When the door shut behind her, Nick helped Beth off the table and pulled her into his arms. She stood stiffly, unable to feel anything other than the darkness that was descending on her. Sensing her detachment, he pulled back to study her face. “Honey, it’s going to be all right. Let’s get through this and then we’ll go home.”
Beth turned vacant eyes on him and said, “I caused this. I’ve hid, lied, and avoided eating, and I starved one of my babies to death to keep from proving my parents right. I killed our baby, Nick. What kind of person does that? I was supposed to take care of them, but all I could think about was myself. What kind of mother does that? You should hate me; I hate myself.”
She saw Nick’s face pale as he started shaking his head in denial. “Stop it. You didn’t do this. You heard what the doctor said—this happens so much it has a name. Don’t do this to yourself. Let’s go talk to the doctor and she can tell you that you didn’t cause this.”
Beth pulled her arm out of his grip and walked to the door. “I’m not going to talk to the doctor; I’m going to the car. You can go if you want to. Hurry, though. We need to eat on the way home. I’m not going to starve my last baby, like I did my other one.”
“Beth . . . princess.” Seeing that there was nothing he could say at this point that would get through to her, Nick handed her his car keys and told her he would be out after he talked with the doctor. As she walked out the door, he slumped back into the seat.
* * *
Nick dropped his head as tension raced through his body. “Fuck!” What in the hell had just happened? He had barely recovered from the shock of finding out they were no longer having twins when Beth threw him for an even bigger loop. The blank look on her face threw him more than the doctor’s words had. She truly believed that she had killed one of their babies. The look on her face went beyond grief. It was the look of someone who had become their own judge, jury, and executioner. She had found herself guilty of something so heinous that she couldn’t deal with it without shutting down.
He knew in that moment that pushing her to voice her fears to the doctor was hopeless. At this point, she wouldn’t believe a word that anyone said. He should probably be grateful that she mentioned breakfast, but somehow that only made things more eerie. Someone in a normal frame of mind would be too upset to think of food. For Beth to want to eat now, after what had just happened, gave credence to her belief that she had starved her baby to death.
Getting to his feet, he opened the door and followed the nurse to the doctor’s office. She probably assumed that Beth would be coming back to accompany him, but he didn’t see the need to explain it to her. He would tell the doctor about Beth’s eating problems and, hopefully, get some reassurances from her that it had not affected the babies. At this point, he would never admit anything otherwise to Beth. Whether the doctor knew it or not, Beth was so fragile that one more blow might break her, and that was something that he could never allow to happen, even if he had to save her from herself.
When he left the doctor’s office and settled in the car beside a still-quiet Beth, he, at least, had answers that he could share with her when she was ready to listen to them. He would give her a few days to deal with her grief. They both needed that. He was more upset than he could have imagined. Somewhere along the way, he had gotten very possessive of Beth and the babies and it was a huge blow to realize that there were no longer two babies. Yeah, he could give her a few days, but after that, she was going to listen to him. After they had a meal that he no longer had any desire for and after Beth was settled, he would call Suzy to get her support, too.
Beth would probably want to take a few days off. Everything was going to be fine. Really? Then why don’t you believe it? He only had to look at the stiff profile of the woman sitting next to him to know that, despite his pep talk to himself, it wasn’t going to be a simple matter to bring her back to herself again.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“It’s been a week, Nick. What is going on over there?” Suzy demanded.
Nick ran a hand over the back of his neck, trying to ease some of the tension gathering there. “Nothing has changed, Suzy. She eats, she drinks, she walks around the block, and then she goes back to bed. She takes care of every basic need that the pregnancy book tells her to and then she blanks out until the next meal.”
“Have you tried talking to her again?”
Releasing a pent-up breath, Nick snapped back, “Of course! I talk to her constantly. She either gives me a one-word answer or ignores me. I fix her meals, fix her snacks, trail her on her walks . . . and I might as well be invisible. If I mention anything about the doctor’s appointment and it not being her fault, she walks off. I thought she was grieving, but she never cries or shows any emotion. It’s pretty damn scary.”
“Screw this; I’m coming over. You need help.”