Chapter 174

“Merci, Doctor. Rousea. I will take care of her.” Janetta ushers the man out of my bedroom and I stay where I am, laid on the bed, numb and lifeless with no feelings or thoughts in my head. Like an empty shelf of nothingness as time ticks slowly by.

It all happened so fast that it seems like a dream to me now. I don’t even remember how I even got here… I remember only the basics like some long lost almost forgotten memory and then here he was, this man examining me, and she was wiping my tears and holding my hand through the pain. There was so much pain.

I saw it. I knew before he had his hands on me. I knew before Janetta turned to me with a white pallor and pained expression because I saw it all. The little thing he lifted from the bathroom floor, so small it was barely real and scooped into a little plastic tub like it was some god damn fucking leftovers at a buffet. I wanted to fight him for it.

I saw them try to hide it under a dish towel and take it away, like it was a sinful thing and not a piece of me, but it was too late. I saw every single little detail because it was me that left it lying on the bathroom floor all alone, because I was too scared to keep staring at my loss. It was me that felt it let go, left it there when it slid from me amid pain and convulsions, touched it, held it, and broke to pieces in every single way before I somehow found myself in her arms on my own bed.

The bed is blood smeared, but I don’t care. I don’t want to move or feel anything. I just want Arrick. I want him right here, right now, to make this better. To make it all go away. To take the heavy weighted lead from my heart that is crushing me down and help me breathe freely once more.

My little mini Sophie inside of me decided I wasn’t going to be a great mom after all, and I know it’s because I kept telling it that I didn’t want to be.

I didn’t mean it.

I can’t cry anymore; that part of me that runs into hiding when the pain is too much, it’s there numbing it out with every minute that I blankly blink at the ceiling, staring ahead as I realize I need to call Arrick and tell him to come home. Sick at the thought of telling him I ruined everything.

He doesn’t know

He’s in New York

This will crush him.

“You rest, mademoiselle. I will make you soup and some fresh bread, non?” Janetta is fluffing around me, fixing the bed clothes, trying to pull the soaked comforter from under me and I give her minimal help. She manages to side it away, lifting my legs and patting my naked skin and I stare at her in complete zombie state. She somehow managed to get underwear on me and a pad to catch the evidence of my carnage, all while I laid here like some shell who has no sense of time or space.

I miscarried my child, before it even begun… because I blamed it for its daddy going away.

I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to have a baby…

Then why do I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped through my chest and nothing is better at all? Why do I feel so empty?

“I need to call him.” I say quietly, voice low and even I can hear how lifeless and robotic I sound. I’m so detached from reality right now and only the aching left over cramps in my abdomen remind me of what happened. What I’ve lost.

“Oui, he will want to know, want to come home to you. I will leave you alone.” She picks up my cell from the bedside and hands it to me, patting me on the hand gently and I stare at her some more. I’m so numb.

There’s nothing but a weird quiet sense of calm and yet somehow, I know that I am not okay. That when this wears off this is going to be a hell of a lot worse and I am not even beginning to understand how I feel. My head is scrambled.

I pick up my cell and dial his number, not even sure if he will be able to answer if he’s at work already. I have no clue how long he has been gone or if he’s even still on his flight. I have lost hours of time, maybe days and I have no idea what day it even is.

It rings a few times before a sultry female voice answers it and I can’t even feel any sort of reaction to that. I know her voice, the pangs of jealousy she ignites in me normally, do not even register at all.

“Mr. Carrero’s. line, he is in a meeting can I take a message.” Amanda sounds bright and perky and I sigh heavily, closing my eyes and wishing it was him instead. I need him.

“it’s Sophie. I need to talk to Arry, right away, it’s urgent.” I don’t care if he is in a meeting. He will want to know. He won’t care if I disrupt it; he’s Arry, my Arry and this will be as important to him as it is to me.

Important? Really Sophie? As of this morning you didn’t even want it.

I swallow down the lump that overtakes my throat and breathe through the prickly tears that hit me hard.

Yes, I did. I wanted it when I tried to make it cling on while crouching on the bathroom floor. I begged it to stay. I told it if it just held on, I would be the best mom I could be, if she only stayed.

“I’m sorry, Miss Huntsberger, they have a conference with men who flew in from Belgium right now and I cannot interrupt.” She says a tad more haughtily and my temper rises. Numb gives way to fury, anger from somewhere deep down and I snap irrationally.

“Listen Amanda… Arrick will want to answer this call and if I tell him you wouldn’t put me through like I asked you to, he will fire your ass. Quicker than you can say Boo. Trust me… Go fucking get my Fiancée like I fucking told you to.” I bite at her, not caring if I am abusing his staff and being really rude. I have this growing black hole inside of me and I want to smash her god damn face in about now.

Slutty little whore who thinks she can stand between us.

“Yes. Miss. Huntsberger.” She says it through gritted teeth, and I can almost feel the bitchy glare down the phone. I stay silent as she mutes me and know at least she is going to tell him I am calling. I bet she hopes he tells her to dismiss me, so she can have some pleasure at snubbing me, but I know he won’t. She doesn’t know him like I do.

It takes minutes and I am sure she is deliberating taking an age just to piss me off as I stare blankly at our bedroom wall. I hate that he is so far away, but I need to get this over and done with. Saying it aloud, saying the words might make it more real and I might feel something more than this aching gap that is robbing me of all energy and life.

