“Oh my God. Erik, help me…”
He exploded out of bed, tying his own pants, tripped over something as he burst into the hallway. Daisy came flying out of the bathroom. “She’s having a miscarriage. I need to get Will, stay here with her.”
“Wait.” But she was down the stairs and seconds later, the back door slammed. Erik stared at the floor. The drops of blood on the scuffed wooden planks. A trail leading to the bathroom. His heartbeat grew louder, heavier, a sledgehammer against the inner wall of his chest. He had to go in there. He had to.
Do it. Now.
Blood like a constellation of stars across the white-tiled bathroom floor. Lucky sat on the toilet, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, hunched over, her face in her hands. Erik reeled back, hesitating. This was a bathroom. A private, insanely intimate place of bodily function and his entire instinct screamed at him to get out of here and leave the lady alone. Don’t embarrass her.
But this was Lucky. The same Lucky who got down in the blood on the stage floor and saved Daisy’s life.
Erik knelt down on the lilac shag rug and gathered her into his arms. She was weeping. “I changed my mind.”
“I got you, Lucky. I got you, hold onto me.”
“No, please, I changed my mind. Don’t let it—don’t let it happen, please, I changed my mind.”
But then a slow and steady dripping in the water beneath her, and she screamed against Erik’s shoulder, not in pain but in despair. Her whole body contracted desperately, trying to hold it back, hold onto the baby.
Erik yanked a bath towel from the rack, wrapped it around Lucky, hiding the bowl and her legs, trying to shroud this in some kind of dignity. He held her tight, she hung on his neck. It was too late.
“You gotta let it go, honey,” he whispered against her hair. “Let it go, Luck, hold onto me. Hold onto me, I got you. Let it go.”
Her body relaxed in his arms, he felt her surrender. Another cascade of drips, muffled beneath the towel, and Lucky buried her face in his neck, moaning like a wounded animal.
A commotion of footsteps up the stairs and Will was there then. He slid in on his knees, and Erik carefully handed Lucky off to him, scooting back and out of the way.
Will rocked her, holding her head safe on his chest. Lucky was sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Will picked up her face, kissed it all over. He was crying too, whispering, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, it’s all right.”
“I changed my mind, I wanted it.”
“I know. It’s all right. I just need you to be all right. I just need you. I just need you. It’s all right, Luck. I just need you…”
Erik helped Will put Lucky in his car to take her to the campus health center. He stood on the porch, watching the red tail lights disappear down the street and turn a corner.
They always leave in the middle of the night, he thought.
He went back inside.
Daisy was in the little front hall, wrapped in a throw blanket and shivering. Erik shut the door, then lurched into her. She opened her arms and caught him. They slid down to the floor, clutching one another.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for helping her. You were so good. You were so good to her.”
He was shaking so hard his bones hurt. The thought of the blood in the bathroom was making him feel sick. “I can’t go back up there,” he whispered, filled with shame about it, feeling cowardly and weak but he couldn’t, he could not go back in there.
“What’s the matter? Tell me.”
“The blood. I can’t, Dais, I can’t do it again.”
“I’ll take care of it. No, no, it’s all right, I understand.” Her kisses on his face, her hands soothing on his head. “I’ll clean it up. It won’t upset me.”