Chapter 19 Nisha
nineteen
nisha
The Color of War
Seven Years Ago
“Ooof.”
I groan when another cramp registers, yanking me awake like claws around my stomach. I blink in the dark, but it’s so heavy and consuming, it doesn’t feel much different from having my eyes closed.
Under the covers, my hand drags down to my belly as another wave rolls through me. It’s a tightness so painful that it leaves me breathless and sweaty.
My mind travels to what I ate for dinner tonight—homemade ramen and a bowl of fruit. That couldn’t be it, could it? I’ve had bouts of nausea and bloating for weeks, but this . . .? It feels different and wrong, like my organs are folding in on themselves, contracting and crying out.
My hand stretches toward the other side of the bed, desperately trying to find Patton, my heart plummeting when all I feel is cool sheets. You’d think I’d have remembered after three weeks . . .
It’s been three weeks since he left for Thailand. Three weeks since I felt his warm body next to mine, his arms here to surround me in times like this. The loneliness, the fact that there’s no one here to hear my cries, hits me almost as hard as the physical pain.
Another sharp stab pierces my lower abdomen, and I pull into a sitting position, my breath catching, eyes pricking with fear.
Something is happening. Something that will leave me broken.
And then it catches again when my hand brushes over the damp sheets.
No, not damp. Wet. Sticky.
Oh, God. No. Please, God, not again . . .
But even as I form the desperate prayer, another cramp has me doubling over, instinctively bringing my knees to my chest as a sob ripples up my chest and tears from my throat.
It’s not until I swing my legs over the side of the bed, my heart pounding against my ribs, and rise to my feet that panic really settles in. With sweat beading over my brows, my head tilts down as my eyes imagine the color of the liquid I can feel trailing down my legs.
Maybe it’s not what I think. Maybe I just wet myself.
I did drink a lot of water before going to sleep . . .
But that’s the thing about hope. It’s the tiny flame we keep burning in our hearts before reality snuffs it out.
Fingers brushing the wall, the feel of textured paint reminding me that I’m awake and that this is not a dream, I slowly trek toward the bathroom. It feels a thousand miles away.
My hand fumbles for the light switch, trembling so violently I can barely flip it on.
And when I finally do, the harsh fluorescent light assaults my vision like needles jabbing my eyes.
I squeeze them shut, giving myself a chance to prolong the inevitability of reopening them and facing my worst fear.
And my world tilts when I finally do.
Red.
So much red.
Bright, thick, and so, so very wrong.
It’s soaked through my pajama pants. They’re the ones Patton brought me last Christmas, with pale yellow daffodils and sunflowers that reminded me of the bouquet I held when I walked down the aisle toward him four years ago, the same flowers woven into my hair.
We knew we were young and inexperienced, but God, there wasn’t anything we wanted more than each other. It didn’t matter that his foster parents were skeptical, or that my dad was reluctant, asking me if I was really ready to get married so young.
I knew.
I’d found my person—my best friend apart from my sister—and no one on this earth could have deterred me from being with him.
I blink as the memories fade behind the color now saturating all others.
“No,” I whisper, the word barely audible over the ringing in my ears. My nose tingles and my eyes blur as the full weight of what I’m looking at crashes over me. Then louder, like saying it with more authority might undo what’s clearly being taken away from me. “No!”
Another cramp seizes me as I grasp the doorframe, my other hand wrapping protectively around my abdomen, as if I can physically keep my womb intact.
I shake my head, repeating the only word I can seem to speak. My back hits the wall, and the weight of the moment drags me down to the cold marble. I stare down at the blood-soaked fabric, watching it seep and spread, much like the ache unfurling in my chest, devouring the sunny color.
Leaving only the color of war behind.
The cramping intensifies, forcing me to pull my knees to my chest. I wrap my arms around them, rocking as tears soak my cheeks.
Thirteen weeks.
A life we fought to have, to bring into the world, gone in thirteen weeks. A baby we wanted and imagined every day for thirteen weeks . . .
