Chapter 14 #3
She looked up, and the large gray-and-white bird sat on top of the white picket fence that divided their backyard from Nate’s. It squawked again before it flew away, and then she could see that Nate was outside, just beyond where the seagull had been. Hanging his wet suit to dry.
“Nate.” His name croaked out of her, too soft for him to hear it at first. “Nate!” She said it louder.
He stopped for a moment, turned, looked around.
“Nate!” she screamed as loud as she could.
“Jules?” He looked around, still unsure where the sound was coming from.
Then everything felt hazy, dark.
I’m not okay! she cried out. Or maybe she didn’t manage to say that part out loud. Maybe she just thought about that time he’d told her once, if she was ever not okay, she had to promise to tell him.
But the next thing she knew, Nate was wrapping her in a beach towel, picking her up, carrying her over his shoulder.
She woke up sometime later, in a hospital.
She was certain of that. It was definitely a hospital room, white and sterile and bleak, and there was the sound of a monitor beeping somewhere close by.
What hospital she was in, how she had gotten here, exactly, she wasn’t entirely sure.
“Jules?” Nate’s voice. She turned her head, and he was sitting in a chair across the room. Then she vaguely remembered: Nate carrying her into an emergency room, her signing off that he could talk to the doctor on her behalf.
He offered a sad smile. And stood and walked toward her bed.
“What happened?” she asked him, though she knew. She felt it in her gut. The baby was gone. Again. For the third time. Nothing else mattered but this.
“You’ve been out for a little bit… You should talk to the doctor,” he said gently. “I can go find him.”
He started to move toward the door, but she reached out to grab his arm. “No, just tell me what happened.”
“I… I’m not a doctor,” Nate said weakly.
“Tell me!” she demanded. “The baby didn’t make it, did it?” He hesitated for another moment, and then nodded slowly, his face looking grim. Was there more? “What else?”
“Do you want me to get Ted on the phone?” he asked gently.
“No, I want you to tell me every last goddamn thing the doctor told you.” Her voice shook. She never spoke like this, never lost control. But she felt her whole body trembling and she couldn’t get it to stop.
Nate exhaled slowly, sat down on the side of the bed, and gripped her shoulders gently.
“It’s not good, Jules,” he said softly. “You lost a lot of blood. They had to give you two pints. You’re going to be fine with some rest, but the doctor said there’s too much scarring to…
” His voice trailed off, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t finish the thought.
“Too much scarring to what?” she whispered, though maybe deep down she already knew the answer.
She already understood that she had wanted too much, she had asked for too much.
She had a child, a beautiful, healthy five-year-old child.
But why did it have to be too much to give her a sister?
To want an Emily, or a Nora, for her too?
“He said you can’t get pregnant again.” Nate was still talking. His words soft, precise. She heard them and they cut right through her, making her feel chilled. “That next time it could be worse,” Nate said. “You could… die.”
“No,” she said. “That can’t be right.”
“Do you want me to call Ted?” he asked again.
But she didn’t answer him. She couldn’t find any more words to speak. All she could do was grab on to him, bury her head in his chest, and sob.
It wasn’t that she intended to not go home, not at first.
She spent a night in the hospital and then she was too weak to even think about flying home by herself. Nate took her back to his house and she slept through several days in his guest room while he cooked her bone broth and brought it to her in bed, begging her to take small sips.
She was still bleeding, and for those few days she felt pale and listless enough to wonder if she still might die. If she needed more blood. But it felt easier to sleep than to ask those questions. And so, she kept on closing her eyes and going back to sleep. Waking, sipping soup. Sleeping again.
Before she knew it, a week had passed. She had mostly stopped bleeding except for spotting here and there.
She finally got up out of bed to eat a bowl of soup at Nate’s kitchen table, and then she noticed, through the open living room window, that a new family had come to stay for vacation next door at Grandma Vera’s house.
She watched them—a mom, a dad, and two perfect red-haired girls bouncing around on the porch. Sisters.
She didn’t forget about Ted and Veronica, not exactly.
Nate told her that he had called Ted right away to let him know what had happened.
Then called him again when she left the hospital, told him that she was safe and just needed a little time to get herself together before she flew home.
She just nodded blankly at Nate, because she couldn’t face Ted.
Worse, she couldn’t truly face herself. And she pushed all thoughts of reality to the back of her mind.
As long as she stayed in Coronado, in Nate’s guest room, with Nate making her soup, then reality didn’t have to truly exist.
When she felt strong enough, she walked along the beach early each morning, for days and days, listening to the rush of the waves and squawks of the seagulls, and in these small moments, she could maybe remember how to breathe again, how to live without the all-consuming guilt and grief she felt pushing down in her chest.
Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurred to her, it was June, her first time ever in Coronado in June.
But it seemed the June gloom was much like the May gray: cool mornings with low clouds hovering across the water.
Somehow this made it feel like no time was passing, as one gray day rolled lazily into the next.
Nate insisted on walking with her along the beach, like he was afraid if she went alone, she would walk into the ocean and never come back.
She wouldn’t have. (At least, she didn’t think she would’ve.) But it was nice to have his quiet company by her side, to have his hand gently reach for her arm when she suddenly felt weak and would have to slow down or stop to catch her breath.
It was nice to hear him say Jules, first thing in the morning when she walked downstairs and last thing at night before she walked upstairs to go to bed.
It was nice to sit on the couch next to him and watch Some Like It Hot, to see right there in black and white the way this island hadn’t changed in so many years.
The ocean still beat back against the shore, the Hotel del Coronado still sat like a white-and-red gem.
Nate was still here too, warm and full of light, the way he had been her entire life.
And when the movie ended, when Osgood says, Well, nobody’s perfect, Julia knew it was supposed to be a joke, but she heard it this time like it was directed at her, a rebuke. A lesson.
Nobody’s perfect.
She suddenly thought about Emily, about Nora. About disappearing into herself.
And then she turned to Nate and asked him, “Can you drive me to Santa Monica?”
“What’s in Santa Monica?” he asked.
Julia just stared at him, and his brown eyes held on to her face, etched with worry. She knew she had to tell him the truth, that after he had been so kind to her these last two weeks, she trusted him more completely than she had ever really trusted anyone.