Especially knowing that it was all his fault.
He had ruined everything. He’d opened his big mouth and betrayed her trust. He’d used her own harsh, hurtful words as an excuse to lash back at her and say the most horrible things he could think of. And now she was losing their baby.
Tyler whipped around the corner to enter the emergency area. Coming to a stop, he threw the car into Park and leaped out. Scooping Amelia into his arms, he rushed through the front door. “Please!” he shouted to the women at the front desk. “Please help, I think my wife is losing our baby.”
A nurse rushed into the lobby with a wheelchair. Tyler stood helplessly as Amelia was transferred to the chair and taken away. “Please wait here, sir,” another nurse told him. “We’ll take you back as soon as we can.”
Tyler’s knees gave out and he slipped down into one of the waiting room chairs. He wished to God he could go back—back in time so he could keep this from happening.
Eleven
“There was nothing you could have done, nothing you did to cause this. About ten to fifteen percent of pregnancies fail in the first trimester.”
“The baby was fine at our first appointment. The doctor even said he had a strong heartbeat,” Tyler argued with the doctor even though he knew it wouldn’t change the outcome.
Amelia was lying silently in her hospital bed, recovering from the procedure she’d undergone shortly after arriving at the hospital. Tyler didn’t know all the details, but the end result was the same. No more baby.
“At this stage, a lot changes in two or three weeks. And from the sound of things,” the doctor said, “the baby stopped growing at around seven weeks, and it just took this long for your body to deal with it.”
Tyler frowned. “How can you know that?”
“Ms. Kennedy said her morning sickness had suddenly ceased and she had more energy. This early in the pregnancy, that’s a big sign that the baby is no longer developing.”
“So it wasn’t anything that happened today...?” Tyler’s voice trailed off. He didn’t want to outright ask if the emotional upheaval he’d put his wife through had caused her to lose the baby, but that had been the question tormenting him all afternoon.
“No, no. This was just nature dealing with a problem. But the plus side is that there’s no reason why you two can’t try again. Take some time to recover from this, give your body a few months and then you can give it another try. Just because you miscarried this time doesn’t mean it will happen again. You don’t have any of the risk factors, Ms. Kennedy, so I wouldn’t worry.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said at last. It was the first time Amelia had spoken since she’d greeted the doctor and told him how she was feeling.
“Well, everything else seems to be okay, so the nurse will be around shortly with your discharge paperwork and a few prescriptions to help with the discomfort. Take it easy for a few days. Feel free to have a glass or two of wine to help you unwind, just don’t overdo it until your symptoms fully clear up. If there are no other questions, I’ll get out of your hair.” When they didn’t speak up, the doctor shook Tyler’s hand and then slipped out of the room.
Tyler slumped down into the chair beside her bed, not certain what to do now. He felt completely helpless, and he hated that. She’d accused him of always being in control, of always getting his way, and she was right. He didn’t like it when he couldn’t fix things, and this was one thing he simply could not fix.
How quickly things had changed. A few weeks ago, neither of them had even considered having a child, much less together. And now that the child was gone...he felt as though a part of him had been ripped away. He knew that it was a piece of him that he could never get back.
At this point, he didn’t even know what to say to Amelia. She was his best friend, and he’d never felt the awkward lack of words when he was with her. But now, he wasn’t sure where they stood. He was fairly certain that she wouldn’t want to try getting pregnant again. Where did that leave them? Their last real words to one another before the miscarriage had been cutting and painful. He wasn’t even entirely sure he would walk out of the room with a best friend, much less a wife.
“Tyler?” Amelia said at last.
“Yes?” Tyler leaped up from his chair to stand at the rail of her hospital bed. She seemed so small with the oversize hospital gown and all the wires and tubes hooked up to her. Her color was better now, but that wasn’t saying much. The faint gray circles under her eyes spoke volumes. She might be healthy, but she was not fine. “Can I get you something?”
“No.” She shook her head and winced slightly. “I’m okay.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Better than I was,” she said, attempting a small smile, but it didn’t make it to her eyes. “Tyler...I want you to go home.”
“I’m not going home without you. The doctor said you’ll be released shortly.”
“You don’t understand. I want you to go home to New York.”
Even though a part of him had been anticipating this eventuality, he didn’t expect the painful blow to his midsection that accompanied it. It was excruciating, worse than anything he’d experienced, even his breakup with Christine a week before their wedding. “Amelia—” he beg
an, but she held up her hand.
“Tyler, please. You were and are my best friend. But we never should’ve been anything more than that. We made a mistake and compounded it by trying to force ourselves into a different mold for the sake of our baby. I’m sorry that all this happened and that I put you through this, but now it’s done. Things have worked out the way they were meant to. Without a baby, there’s no reason for us to continue on.”
Tyler tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat, but it remained stubbornly lodged there as he struggled to breathe.