had been, and when she woke, there was a mask on her face. It smelled terrible, and she was very drowsy. And then, without saying anything to her, they rolled her away, and she saw people and hallways and doors drifting past her, and someone told her they were taking her to her room now. She wondered if she was in jail, if they were going to punish her finally for the terrible things she had done to all of them. They knew, they all did, that she was guilty. But no one said anything to her as they wheeled her into a room, and left her there, dozing on the gurney.
Two women in white walked into the room finally, wearing starched caps and somber faces, and without saying a word to her, they lifted her carefully from the gurney to the bed, and adjusted the IV that was still giving her a transfusion. They said very little to her, and left her to sleep for the rest of the day. Gabriella still didn't know why she was here, though she still remembered the sound of the woman she had heard screaming. It had been a wail of agony, a keening of pain, and sorrow. And later, when the doctor came in to talk to her, she cried again, but this time she understood what had happened. She had lost Joe's baby.
“I'm very sorry,” the doctor said solemnly. He did not know she was a postulant, but he assumed because of the convent where she lived that she was an unwed mother, and had been placed there by her parents. “There will be other children one day,” he said optimistically. But Gabriella knew better than he did, that there wouldn't. She had never wanted children because she was too afraid that she would become a monster like her mother. She would never have risked it. But with Joe at her side, she thought it might have been different. It had been a chance for another life, with a man she loved, and the child born of their love for each other. It had been a dream she had cherished all too briefly and didn't deserve, and now it had become a nightmare without him.
“You'll have to be very careful for a while,” the doctor admonished her. “You've lost a lot of blood, and,” he added ominously, “we almost lost you. If you'd come in here twenty minutes later, we would have.” Her heart had stopped beating twice in the delivery room, and it was the worst miscarriage he'd ever seen. She had lost more than enough blood to kill her.
“We re going to keep you here for a few days, just to watch you, and to keep up the transfusions. You can go home after that, as long as you promise me you'll rest and take it very easy. No running around, no parties, no visits, no dancing.” He smiled at her, imagining a life different than any she had ever known, but she was young and beautiful and he assumed she would be anxious to get out and see her friends again, and probably the man who had gotten her pregnant. Then he asked her if she wanted him to call anyone for her, and Gabriella looked up at him with grief-stricken horror.
“My husband died yesterday,” she said in a hoarse whisper, endowing Joe posthumously with the role she had wished for him, and the doctor looked at her with wisdom and compassion.
“I'm very sorry.” It was a double blow for her, he knew, and explained something to him. For most of the surgery and delivery he had had the odd feeling that she was fighting them and didn't want to make it, and now he knew that for certain. She had wanted to die and be with the man she called her husband, although he still doubted they'd been married. If they had been, she would never have come to them from St. Matthew's. “Try and rest now.” It was all he had to offer her, and after a few more minutes of observing her, he left her. She was a pretty girl, she was young and had a long life ahead of her. She had survived this, and would survive other things. It would all be a dim memory one day, he knew, but for now she looked and felt as though her world had ended.
And in Gabriella's eyes, it had. She was absolutely convinced she had