Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,42
and quiet together for a while, and it was wonderful after the hubbub of arriving at the hospital, the struggle to remove my jeans, the shock of the miscarriage. I felt drained, mentally and physically. I'd lost a lot of blood. After a while, I think I dozed a little, and Jack may have, too.
As I drifted in and out of uneasy napping, I was thinking that this was the first time I'd felt really married. It felt like a cord ran between Jack and me, an umbilical cord, pulsing with life and nutrients. Then I thought of the baby, the baby who'd been attached to me with a real umbilical cord, and I thought of Jack leaving this brilliant white cubicle to cry for our lost child. I stared at the wall, at the incomprehensible medical things attached to it, and I considered that if I had not allowed Jack into my life, none of this pain would have been mine or his. Dry eyed, I stared at the wall, from time to time stroking his dark hair, and I did not know if I was glad or miserable that I'd ever seen him.
That evening Tamsin and Cliff came to my room. It was a double, but there wasn't another patient in there, which was a relief I was sure I owed to Carrie. Jack had left to spend a little time at the house cleaning up the disorder we'd left behind us that morning and to shower and change. I'd been dozing again, this time from the anesthesia, and I was startled to open my eyes and see the couple standing in the doorway.
"Tamsin," I said. "Cliff."
"I was visiting a client on my lunch hour and I saw your name on the admissions list," Tamsin explained. She had a little arrangement of daisies and baby's breath in her hand. "Are you feeling all right, Lily?"
"Yes, much better," I said, being careful not to move. "Thanks for coming by."
Tamsin placed the flowers on the broad windowsill, and Cliff came to the side of the bed and peered down at me. "We've had a miscarriage, too," he said. "Tamsin lost our baby about three years ago."
Tamsin looked away, as if the mention of the loss was a reproach.
"How are you doing?" I asked her.
"You mean, about the death of Saralynn?"
I nodded.
"I'm adjusting," she said. "Her mother came to see me. That was bad."
"I can well imagine," I lied.
"I brought you some magazines." Tamsin fumbled with a bag. "Here, maybe one of them will distract you for a while." She arranged a stack on my rolling table. She'd been smart enough to avoid House Beautiful and Vogue.
"Thank you," I said.
"Then, I guess, we'll see you later. I hope you feel better."
"Thank you."
After they'd left the room, I was ashamed of my eagerness to have them gone. I didn't want to see anyone, not a soul, but normally I would have expended some effort to be more polite.
Between the slit left between the curtains, I could see the late summer sun setting on one of the longest days of my life. I was seeing only a slice of the brilliant ball of glory, the briefest flare of red and orange. I looked for a long time. Then I pressed my call button.
The nurse eventually arrived to help me to the bathroom. She was a burly middle-aged woman who had no sympathy for me at all... kind of a relief after the emotional fire-walking I'd had that day.
As I shuffled back to my bed across the bright linoleum, I realized that Tamsin herself must be going through much the same difficulty. Her life was churned and risky, and she and Cliff most probably could not see any end to that risk.
In my self-protective way, I wanted to hold my counselor at arm's length because I had too much trouble of my own to help her out of hers.
Whatever Tamsin was doing, or whatever was being done to her, I wanted no part of it. I had worked myself into a state of revulsion for my increasing entanglement in the lives of others, even Jack. This was where it led, to this hard white bed in this hard white place, where pieces of me bled out of my body.
I caught my breath, revolted by my own self-involvement.
When Jack returned, he tried to hold my hand, but I pulled my fingers away and turned my eyes to the wall.
"I'll feel better before long," I promised