Chapter 50

Still Nikki’s turn:

I squeezed Dan’s fingers. “A bit of bad luck, this,” I said. “Baby, be so kind as to hand me my iPhone. I need to get the news out.”

Dana’s turn:

We’re a pretty connected group here. I mean, everybody’s always texting and posting updates during the day, so when I got one from Nikki, I knew where she was supposed to be – on campus with the munchkins. I thought I’d see another ‘you won’t believe what Terri (or Rachel or Vicki) just did’ post.

It wasn’t.

I’m at the hospital with Dan. We had a miscarriage. I’m okay. I’ll be here overnight.

I gasped. I was with Kim. The two of us are pushing through much of the same coursework trying to catch up to the rest of the community.

Kim saw my face as she was retrieving her own phone. “What’s wrong...”

“Check your phone. See if you read what I read.”

She did. Gasped, just like me.

“Omigod ... Our sister...”

“What do we even SAY?” I asked.

Kim’s eyes. The corners were moist. “She ... they WANTED that baby.”

“I know...”

“Dana, I knew girls who got pregnant in school. Even paid attention to them all the way through birth. A high school student, pregnant, horrible thing. Tears. Anger. Even some shame, even though it’s not rare any more. But nobody was HAPPY. Nikki was happy.”

“I know,” I said. “Here. Us. We do things in proper order. Love. Marriage. Career. Children.”

“Yeah. Even though I think those babies talk with one another when they’re together. I just don’t think I can understand what they’re saying, but they do ... You know.”

“I know,” I said. “And that’s gonna be a hard thing for Nikki. In a few months she was going to add little Danny to the group. Now...” I thought. “I need to call Gramma.”

“She’s got bridge tonight, doesn’t she?” Kim queried.

“Yeah.” Gramma’s life was filled with activities with her and her husband. The two of them loved their bridge group and played often. Oh, don’t get me wrong. She gets the Munchkins to herself for a couple of hours three times a week. One of those times includes a few other kids from the homeschool group. My Gramma – still the consummate teacher.

Now I need her to teach me something about being human.

“Do I need to go home?” Kim asked.

“Not unless you want to. You know what we’re going to talk about. You’re my friend – my sister – and we sort of need some advice, don’t we? I mean, Nikki’s hurting and I don’t have any idea of what to do or what to say.”

“I knew a girl who miscarried in high school. It wasn’t a planned pregnancy. The miscarriage, for her, was...”

“I understand what you’re trying to say, Kim. But this is Nikki...”

I told Siri to call Gramma. That’s usually a few rings. Gramma still hasn’t accepted the idea that her phone should be immediately available.

“Hello, Dana,” Gramma said.

“Hi, Gramma...” and then I lost it. Tears for my sister and for her baby and her husband and...

“Dana? What’s wrong?”

I should’ve known that Kim, her being my empath and all, if I cried, she’d cry, too. She had tears on her cheeks.

“Nikki’s in the hospital. She lost her baby.”

“Oh, mercy, sweet Jesus,” Gramma said. That was as close to an expletive as I ever heard from her. “Nikki’s okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. But can you ... can we talk? Me and Kim...”

“Kim and I,” Gramma chided gently, ever the teacher.

“Yes, ma’am. We want to understand. What can we do?”

“I will be over there in a short while, Dana.”

“Do you wish tea?”

“That herbal mix that Cindy made up? Have you any?”

“Yes, ma’am. I am putting the water on now.”

Kim helped me set up the tea tray. We’d learned from Cindy who’d learned from Gramma Desai. It’s very much like the coffee service that Nikki displays for her more formal moods.

“What would YOU be feeling if it was you, Kim?”

“Lost. Like I missed the turn in the path and ended up in the briars.”

“I’d be wondering what I did wrong.”

“That, too.”

“And after I’d given this gift to my husband, how would he feel about me?”

I sighed. “I know my husband loves me. He took a risk. Real risk.”

“Mine did, too. So did Dan Granger. I can’t see him holding anything against Nikki. No, not a bit.”

Before Gramma arrived, we ended up with Cindy and the Munchkins and Johanna. You know what the topic is.

There was a soft knock on the door. We welcomed Gramma into my home. Kim brought the tea tray in, placing it on the coffee table.

Gramma sipped her cup. “Lovely thing, this,” she said. “Tea used to be tea until I started dealing with the Community. Cindy’s blend.”

“Gramma Desai taught her about chai. Cindy did her version. Says it’s as perfectly valid as any other, because everybody had their own version.”

“This one works well.”

I took a sip, savoring the cinnamon and cardamom overlaying the tannin of the black tea.

“Now. Our friend,” Gramma said. “Will she have visitors?”

“We ... Uh, Mizz Lee, do you mind ME being here?” Kim asked.

“No, dear. Certainly not. Dana says ‘sister’. That makes you my grand-daughter as well. I am happy to be one of the grandmothers to the whole bunch of you.”

Dan Granger’s turn:

This was totally unexpected. Ever since the pregnancy test came back positive, Nikki’s had this happy little ritual. We’d go to bed, she’d take my hand and put it on her abdomen and ask, “Can you feel anything different?”

