Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
“Are you planning to try again?”
Some days begin like any other—until they don’t.
The first snow was forecast to reach the shores of Vancouver Island, so I was napping on the living room sofa, half-awake and half-asleep, with Mia’s comfort blanket on, and music from my playlist streaming through my earbuds.
Paul had me add a recording of last year’s New Year’s concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as he read that classical music is good for this, as he phrased it.
I was finally dozing off when the doorbell rang. Dad was still somewhere in his bedroom getting ready for a walk with Hannah. Adam was the first to open the door, after a long internal debate with himself about whether protein powder counted as breakfast.
“Delivery! It’s for you, Alicia. You need to come up and sign for this.”
I lifted myself from the sofa, took off my earbuds, and rushed, perhaps too quickly, to the doorstep.
I felt dizzy, but I blamed it on the sudden change in position.
The deliveryman handed me a small bouquet of flowers, neatly covered in brown paper.
No ribbons, simple. Under the paper, I discovered a small, silver pendant shaped like a compass rose, and a neat bouquet of yellow tea roses. And a short message: I remember, P.
Mia was right. It was hard not to gravitate toward his orbit.
This man had a way of saying the right things, ones that made your blood pressure rise to uncanny levels and hit your cells with dopamine.
I remembered that day and what happened after he brought me roses and medicine, all too well.
This time around, he had replaced cough syrup with a shape he held close to his heart—literally—and I used it every day in my aviation days.
But in the end, and to give him some credit, I’d learned the hard way that this seesaw of emotions, the push-pull from him, innuendo wrapped in promising messages, were unhealthy and wrong, but were misinterpreted by me, too.
I read too much into them, I misheard, I left things unsaid and unanswered, simply because I wanted him.
Yellow roses, which I learned after our collapse, didn’t symbolize anything more than friendship and joy.
I was okay with that now, and it was a nice gesture. I put the roses in the vase and the pendant on the coffee table by the sofa, and was about to sit down and text Paul with a short: I remember, too, when I saw it. I put my phone down with the messaging screen still open to take a closer look.
A small stain. Darker than I wanted to believe.
It wasn’t a coffee stain left by Adam running around with his mug a minute ago.
Definitely not water from the vase. I froze, my breath catching somewhere between my ribs and my throat.
For a second, I told myself it was nothing.
That these things happen and spotting was normal…
right? But when I stood up, I felt it, the unmistakable warmth and the shift from concern to panic.
My hand went to my abdomen on instinct, as if I could hold everything in place with just a firm touch.
“Alicia?”
Adam’s voice cut through the haze, sharp and immediate. He was already moving toward me before I could find words..
“I…” I started, but my voice cracked. I glanced down again. My pants were soaking through already.
I ran to the washroom to grab a few hygienic pads to stop the bleeding somehow, leaving red stains everywhere behind me. I tried to breathe in, breathe out, compose myself, and think like a pilot, and what needs to be done, step by step.
“Adam, call my doctor, ask her if she’s on call at the hospital because we need to go, stat.”
My mind suddenly cleared with an adrenaline rush, although I was barely walking at that point. Holding the pads with one hand, blood trickling down my legs, and trying to put on a hoodie with the other.
Adam’s face paled. “Shit. Shit. Okay. Okay, calling now.”
Dad was already on his phone, his knuckles white as he dialed for a cab because none of us trusted Adam’s driving in this state.
I tried to calm them down, saying I was fine and could drive, because that’s what I usually did.
But the wave of dizziness that followed shut me up fast. Adam grabbed my coat, wrapping it around me even though I barely registered the cold.
As he helped me out the door, he hesitated. “Do you… Do you want me to call him?”
For a heartbeat, I considered saying no. What was the point? But then I saw the fear in Adam’s eyes—the same fear I felt creeping into my bones—and I nodded.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Tell him.”
The world blurred into fluorescent lights and the sterile smell of antiseptic.
When I woke up—in what must have been a post-operative recovery room—I heard voices, but they felt distant, like I was underwater again, just like after the crash.
