“Where y’all at?”
“In the kitchen,” Lindsay shouts. She grabs bags of chips and tosses them into a picnic basket just as Cord comes into the kitchen with his trademark wide smile.
Cord McCurry has hung out with us since high school. We have a special friendship, one that’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s because he stayed with my family for a year or so after high school when my father got him a job at the mine. I don’t know. All I do know is that Cord and I don’t see each other daily, sometimes not weekly, even, but we always seem to be there for each other. It’s almost a brother-sister relationship, although not quite. Cord would never allow someone that close to him.
“Hey,” he says, patting me on the shoulder as he walks by. “Smells good in here, Lindsay. Whaddya got I can sample? I’m starving.”
“You can wait like the rest of us,” Jiggs says, reaching for another marshmallow.
“Oh, whatever, Jiggs,” I laugh. “You’ve been into every dish we’ve made today. You probably still have brownies on your fingers.”
He looks at his hands with a smirk before glancing up at his wife. “That’s not all that’s on these fingers.”
“Jiggs!” Lindsay blushes and tosses a towel at him, making us laugh.
“Are you denying it?” Jiggs teases.
“Do you guys want to take everything out back?” Lindsay says in an attempt to change the subject. She glances out the window towards the fire that’s starting to glow as the afternoon sun sets behind it. Upwards of thirty people are already here, lingering around the fire. “I think it’s time to get this party started.”
“Sure thing,” Cord says, grabbing the cooler of snacks Lindsay and I put together earlier. Jiggs balances the picnic basket on another cooler and they head out the back door.
Once they’re gone, Lindsay leans against the counter and watches me. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, straightening out my red and grey flannel shirt, my fingers only slightly fidgety. “Why?”
“You’ve not quite been here mentally all day. Just wondering if everything is okay.”
I snort, turning my back to her. I don’t want to dampen the party by bringing up the fact that I feel like crawling in a hole and sleeping away my life. That I don’t even want to be here. That seeing Ty has brought back, in vivid technicolor, the moment that forever changed the way I’ll feel about him.
Dr. Walker sits down on the stool in front of the examining table and looks up at me through his black wire-rimmed glasses. He takes a deep breath as he sits my chart on the little table behind him. My hands find the edge of the white paper hanging off the sides and crumple it in my fists.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my voice trembling. I’m on the cusp of breaking down, my heart beating so fast in my chest that I can barely sneak in a breath. It’s been this way since he left and I can’t take it anymore. I feel like I’m going to die, like the world is starting to crush me with its weight. It’s why I’m here. To fix it. To get something to help regain control of my emotions. But something’s wrong. I can see it in his eyes, a benefit of seeing the same doctor since I was fourteen.
The glasses are removed and he clears his throat. “Where’s Ty?”
“I don’t know,” I admit through the burn in my throat.
“Is anyone here with you today?”
“No. Why? What’s wrong, Dr. Walker?”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but your bloodwork showed you’re in the process of a miscarriage, Elin.”
My world stops yet starts a slow spin that wobbles me slightly as I take in his words. My gut churns, like I’ve drunk too many margaritas on a Thirsty Thursday with Lindsay, but something itches in the back of my psyche that tells me a margarita might be helpful right about now. I’m starting to sway in my seat, but no amount of grabbing the edges of the table helps.
“What?” I ask, trying to focus on the wrinkles in his face. “I’m not pregnant. It’s impossible,” I say, a sad laugh rolling past my lips.
Surely I misunderstood. The universe wouldn’t do this to me, wouldn’t take away the one thing Ty and I have wanted more than anything else. It wouldn’t do this to me now, when everything else is falling apart. I won’t be able to take it.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “You were just a few weeks along . . .”
The rest is muffled by a screaming only I can hear. My heart thunders so hard I think it’s going to explode as I touch my stomach and then pull back, like they’re going to be burnt by contact.
I am pregnant. I was pregnant. I . . .
My head falls forward and I barely catch it with my fingers. All the times we tried. So many negative tests. Thousands of unanswered prayers. I can’t . . .