“Lucian,” I whispered.
“I don’t feel well, Evey.”
“Your wings. Try to sit up.”
He sat up while I flipped on the light. He was wearing only boxer briefs, so I could see his back. I saw nothing—no wings, feathers, blood, or broken pieces. He had his elbows resting on his knees over the edge of the bed with his head drooping into his hands.
“Everything hurts,” he said.
“Show me your wings, Lucian.”
“I’m not hiding anything from you.”
They were gone. I felt his back frantically. He fell back into my arms. I held him in my lap. “They’re gone, Lucian.”
“I know,” he said.
“I’m going to CVS to get you some medicine. You have a fever. You might have the flu.”
“I shouldn’t be near you and the baby.”
I ignored him and got up to get dressed. “Lie down. I’ll bring you more water.”
He fell back onto the pillow. After I brought him water, I kissed his forehead and headed out. It was the second time I’d ever left the safety of our home or the loft without Lucian. The first time was just the day before.
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 d
octor 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.
He squinted, looking confused.
When he opened his mouth to speak, I interrupted him. “This is my second miscarriage. Why is this happening?”
He cleared his throat. “We contacted your OBGYN, so you’ll want to follow up with her, but miscarriages are very common. Consider it your body’s way of ridding what would likely be an unviable fetus.”
Unviable fetus? Again, poor choice of words. “But it already had a heartbeat.”
He approached the head of the bed. He put his cold hand on my arm. “I’m very sorry this happened to you. Try to look at it as a blessing.”
“A blessing?” He nodded, and I shook my head. “Will you please give me an update on my husband, Lucian Casey?”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”
No one returned. A half an hour later, I was buzzing the nurses station like a lunatic. Yet another nurse I had never seen before, wearing Pepto-colored scrubs, came skipping in, her ponytail swinging from left to right as if her hair itself was happy being attached to her head. I wanted to throw a puke bowl at her.
“I asked the doctor a half an hour ago for an update on my husband.”
“Your husband is Lucian, right?”
She was smiling and on a first-name basis with him, so I knew he was fine. From the blush hitting her cheeks and the glimmer in her eye, I could tell he’d been laying the charm on from his damned hospital bed.
“Yes,” I said pointedly.
“He’s doing really well. They’ve done an MRI and it was clear, so they’re running more blood tests now. We’re just waiting for the results.”
“Can I go see him? Can you wheel me to him?”
“Sure. He’s a little loopy, just so you know. He’s on a high dosage of anti-seizure and pain medication.”
I just shrugged, so she left the room and returned a moment later with a wheelchair. She wheeled me to the last room at the end of the hall. There he was, looking so mortal with an IV, a hospital gown, and a loopy grin.
“Heya, gorgeous,” he slurred.
I was wearing hospital-issued underwear, a giant Maxi pad, and a backless hospital gown, but I didn’t care. I crawled into his bed, right into the crook of his arm where I’ve always existed.
“Ah, come here,” he said, kissing my forehead and pulling me closer.
Pepto Nurse tried to object, but Lucian put his finger to his mouth and nodded. She left the room without a word. It was just the two of us.
“I’m so sorry, Evey.” His voice was soothing.
“I know, me too. I don’t think we can have a baby.” I tried not to sob. “I don’t even care anymore, and I don’t want to go through that again. We need to find out what’s happening to you. What if something is seriously wrong?” I whispered, “Your wings are gone.”
“Things are changing. Something is wrong. And also you deserve a baby.”
“Stop it. What are you not telling me? I’m torn up about this, all of it, but mostly about what’s happening to you. Tell me what’s going on.”
For a moment, I thought that Lucian was finally going explain to me the meaning of life or why he and I were in that situation. He was staring into my eyes with so much warmth and love in his expression, but then he just smiled and said, “Let’s cuddle. These drugs are good.”
“Lucian, tell me anything, something. I need to know.” I started to sit up to examine him.
He pulled me back down and shook his head. Lifting the blanket back to reveal his feet, he gestured toward the end of the bed and said, “See?”
Lucian had had the sexiest man feet I’d ever seen, but they had become pale, almost bluish. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
A moment later, a doctor came in holding paperwork. It was the same guy who had been treating me. “Oh, hello. I see you found your husband.”
“Yes, no thanks to you,” I replied, looking away.
Lucian squeezed me tighter.
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” the doctor said. “We were going over the results of his blood work. There really is no concrete explanation for your seizure. Your levels look fine—”
“Show him your feet, Lucian.”
The doctor quirked an eyebrow, but he checked Lucian’s feet. “Hmm. I’ve never seen anything like this. Is it painful?”
“Not at the moment,” Lucian responded.
