.

“For letting the baby go.”

“You know I’m not going to accept that apology.”

“I feel like I failed you. And hours after getting you all excited. God, I’m such a f*ckup.”

He put his fingertips to my lips. “Stop.”

But it was too late. My eyes filled up, and the skin behind my face tingled. “I can’t. I can’t stop thinking that—” I heaved a breath. “That it’s my fault. That I killed it.”

He soaped the sponge. “If that were possible, there wouldn’t be any unwanted pregnancies.”

I was Teflon, immune to logic, sense, and evidence-based reality. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was somehow at fault for this disaster. I couldn’t answer him with the straight fact that despite the pure reason of his assertion, I was poisoned. Blighted. My body wasn’t fit for a child.