“Hello… Sophs?” Arrick comes on the line, sounding harassed and I close my eyes at the almost normal tone of his voice. He still has a voice that makes everything feel better. Like coming home to a warm hug. Whether he knows it or not, right now this is what I need more than air.

“I’m sorry I… I had to call.” I sound way too calm, unemotional and sort of strange. Like I’m not really here at all.

“It’s okay…I’m glad you called. I hate when we argue, and I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I’m sorry, baby, I know I left mid fight. I feel shitty as hell for it.” He’s trying for upbeat, apologetic, and sincere, but I can hear people behind him and Amanda’s nagging voice reminding him he has people waiting. She clearly thinks it’s a lover’s tiff being put to bed and doesn’t know the importance of this call.

I wish she would shut the fuck up and go to hell.

“It’s gone, Arrick. I got up and … it’s just gone.” It comes out, like a meaningless nothing announcement but I don’t know how else to say it. I have no words. It aches deep inside and I have to swallow down the urge to cry. So on the verge of falling apart.

“What’s gone?” He seems distracted as he responds to her and then his breathing gets a little louder as he comes back to me, it doesn’t even irritate me. This weird numbness spreading further, and I’m drained and limp. I push my head back into the cushions and stare at the ceiling instead, counting the cracks in the whitewash and pray that he will come home.

“Sophs? What’s gone?” He sounds so clueless, so innocent of the words I am about to strike him with. Concern and confusion mixed in that husky voice of his.

I’m sorry, Arry.

“Our baby.” That word is like a stabbing hot poker to my heart and my eyes fill with full tears, unable to hold them at bay anymore.

There’s a deathly silence on the line as though everything drops into nothing, and for a long moment he doesn’t say a thing.

Neither do I.

“What happened? When? How?” Arrick’s voice is shaken, hoarse and low and I can tell it’s hitting him in the way it should be hitting me, yet I’m too calm. The silence is agony however and I have the urge to fill it with words. I can’t stand silent Arrick; it means he’s in pain and I don’t know how to deal with him that way. I have never really had to.

“I got up with cramps, and then it happened. It was done and gone in minutes. Blood… Everywhere.” I cringe and close my eyes on the memory of the weird little unidentifiable thing among the mess I left smeared across the bathroom tiles, yet somehow, I had known what it was. I knew she was mine.

I think maybe I am in shock.

“Shit… Sophie… Baby.” Arry says breathlessly, his voice dropping to barely a whisper and then he’s back stronger. That shake in his voice, his tone has dropped to an emotional level and I can hear him trying to keep himself together. “I’m coming home. I’ll be on the first flight. I’m sorry… I should have been there. I love you, and I’m sorry.” He sounds broken, emotion rasping his voice and yet still in me, nothing but the same emptiness keeps enveloping me anytime emotion tries to break through. Drawing me back into myself and that quiet space where I used to hide, the space where no one can touch me.

I sigh heavily and nod even though he can’t see me.

“I guess that means I can leave Paris now, huh?” I say it so matter of factly, and even though it’s coming from me, another part of my brain is looking on in bewilderment at how cold and weird that statement is.

What’s wrong with you?

“What? … I guess so. Are you okay though? I’ll call Boris and make him take you to the hospital with Janetta.” Arrick answers me with an equally odd tone and I know he’s probably balking at how I am being and what I said and is trying to dismiss it. I don’t know what else to say.

“I don’t need to go, he said it came out whole, it was all there and there’s nothing they can do. Just rest and move on. I thought I should let you know anyway.” My dead pan, lifeless voice doesn’t sound like me at all.

“Sophs, your kind of scaring me, where is Janetta? Is she still there?” He’s shell-shocked and concerned but it also seems like he has a rising panic in the tone of his voice. I can almost picture him; his eyes will be green.

“She’s making soup, because you know… Chicken soup cures everything right?” I inhale slowly, deliberately as I go back to counting the cracks in the ceiling … one… two… three. Only three, three little cracks all clustered together in one little space. Three little things like we should have been. Me, Arrick and bump… Three little cracks in the same ceiling who should have been a family.

I have no idea what I’m even thinking.

“Sophs, you sound… weird. I’m coming home, baby, hang on in there. I’ll be home as soon as I can get a flight to you. I hear him bark a muffled order at Miss. Boobs. beside him to go book him any flight back to Paris ASAP and then he’s back with me. I have no other words, just the empty hole and low abdominal ache that reminds me that this isn’t a dream.

“I think I need to take a nap. I’m tired. I want to go to sleep now.” I answer blankly.

Arrick breathes heavily on the phone like maybe he went to say something and changed his mind. There’s a pause while he thinks through his response and then that voice that can save me from most things is back with me. Soft, trying to soothe me and conceal his own emotions. He’s trying to be my rock.

“Okay. You do that… I’ll be there soon, Okay. Call me if you need me… I’ll have my cell on the whole time. Just call or text me. I’m coming.” He’s trying to keep the pain out of his voice, but I can hear it, even through his gently, gently, Arrick mode, where he treats me like fragile glass even from afar. This is killing him, and he wants to fall apart, but he won’t if he is trying to be strong for me and it only adds to my weight of guilt about my lack of emotions.

“Okay.” I answer a little too brightly and there’s a stumbled pause.

“I love you, Mimmo.”

“I love you more.”