Nurses floated past me, only stopping by to check my vitals.
At that moment, my memory of our arrival at the hospital was foggy and blurred.
But since I was here, wearing off anesthesia, I already knew.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Minutes?
Hours? Everything suddenly ached with double force, but not in a way painkillers could fix.
When I finally opened my eyes properly and they moved me from post-op to the ward and my room, Adam was already there, sitting beside the bed, his head in his hands, sobbing quietly.
He looked up when he felt me stir, his face a mess of sorrow and helplessness.
My doctor came in and she tried to explain what happened, but all I could hear was the buzzing in my ears and some muffled words making their way through the white noise:
“…placental abruption…”
“…acute hypertension…”
“…no heartbeat.”
I didn’t cry, I just turned my head to the window, staring at nothing.
The weight in my body felt empty now, like a silence too loud to bear.
I was discharged two hours later, with a list of prescriptions and a note with recommendations: two weeks rest, a high-protein diet, a phone number to a psychotherapist, and to consult an ob-gyn if planning to try again. Planning to try again, funny.
The cab ride was quiet. Adam sat beside me, his knee bouncing with nervous energy he couldn’t burn off. He was still a teenager, but seemed to have matured by five years. I was wrapped in my old Snoopy pajama pants and Adam’s oversized hoodie.
When we pulled up to the house, I saw him.
Standing on the porch behind Dad, who was seated in his wheelchair, Paul towering over him, wearing a simple black T-shirt, despite the chill, his shoulders covered in this season’s first snowflakes.
They weren’t talking. Two men who had nothing in common except me, and the fact that neither knew how to fix what waited behind that front door.
Paul straightened when he saw me, his eyes the stormy greyish-blue, face pale, with crevices that I hadn’t seen before.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
I just walked past them, into the house and up the steps, hearing Adam mutter something to Paul—probably a warning, knowing him—but I missed the words.
I made it to my room before the tears came.
I didn’t even change, although I could still feel that hospital smell creeping into my bones.
Just curled up on the bed, knees to my chest, hands covering my face like they could hold in everything I didn’t want to feel.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that before I heard the soft knock.
Paul didn’t wait for permission. He stepped inside quietly, like he was afraid the floorboards might betray him.
He crossed the room and sat beside me. Not close enough to crowd me, but near enough that I could feel his presence.
After a moment, I felt the bed shift as he slowly, carefully, lay down beside me.
Neither of us spoke. Then I felt his arm—hesitant, trembling—wrap around my shoulders.
I let him. I didn’t have the strength to push him away, and he was comfortingly warm despite waiting for God knows how long in the wintry cold.
His heart was beating irregularly, like he was trying to control his breath.
I curled into him, feeling tiny in comparison.
I don’t know who started crying first. Maybe it was both of us at the same time. Silent tears that turned into heavier sobs, something we couldn’t hold back anymore. His hand found mine, fingers lacing together like they used to when things were simple.
After what felt like hours, I heard his voice: low and raw, nothing like the Paul I’d known before.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he whispered into my hair. “I can’t… I can’t make this better. But I’m here, for once, I’m really here.”
I let out a shaky breath, my forehead resting against his chest.
“You always carried more than anyone should,” he continued, his voice breaking. “I was too blind to see it. Too caught up in my own lies and bullshit. I’m sorry it took this… to understand.”
I closed my eyes, letting the sound of his heartbeat, now steadier, calm me down.
“You don’t have to be strong right now, Alicia,” he said, softer than I’d ever heard him. “Not with me.”
And for the first time since the hospital, I let myself fall apart knowing that, just this once, I didn’t have to hold the pieces together alone.
We stayed like that until the tears ran out.
Until grief settled into something quieter, but not gone.
Never gone. When I finally pulled back, Paul didn’t let go immediately.
His hand lingered, like he wasn’t ready to lose whatever fragile connection we’d found in the wreckage.
A moment. A shared sorrow. And maybe, in some strange way, finally, a shared love: not the kind he chased, but the kind that stays when everything else falls away.
And he stayed.