“We’ll keep you overnight for more observation, and I’ll prescribe you a low-dose seizure medication until we can figure out what’s going on.”
We both nodded.
After the doctor left, Lucian and I began to doze off.
Just before I fell asleep, Lucian said, “Evelyn, we do have to figure things out.”
“Tomorrow,” I told him. Now we were both playing the denial game.
“IT’S TOMORROW, EVEY,” I said, sitting next to the hospital bed she was sleeping in. “Wake up, talk to me.”
She groaned and rolled over. “I don’t want to talk.”
I had gotten dressed and gathered our things. We were being discharged at the same time. Evey’s mom came into the room before Evey and I could start the conversation I knew we needed to have.
I stood up. “Hello, Jane.”
A second later, Jane was crying in my arms. “I’m so sorry for both of you. Why didn’t you call me yesterday?”
The truth was that we weren’t thinking about anything but ourselves. Evey and I hadn’t thought to call her parents or Brooklyn. We’d just needed to be alone. We still needed time to figure everything out.
An image ran through my mind of Evey playing with her dolls in her bedroom in Oakland. She was about six, and she would feed and change and care for her dolls as though they were real babies.
Once when she was even younger, she asked Mrs. Obernickle, her preschool teacher, why she didn’t have a family. Mrs. Obernickle responded with something harsh like, “Having children isn’t like having dollies, Evelyn, don’t be silly. They require much more work.”
I’d thought it was such a harsh response, and Evey’s face scrunched up with sadness. She became disappointed about life and her future in an instant. And because I had no self-control with Evey, I refused to let her childhood heart be broken by a cynical and grumpy old woman.
That day I had moved into Mrs. Obernickle’s tubby body, with her stinky perfume, and knelt next to Evey and said, “But you will be a wonderful mother. Look at all the practice you’re getting now with your dollies. You have nothing to worry about. Babies and children are a joy and a blessing.”
She had smiled and hugged me—or hugged Mrs. Obernickle rather. Evey had always wanted to be a mother.
In that cold, sterile hospital room, I watched her trying her hardest to put on a brave face. But I could always see right through her, into her soul. I could see and feel the pain she was enduring after losing another baby. It was all my fault, and I might have been dying from the guilt alone.
“Mom,” Evey said from her bed. Jane turned to face her daughter. “I’m sorry we didn’t call you. They were running tests on Lucian, and I was feeling terrible.”
“I know, DD, but I could have been here for you both.” They hugged. Evey hadn’t been terribly close to her mother growing up. There was a lot of pressure on Evey to be perfect, especially from her mom, but I was sensing a change in both of them. Jane turned back to me. “Have they figured out why you had a seizure, you poor thing?”
“No. No explanation. Just a fluke, I guess.” Well, Jane, you see, I’m a guardian angel who is probably experiencing some sort of cosmic breakdown that is affecting the physical body I hang out in.
“It’s a very serious thing, you know?” She brushed my cheek with her smooth hand. In that moment, I wished I had had a mother.
“I know. I?
??m scared.”
She hugged me for the second time that day. “Don’t be scared. They’ll figure it out. Have faith.”
That word again.
Evey’s father entered the room and went straight to Evey. They had always been a lot closer than Evey and her mother. “Ah, DD, I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
Evey started crying. “I’m sorry too, Dad. I wanted to give you guys a grandchild so bad.”
Each word in that sentence felt like a knife being thrust into the center of my chest. With me, Evey would never be able to give her parents a grandchild; I knew that, and I was finally able to admit it.
A WEEK WENT by, then two, then three. We were able to clean up the loft and move in. It still needed a lot of work to make it the perfect work/living space, but Evey was knocking it out with relentless energy. I had never seen her so independent and determined. She was growing up… changing. Sometimes I felt like she didn’t need me anymore, like I was just a boat anchor holding her back. In a matter of a few months, Evey had gone from relying on Tracey and Brooklyn for everything, to getting what she needed done, all on her own. She’d also never stood up for herself the way she did now.
We hadn’t talked about anything serious since our last day in the hospital. We spent our time working on the loft and getting ready for Brooklyn’s wedding. Every day, I got weaker and weaker, but I kept it to myself. I hadn’t had another seizure. I also hadn’t told Evey anything about what I had heard that day while I was seizing on the floor of the San Francisco General Hospital lobby.
The night before Brooklyn’s wedding, I collapsed in the stairwell of the loft building. The elevator was being serviced, so I had to climb three flights. I was heaving and out of breath when Evey found me.
“What’s going on, Lucian?”
Holding my chest, I said, “I just need to catch my breath. I’ll be okay.”
She helped me to the top of the stairs, where we both sat.
“I’m ready to talk,” she said.
“Did you finish the speech for Brooke’s wedding?”