Chapter 26
26
Tegan refused the two pills I offered her for pain.
In actuality, they were not Dilaudid like I claimed they were. They weren’t pain medications at all. I looked in our medicine cabinet for things safe to take during pregnancy, and I ended up fishing out two tablets of Benadryl. I figured at the least, it would give her a good night’s sleep. And I’m sure there would be some placebo effect for her pain.
Then she ended up not even taking them. I’m glad she did the right thing for her baby—eventually. Fractured ankle or not, she shouldn’t be popping narcotics.
When I come back up to the bedroom, Hank is already in bed. His short, dark hair is damp, and so is his beard.
“Did you take a shower?” I ask him. “In the dark?”
“I brought a flashlight with me. You know I can’t fall asleep if I’m covered in grease from the shop.”
I glance at our bathroom. “Is there hot water?”
“Nah. I took a cold shower.”
I crawl into bed next to my husband and lay a hand on his abdomen. His arms and shoulders are tight with muscles from the work he does at the shop, but his belly is soft. “A cold shower, huh? That’s a shame.”
Hank’s eyebrows shoot up. “Polly?”
He looks stunned, which makes me feel a flash of guilt. Hank and I don’t have sex much anymore, and when we do, I am rarely the one to initiate. Fine—I am never the one to initiate. And ever since The Incident, Hank treats me like I’m made of glass, and he’s so gentle most of the time. Too gentle. We are basically abstinent.
It wasn’t always like that. When we were first dating, it felt like we were going for some sort of world’s record. Our sex life slowed down a bit after we were together for a couple of years, but then after we got married and decided to try to have a baby, we got back in the running for the world’s record.
Back then, it was fun . But eventually “trying for a baby” morphed into “struggling with infertility.” Sex became something we had to time perfectly when the ovulation kit said we were supposed to do it.
It all turned out to be for nothing anyway.
“It’s so cold in here.” I run my fingers down Hank’s chest. “You up for something to warm us up?”
“Of course I am,” he says like it’s a stupid question, and I suppose it is.
He leans in to kiss me. Hank was always a really good kisser—he’s very gentle for a man his size. I try to lose myself in sex by candlelight, grateful that we made it through that rough patch. I’m glad I didn’t completely destroy our relationship, although I did my best.
I’ll never forget the look on my husband’s face when he picked me up from work two years ago. That was after the failed IVF treatments that emptied out our bank accounts. And it was after the failed adoption, when the teenage mother changed her mind after she held her little baby girl in her arms and decided she couldn’t give her up after all.
Hank was a rock through the whole thing. We’ll try again, Polly. Our child is still out there somewhere.
No , I had sobbed to him, I can’t go through this again. I can’t.
So it’ll just be you and me. Nothing wrong with that.
His words were echoing in my ears the next day when I had to work an overnight shift in the newborn nursery at the hospital. I should have refused, given how I was feeling. But I thought I was stronger than my feelings. I thought it might lift my spirits to be around all those new babies.
I was wrong.
After what happened that day, I lost my job at the hospital. I’m lucky they didn’t lock me up. I loved that job, and as hard as it was leaving, it was even harder to admit why I had to leave. I usually tell people that Hank wanted me to stay home to focus on our family. Unfortunately, The Incident meant there would be no family—we had to withdraw our name from the waiting list for adoptions and foster children. We would never become parents.
We don’t need a child, Polly, Hank kept telling me. We’ve got each other.
And then my mother got sick, and I threw myself into her care—it gave me a purpose and a reason for living again. But since she’s been gone, there’s been little else to occupy my time. Bookkeeping for the auto shop is hardly a full-time job. Hank may be satisfied without a child, but I’m not.
I never will be.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had sex, and it’s been even longer since we’ve had really good sex. Tonight, we have really good sex. And when it’s over and I collapse against him, Hank whispers in my ear, “I love you so much, Polly.”
I get a flashback to him kneeling beside my bed in the inpatient psychiatric ward, gripping my frail hand in his much larger one. The desperate look in his eyes. Please talk to me, Polly. Please. I love you so much.
“I love you too,” I say.
He squeezes me close to him, our bodies stuck together with sweat. “That was so great. I didn’t expect…I mean, I thought you might be upset tonight…with that woman downstairs being…”
“I’m not upset.”
He beams at me. “I’m glad you’re doing so much better.”
“Me too.”
He kisses me one more time. “And I’m glad you’re my wife. I’m glad that it’s just the two of us.”
I don’t answer him this time. I won’t lie to him. I’m not glad that it’s just the two of us. I will never be happy with our situation the way he apparently can be.
But that’s okay. Because I made up my mind tonight. Very soon, we will have a child of our own. We will finally get to use that teddy bear with the heart that I’ve had stuffed in the pantry all these years. He just doesn’t know it yet.
My mother was right after all. Very soon, our family will be complete.