All the plans and dreams, hopes for our future little family, are now bleeding out of me on the cold bathroom floor.
“Please,” I whisper to the empty room, to God and the universe, to anyone listening. “Please don’t take this away from me . . . not again.”
But despite my pleading, it’s happening.
The life I was carrying, protecting, and loving—the one my body went through immeasurable pain to create and hold, the one I constantly prayed for—is slipping away like the fuzzy afterthoughts of a dream.
I reach for my phone—I hadn’t realized I’d carried it with me—calling for the only voice I want to hear right now. The only voice who’ll understand.
Because he’s lost this, too, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
My first call goes straight to Patton’s voicemail.
I try again and again, each ring feeling endless, each trip to voicemail as painful as the cramps wracking my body and crushing my soul.
A voice in the back of my head reminds me that he said he’d be unreachable for the next few days, on a set in some remote part of Thailand with spotty phone service.
Still, each failed attempt hurls me deeper into a despair that’s swallowing me whole.
A despair, as thick as tar, that I can’t see past or swim through.
On the fifth try, my hands can barely hold the phone, my shaky whisper hoarse and unfamiliar to my own ears. “Please, Patton, pick up. Please . . . I need you.”
But he doesn’t.
And who knows when he finally will. In a day? A week? Definitely when this is all over and there’s nothing left to talk about.
Nothing left to save.
Thirteen weeks. A baby I’ve been whispering and singing to for thirteen weeks.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice gurgling past my tears as I run a hand down my throbbing abdomen. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. So sorry that I couldn’t keep you, couldn’t be your mommy.”
My voice breaks around the gravel in my throat. “I’m s-so sorry I couldn’t hold you. Kiss you. Show you how much I l-love y-you.”
Tears stream down my face, soaking the collar of my tank top, as I continue to shake my head against the wall, my words a chant against the reality I’m having to face alone. “I’m so sorry . . . So sorry I failed you.”
How much longer can I keep watching my body fail to do what so many other women do so easily? So naturally.
My sister got pregnant without even trying, and she carried my nephew to term without a single complication. The women at my salon chatter about how hard it’s been to lose the pregnancy weight, not how hard it was to get pregnant; how hard it was to stay pregnant.
And the look in my boss’s eyes when I told her I needed to adjust my schedule around some of my treatments. Her eyes spoke the words her decorum didn’t afford her lips—“Poor thing. So young. How could you need treatments to get pregnant?”
What would her eyes say watching this—my body, barely past one trimester and already giving up? Again.
How much longer can I endure going through this alone, without him?
I can’t. I just fucking can’t anymore.
The anger hits me suddenly, white-hot and all-consuming, like the explosion of a star. I’m furious at my body for forsaking me, furious at Patton for not being here when I need him again, and furious at God for not giving me the one thing I’ve wanted more than anything else in my life.
But mostly, I’m furious at myself for getting so excited so quickly. For thinking that this time would be different because I passed the first trimester date. I’m furious at myself for allowing hope to settle in my heart, for allowing myself to daydream about the future.
My breaths come out faster, ragged and shallow, as if each gulp of air is trying to fill the emptiness my womb just created. The cramping is getting worse, and I know what this means.
I need to get to the ER.
But I sit a little longer, clutching the phone in my trembling hands, willing it to ring. Willing him to see the missed calls, to sense that I need him. To realize through some telepathic connection that our real world is crumbling while he’s on set creating a fictional world for others.
Except all I get is silence.
And in that deafening silence, I come to terms with more than just what my body wasn’t able to hold.
I come to terms with the distance that’s grown between us, not in the past few weeks, but over the past four years. A distance accumulating like mold inside walls, slowly and silently, until one day the structure decays from within.
I come to terms with the lonely nights, the missed calls, and the conversations interrupted by more important phone calls.
I come to terms with the fact that love alone, even as immense as an ocean, isn’t enough to keep two people from drifting apart.