Chapter 9 #3
The words came out so faint I wouldn't have been sure I’d spoken them if Cole hadn't leaned closer to my shoulder.
“Yes,” Dr. Mehta said. “There was. I’m so sorry.”
I didn't cry. The ceiling fan kept turning. Out in the hall, a supply cart rolled past and a wheel clattered over a floor seam—the exact same sound from eleven days ago, or one close enough that my body remembered it before my brain could.
“Did I do something?” I asked.
The question humiliated me the second it cleared my throat. I’d worked on a Sunday. I’d taken on a board deck. I’d drunk bad peppermint tea, taken stairs, slept poorly, thought too much about New York. I could make a full list in ten seconds.
Dr. Mehta set the tablet on the counter.
“No. Nothing you did caused this. Early pregnancy loss is common, and in many cases, it happens because the pregnancy couldn't continue developing. It’s not the result of working or keeping your routine.”
The air wouldn't travel all the way down into my lungs. I looked at Cole. His face was pale beneath a day’s worth of stubble; he didn't try to arrange his expression to reassure me. He just sat there, one hand gripping mine, the other clamped flat over his knee.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Dr. Mehta walked through the options in concise, measured sentences.
We could wait for the body to complete the miscarriage naturally through expectant management.
She could prescribe medication to manage it at home.
Or we could schedule an in-clinic procedure if I preferred a faster, more controlled resolution.
She explained what to expect with bleeding and cramping, scheduled follow-up calls, and outlined the threshold symptoms for the emergency room.
She didn't wrap the reality in soothing platitudes.
She handed me an instruction packet and the space to decide.
“You don't have to decide this minute,” she said. “Since bleeding has already started, we can monitor you and check in again this evening or tomorrow, provided your symptoms don't escalate. Do you have a safe place where someone can stay with you?”
The obvious answer was yes. Cole was right there. That didn't make anywhere feel safe.
“Yes,” I said.
He leaned in slightly.
“I can stay with you,” he said. “If you want.”
Dr. Mehta looked at the dark monitor, not our faces. I was grateful for the discretion like a physical gift.
“I want to go home,” I said.
“All right. I’ll send the instructions to your patient portal and have the desk print a hard copy. Please don't drive if the pain worsens or you feel dizzy. Call us with any question, even if you just need to hear the information again.”
I nodded. It was the only action I had left intact.
When we were left alone, the sonographer shut down the machine. The black screen occupied the exact space where the heartbeat had flickered eleven days earlier.
Cole didn't speak for a long time. The silence wasn't comfortable. It had no reason to be.
“I don't know what to do with you,” I said.
He looked up, the sentence lingering on his features before he found an answer.
“You don't have to do anything with me.”
“No, I mean...” I swallowed. The paper gown crinkled as my knees shifted. “I don't know what you do when things go truly wrong.”
Cole looked down at our joined hands.
“I’m not making a list today. I’m taking you home. I’m staying if you ask me to. And if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”
The sobs came then. Not cleanly. They caved my chest inward with a raw, childish force that left me clamping my free hand over my mouth so nobody out in the corridor would hear.
Cole rose from the chair, waited until my arm reached out, and wrapped his arms around my shoulders carefully, without crushing me against him.
His hoodie smelled of laundry soap and rain. I buried my face in the fleece. The sobs kept coming, jagged, until my ribs ached.
“I’m so sorry,” Cole murmured against my hair.
It wasn't a useful phrase. It wasn't trying to be.
I pressed one flat palm against his chest. Beneath the fabric, his heart beat with obscene regularity.
“Me too.”
I don't know how much time passed. When I lifted my head, my cheeks were wet and the screen was still dark. Cole hadn't moved his hands from my back.
The nurse set the discharge packet on the counter by the door and stepped back outside. On the first page, beneath my name, someone had printed *Early Pregnancy Loss*. The type was black, neat, impossible to dispute.
My phone buzzed inside my coat pocket. The notification lit the lock screen.
DIANE: *The team has the deck. Don't think about tomorrow. Message me when you can.*
I read it once. Put it away without replying.
Cole waited.
“I can’t go back to the office tomorrow,” I said.
The sentence was small, but speaking it made something yield inside me. Not relief. Space.
“No,” he said. “Tomorrow, you don't go back.”
I took the instruction sheet with one hand and held onto his wrist with the other. The rough edge of the athletic tape pressed into my fingers.
“Take me home.”