“You can go,” I say. I’d rather be alone.
He ignores me and carries on his conversation. “I’ll be off-grid for the rest of the day. Just take care of everything however you think best.”
Ending the call, he says to me, more forcefully than last time, “Birdie, look at me.”
“No.”
“Fuck,” he says, squatting so he can come down to my eye level. “Why not?”
When he tips my chin up, I want to lash out at him. I want to yell at him to just leave me alone. I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. This. But I don’t have the energy for that, so I allow him to force me to look at him.
“Baby,” he starts, but I cut him off.
“I can’t look at you, because all I see are your hopes and dreams that I’ve stolen from you.” I swallow the grief and fear clawing at me. “What if I can never give you a baby?”
“We’ve discussed this. If we get to that point, we have other options. You know I’m good with that if it’s the path we have to take.”
“Stop talking about paths and options and all that bullshit. I’m tired of it. I’m so fucking tired of it all. For once, just tell me how much this sucks for you, too.”
“It sucks, but we knew this could happen. Hell, you researched the fuck out of success rates; you knew this was likely—”
“That doesn’t make it any easier. God! Stop being so fucking matter-of-fact about this. You see everything so black and white when there’s so much grey here. I’m fucking drowning in the grey, and I just need you to acknowledge it exists, and to stop trying to solve it or fix me or make everything better. I just want to spend the day crying and grieving. Can you let me do that?”
His eyes search mine and I instantly feel bad for vomiting my grief all over him, but I can’t take it back. I won’t take it back. It might have been hurtful, but it’s my truth, and it’s all I have to give him now.
He nods and stands, holding out his hand. I take it and let him lead me back to the bed. After he wraps me in his arms again, he says, “I’m drowning, too, baby. Don’t shut me out.”
I don’t know if it’s his confession or the torment I hear in his voice, but Winter admitting he’s as broken as I am over this makes me cry again.
We turn silent after that, each lost in our own emotions.
How will we survive this?
18
Winter
* * *
It’s been four days since Birdie and I received the news she’s not pregnant, and if I thought we were drowning then, I don’t know what the fuck you’d call how we are now.
After she spent the entire day in bed, crying for most of it, she went back to work the day after we got the news. I tried to talk her into taking some time off, but she didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. And in complete contrast to how she usually is, she hasn’t wanted to do much talking this week. This silence has thrown me; I don’t know how to reach her or help her. She told me she doesn’t want me to try to make her feel better, but fuck, watching her go through this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. If I could take all her pain away, I would.
“I picked up some Thai for dinner,” she says when I come home just after 7:00 p.m. and find her sitting on the couch scrolling through her phone. “I’m not very hungry, but I can heat some up for you if you want.”
She’s barely eating and I’m growing concerned. “Angel, you need to eat.” And fuck, I want us to have a meal together, something we haven’t done this week.
“Yeah, I will, but later.”
“I’ll wait to eat with you.”
She glances at me and stands. “Okay. I’m gonna have a shower.”
As she moves past me, I reach for her hand and pull her to me. Smoothing her hair off her face, I say, “How was your day?”
“Long. Sucky. How was yours?”
Fuck, I detest what IVF has done to us. Her arms hang by her side, her hands nowhere close to being on me like they usually are when I come home at the end of the day. This has become our norm this week. On top of that, I haven’t fucked her in weeks. We need to get through this together, in every way we can. The ache in my soul can only be soothed by Birdie, but she doesn’t want me anywhere near her.