Mason Hayes
The Loss

Charlotte and I had been trying to have a baby for a year, ever since we moved into our new house, a house we couldn’t really afford. But Char insisted we needed two bedrooms so we could turn one into a nursery. Once we knew for sure, we spent two weeks painting it—a gender-neutral yellow—and another couple of weeks decorating it. Charlotte was an elementary school teacher and used to doing arts and crafts with her students, so she did most of the work. She hung handmade snowflakes and stocked a tiny bookcase with our favorite childhood books. While she worked she sang nursery rhymes and songs that her mother had sung to her, and every now and then she would stop, look down at her little bump, and smile. I mostly moved furniture around and watched my wife admire her belly out of the corner of my eye.

The night before the accident, we’d thrown a blanket on the floor of the nursery and laid under the homemade mobile that Charlotte had spent all day putting together.

“What do you think about ‘Oliver’? ‘Oliver K. Stearns’. A strong name.” Charlotte said.

“I thought we were going to wait to see what our baby looked like first,” I replied, laughing at how impatient she was.

“I know, but I just can’t wait! ‘Oliver’ for a boy, ‘Olive’ for a girl?” Charlotte said, putting my hand on her belly.

“We’ll see,” I said. She turned her face and bore her eyes into mine. “But yes, that sounds great!” I quickly added. She laughed as I kissed her forehead. We fell asleep under the spinning paper birds of the mobile. That’s the last thing I remember clearly.

I was woken at 3 am by Charlotte clutching her stomach, yelling, “Gilbert, what’s happening?!” I followed her eyes down to the circle of blood on the blanket between her legs. Without fully understanding what was going on, we threw things into a bag, wrapped a towel around her waist, and got into the car. It seemed like we hit every red light on the way to the hospital, each one shone brighter on Charlotte’s ashen face, adding to the horror of what was happening beneath the towel.

At the hospital, I don’t remember much besides the doctor delivering the news. I heard the words over and over again in my head, not believing them then, not believing them now. I’ll never forget Charlotte’s response. She was propped up in the all-white, sterile hospital bed, holding the stuffed bear she had brought when I’d carried her out of the house early that morning. It was the only toy we had purchased for our unborn child so far—the only one we’d had time to buy. The fluorescent light made her skin pale, and everything smelled like hand sanitizer. She put her hands over her mouth, letting the bear to fall to the floor, turned to me and asked, “Why?”

*     *     *

It’s been two months since that night at the hospital, and Charlotte hasn’t been the same since. It isn’t that she’s particularly depressed, she’s just been different. One day, I found her standing outside the nursery—which we hadn’t opened since the night we came back from the hospital—knocking on the door.

“Char, what are you doing?” I asked, after standing at the edge of the hallway for a few minutes, trying to figure it out. She didn’t move, just lifted one hand every few seconds to rap on the door.

“Oh, Gilbert,” she said, not looking up from the floor.

“C’mere…” I took a step towards her but stopped when I heard her reply: “What do you think Oliver wants for dinner?”

She isn’t always like this. Sometimes she’s her normal self. It’s only rare moments that I catch her doing or saying something strange. She came home late from work one day and when I asked why, she told me she’d been waiting for Oliver but he never showed. Would I go back to school and check on him? I promised to look for him, and instead walked to the corner store. I bought a pack of cigarettes, even though I’d given up smoking years before. I waited an hour before returning home, and by then the incident was forgotten in her mind.
Earlier today I found her in the nursery, staring down into the empty crib, tucking a small purple blanket around the bottom of a pillow, where a baby’s chin would be. When I called softly to her, she turned and I realized she had been picking at the paint. Her fingernails had dug a gouge into the wood, and her fingertips were covered in blood. She looked at me and mouthed, “Why?” then walked past me and out of the room.

I stepped into the room and sat down near the remnant stain showing where we lost the baby. The nursery held months of memories for me and Charlotte. I remember the first time we saw the room. The window was open, a breeze pushing the white curtains into the room, filling the room with sunshine. We knew immediately it would be our baby’s. And I remember the last night we spent in it together, talking about names, surrounded by the white snowflakes and blue birds she had worked so hard on. Now it felt tainted. The window is never open and the curtains never flow, they just drag on the floor. Nothing can prepare a couple for a miscarriage. Charlotte may have been the one with blood streaming down her legs, but I was the one who had to see the horror on my wife’s face. I had to take the news from the doctor like a man, and I had to tell my wife that it was going to be okay when it wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to be okay again.

*     *     *

The doctor says that it’s more common for a woman who has a history of depression or a woman who was previously childless to have postpartum depression after a miscarriage. I’m sitting at the kitchen table on the phone with him, peering into the hallway to make sure Charlotte isn’t around. I can hear the doctor clicking the mouse around, looking through Charlotte’s file.

“She doesn’t have a history of depression…” I tried to recall if anyone in her family did.

“Maybe there’s a history of it a few generations back that you don’t know about. This would have been her first child though, so it isn’t a surprise that this is happening.”

“But I’m sure this isn’t normal, doctor. I’m scared for her. If she’s mindlessly picking at wood and doesn’t notice that she’s ripped her fingernails bloody, what else is she going to do?” I said, checking the hallway again. I didn’t know what kind of help to get her. I didn’t know if she needed me or if my being around hindered her getting better.

“Give it some time. Don’t downplay her grief, but maybe try to get her out of the house, take her somewhere you used to go and show her how much you care…women with postpartum depression need to know their support system is still strong.” He gave me the number of someone who was more qualified than he to deal with mental health, but told me to give it a few weeks first and try to talk about it with Charlotte. He said a half-hearted good luck and hung up.
I went upstairs and found Charlotte folding tiny striped and checkered baby clothes.

“Did you just wash those?” I tense. I was getting used to finding unused baby clothes in the laundry.

“No, I think I’m going to donate them,” she says.

I thought about what she just said for a second. She put a green and red onesie down on the table and looks over at me. The look in her eyes was normal.

“We won’t need them for a while,” she says with a sad smile. “I also packed up our baby books for the attic.” She throws a finger over her shoulder to a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner.

I gave her a half-smile, trying not to show too much emotion in case this isn’t permanent.

“Are you hungry, Char?” I want to ask her to go to the farmer’s market to get lunch but I’m scared that it might bring up too many memories of when we used to go, eating fresh cheese and bread, laughing and talking about how our life would be post-baby.

“Yeah, I could use some fresh air. Want to go to the Farmer’s Market?” she volunteers. I can’t control my emotions this time, I smiled at her and I hold out my hand for her to take.
We strolled through the booths all that afternoon, stopping to buy kettlecorn, and hot dogs, my wife’s face looking full and bright. She smiled at all the vendors and even suggested we sit in the grass, under the sunshine, to eat our lunch. I tried not to get too ahead of myself but I couldn’t help thinking how good she looked, and how well she seemed to be doing. Is it over? We’re lying on a blanket—like we did the night of the miscarriage—looking up at the sky. I look over at Charlotte, she’s got mustard on her cheek.

“You are a mess, Charlotte Stearns,” I say as I wipe the mustard off her cheek. She laughs as I lean in to kiss her forehead.

She rolls back over and closes her eyes. She pushes the hair away from her face, the sun making her brown hair look red, and lets her hand fall on her stomach.

_ _

Mason Hayes, originally from Los Angeles, earned her BA in English at Oklahoma State University. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno, in the program for Ethics, Law, and Politics (Philosophy).

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