Things were changing.
When I returned from the pharmacy, he was curled in a ball, shaking. He could barely speak. His teeth were chattering. “Evey, you can’t go out like that without me.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
I gave him Tylenol and wrapped him in blankets. Over the next four hours, I stroked his hair and wiped sweat from his forehead. He would doze off then startle awake.
“What’s happening, Lucian?”
“I don’t know. I know nothing.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital.” I stood abruptly and felt a gush between my legs. No. I held my hand between my legs. “No.”
Lucian looked up at me. “What? What is it?”
Scrambling to the bathroom, I felt the familiar cramping. “No!”
Lucian was behind me, looking pale and weak. I closed the bathroom door as he waited in the hallway. “Tell me what’s going on. Is it happening again?”
Sitting on the toilet, I felt all of the hope, all of the promise leave my body in less than a minute. I cried loudly and dropped my head to my knees. I felt defeated. “God, why are you taking all of this away from us?”
The next thing I knew, Lucian was there with me in the bathroom. He had come through the door somehow, just like he used to. He had cloaked himself, but I felt his familiar comfort around my shoulders.
“I know you’re here,” I said. “You can show yourself.”
The feeling became even stronger, and then I heard his voice. It was almost as if he was far away. He said, “This is all I have left. This is all I can give you.”
I cleaned myself up as best as I could and stood. When I opened the door, Lucian was standing there. I collapsed into his arms.
“This is too much, isn’t it?” he said.
“Don’t give up, please. Don’t give up on us.” I pressed my hand to his head. He was still burning up. Was he burning up literally? “We both need to go to the hospital.”
He cupped my face. “Look at me, Evey.” I looked into his glistening blue eyes and saw all of his love in them. “You are everything to me. You’re the dream, the air, the reason, the cause for my whole existence. If I die today right in front of you, it won’t be because I gave up. I’ll never give up. There is no God that can keep me from you. I’d die ten thousand times for you. I’ve been this thing, this being that no one believed in. I had no legacy. I had to be selfless for so long, then I found you and you always gave more than you took. When you were little, I used to think everything you did was amazing… I still do. I’ve loved you forever. You don’t understand that my life before you was nothing. You made me real. You made me exist… finally. I would take this pain all over again. I wouldn’t change anything.”
I felt tears streaming steadily down my cheeks. Listening to every word that came out of his beautiful mouth, I wondered what I would be without him. If I lost him, I would die. “Don’t say things like that. We’re going to be okay,” I told him.
He smiled, but there was still so much sadness in his eyes. Wiping the tears from my cheek with his thumb, he bent and kissed my lips. “Always the optimist.”
I was trembling from the cramps. Lucian, as weak as he was, picked me up, grabbed the keys, and carried me out to the car. When we reached the hospital, he yelled for someone to help me. I shuffled to a wheelchair just outside of the ER doors, then a nurse wheeled me in, asking me questions.
“I’m having a miscarriage, and my husband is very sick. He should be coming in behind me.” I heard a ruckus from the entrance and saw staff running toward the doors.
The nurse stopped pushing me and glanced back.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
The nurse didn’t answer. She just stared, eyes wide. I stood on shaking legs and looked back at the entrance. Just inside the doorway, Lucian was on the floor, convulsing. I ran to him, feeling blood running down my legs. My gray sweats were drenched.
“Ma’am,” one of the nurses said, but I ignored her.
A doctor was trying to prevent Lucian from banging his head on the ground. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and he was foaming at the mouth.
I was crying and screaming, “Help him!”
“Whose blood is that?” one nurse said.
Then I heard, “It’s the woman who’s bleeding.”
“Help my husband,” I screamed through what felt like an hour of watching Lucian convulse. “Please, help him!”
“We’re doing what we can,” a blond woman in blue scrubs said to me as we all sat on the floor around him.
When the seizure started to subside, Lucian was still twitching. His eyes were back, but he was obviously confused.
“Ma’am, you need help. Let us help you,” the lady in scrubs said to me.
I need help?
Lucian tried to focus his eyes and sit up, but the staff wouldn’t let him. Four men lifted him onto a gurney. When I stood, Lucian glanced at my sweats and began crying. He was trying to form words, but everyone was telling him to relax and take it easy. He reached his hand out to me and I felt it, the energy he was giving me.
When he started to close his eyes, one of the nurses said, “Try to stay awake, sir.”
He was losing consciousness by trying to give me strength.
“His name is Lucian,” I said as I followed the gurney out of the ER lobby.
I was still holding his hand, hoping I could give him some comfort. He was fighting it, I could tell, trying to keep his eyes open. He seemed so human, but I knew he wasn’t. I wondered what kind of tests they would run on him and if they would somehow be able to tell that he was something other than a man.
The nurse who had been pushing me in the wheelchair earlier was urging me to sit back down. I let go of Lucian’s hand, and his eyes shot open.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed.
I collapsed into the chair, and then Lucian and I were wheeled in different directions. I had to have a vaginal ultrasound to confirm that my baby no longer had a heartbeat. My baby was dead and gone… again. I felt naked inside and out, vulnerable, alone, sick to my stomach, depressed. I missed Lucian and couldn’t stop thinking about how he must have been feeling. I yearned for him to be there with me.
Probing my bleeding insides, the man watched a screen and said without any compassion, “There’s nothing in there.”
“Excuse me?”
He glanced at my face quickly before looking back at the screen. Pointing at something, he said, “That’s your uterus, and there’s nothing in there.”
I wondered whether I should thank him or punch him. It was like déjà vu, being in that situation, in pain and not knowing how to act, whether to be angry or sad. They wheeled me into another room to recover, except this time I was alone. The nurse asked if I wanted pain medication, and I told her no. A male doctor I had never met came in and said that I had miscarried and that everything was fine. But it wasn’t. What a poor choice of words. I had just miscarried. Everything wasn’t fine.
“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.