Right up until today, the answer was a kiss and, “Yes, I know something’s different.” In recent weeks there was a difference – belly starting to round out, smallish breasts filling, changing from teasing little cones to more rounded, fuller shapes. My Nikki, headed for motherhood, her body keeping up with her heart.

Then this. Torpedoed. Our baby, gone in almost a flash. And MY Nikki, my beautiful, loving, adorable Nikki, lying in a hospital bed, sleeping off a sedative. Of course I’m there. She’s my everything in life, her head on that pillow, those familiar tousled walnut tresses splayed in a small circle around her head. Still groggy from the dilation and curettage to clean up after the miscarriage.

A nurse comes in, making the rounds. She nods to me, checks the readings on the monitor hooked up to my Nikki.

“She’s resting nicely,” she said.

“Yes. This is quite a shock.”

“I know it is, Mister Granger. Are YOU okay?”

“Thank you for asking. I’m as good as I can be under the circumstances. I need to be here for her.”

The nurse smiled approvingly. “There’s a big flower arrangement at the station. It just got dropped off. I didn’t want to disturb you two.”

“I’ll bring it in,” I said.

It was a nice, cheery bunch of flowers, complete with card from everybody. Obviously somebody’d signed a card at the office, digitized it, and sent it to the florist. I set the vase down near Nikki so she could see it when she awoke.

I was idly scanning articles on my iPad when I heard movement. I stood immediately and went to her side.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she said.

“Hello, my Cajun princess,” I returned.

“Who sent the flowers?”

“That’s the official bouquet from the office. The card has a signature of everybody from the janitor to Alan.”

She smiled a bit wanly. “Nice. Pretty. Heard from the gang?”

“Oh, yeah. Twenty iterations of ‘can we come visit?’”

“I hate being this kind of news, you know. I was happy being ‘pregnant Nikki’.”

“I know. I was right there with you, remember?”

She squeezed her eyes closed, took a breath, smiled a bit more. “Right from the beginning. The beginning of this...” her hand touched her belly. Tears welled up into those blue eyes. “I’m sorry, baby,” she wept.

“I’m sorry, too. Don’t wreck yourself. This isn’t a ‘somebody’s fault’ thing.”

“Text the gang and tell them that whoever wants to show up, I want to see them. Baby ... You understand, don’t you?”

“How could I not, sweet girl?”

Mizz Lee’s turn:

At this point in my life, I’m supposed to be ‘serene’, I’m told. Bullshit. And shame on me for characterizing it that way, but it’s the truth. I just got in the SUV with Jo and the Munchkins, and we’re on the way to see Nikki. Cindy’s in her own car, following us.

And I’m dabbing at tears, and the Munchkins want to know why.

I said, “Girls, you’re approaching the age when you’ll begin to think about motherhood. You’ve handled the babies, changed diapers, and all that sort of thing. But there’s absolutely nothing I can say to explain the amount of emotion you’ll feel when you’re married and you have a baby growing inside you. Some of it is hormonal, but a very real part is about the idea of another human life inside you, depending on you for his existence. The emotions related to that are just overwhelming. And now, Nikki has lost that, and I lost it once. I cannot tell you how much it hurt.”

Vicki said, “Mizz Lee, you never told us that. When was it?”

I said, “Girls, we’ll get there in a few minutes, and I’ll tell you all at once, OK?”

The truth is, I don’t know if I can tell this more than once. It’s not about ‘don’t want to’, it’s about a very literal difficulty in articulating it. Jo’s not speaking, and she’s dabbing at her own eyes. We park at the hospital, pTerri grabs one of my hands, Rachel grabs the other, Vicki’s got Jo’s hand. We walk in, ride the elevator, and then down to Nikki’s room, where we take turns hugging Nikki and Dan.

“Nikki, we’re sorry this happened, and we’re hoping you’ll be OK,” Rachel said, gently touching Nikki’s fingers.

“Thank you all for coming, and I’ll get through it somehow. I appreciate your thoughts, but it hurts a lot, right now.” Nikki is, in my opinion, the tenderest and most fragile of the Sisterhood. Seeing her in a hospital bed accentuated the effect.

I drew a breath and said, “Nikki, can I speak to you, and everyone else, about what happened to me?”

Dan stood up, offering me his chair. Gentleman.

Everyone nodded, so I continued: “My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, at about the same stage as yours, and I felt like the world’s worst failure.”

“When Dana’s great grandfather and I got married, oh, so long ago, I was eighteen. My husband was nineteen, in college. We were very much in love. He was in college. I had just graduated from high school. This was in the days before birth control, so naturally I became pregnant. We were apprehensive, but happy. He had a part-time job that paid for his tuition and our tiny apartment and I worked part-time in the library. We could make it.”

“We were doing okay. Back then, we could live cheaply. We were even saving a little money. Then it happened. In the beginning of my fourth month of pregnancy, I started having cramps, then bleeding.” The room was silent after a few gasps. Nikki’s eyes changed like she and I just made a connection.