Don’t Forget to Remember Me (50 page)

“Okay. Do you want to shower while I get it?
Beer?”

“I’ll change, yes. And scotch, okay?” I
didn’t drink scotch often at home, but she didn’t question me, only
reached up to run her hand over the stubble on my chin and then
kiss my mouth softly. She was so sweet and her touch eased the
ache, just like I knew it would.

“Yes.”

I kissed her briefly, before walking down
the hall and peeling off my scrubs. I wanted all evidence of the
hospital gone and jumped in the shower to rinse off. I felt
antiseptic and sterile and I needed to feel like myself. I quickly
combed my hair, pulling on old jeans and a ratty old T-shirt from
Stanford, took a deep breath and then went into the living
room.

Julia was waiting on the
couch with my glass of scotch sitting next to her wine on the
coffee table, the music switched to a softer venue
;
songs that she felt would comfort me.

I sat next to her and reached for my drink,
slamming the entire contents in one gulp. Julia waited patiently,
her hand scratching soft patterns on my back, until I leaned back
and turned toward her and put my hands on her bent knees to pull
her closer, leaning my forehead against hers.

“I needed this. You are my solace in the
madness.”

“Madness?” Her voice was gently questioning.
“Baby, what happened today?” Her hand covered one of mine.

“Oh, Julia. It was so horrible. I lost a
patient.” The stinging started in the back of my eyes again and my
voice cracked.

She sighed and wrapped her arms around me
and both of her hands wound in my hair. “Oh, Ryan. I’m so sorry,
honey.”

I started crying then. The
gentleness in her touch and voice somehow gave me permission to let
the emotions
loose.
I couldn’t hide from
her and I didn’t want to. Her arms tightened around me and I
gathered her in a close embrace as I buried my face in her
shoulder.

“A little girl. She had a
bee sting,” I told her miserably, starting to sob. “It was just
a
bee sting,
but the mother didn’t
get her to the hospital in time.
Fucking New York
traffic
and she didn’t know to call an
ambulance and get some paramedics on the scene. They were having a
picnic in Battery Park. A
picnic
, Julia. One minute you’re
having a picnic and the next, your child is dead.”

Her fingers pushed my hair
back and she kissed the side of my face over and over again. “I’m
sure you did everything humanly possible, my love.” The trembling
voice told me she was crying with me, her big heart feeling every
twinge of my pain. “Oh, Ryan, I wish I could take this away.
I
know
you did everything you
could.”

My shoulders were shaking
and her voice was cracking. I broke down even further. “She was
just a baby, barely a year old. We worked so hard and still we lost
her. Julia,
we lost that little
baby
!” In my grief, I’d forgotten myself,
but the instant the words were out, my heart stopped and suddenly
Julia stilled in my arms.

How could I be so Goddamned careless?

I pulled back frantically, my hands on her
forearms as I searched her face for recognition. She was still as
stone while she looked at me, her eyes filled again and her lips
lifted in a smile.

A smile?
I couldn’t
believe my eyes and my heart felt like it would fly from my
chest.

“Oh, Ryan! We’re going to have a baby!” My
heart jumped up in my throat. If this day could have gotten any
worse, it just did. She cupped both sides of my face and her face
sobered at the pain in my eyes. My heart split apart, like steel
knives, cutting and ripping my flesh as they fell.

In about three seconds she would realize
there was no baby and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop
it. She took my hand and moved it to her flat stomach and I was in
literal hell. I knew what was coming. Finally, we had to deal with
it.

“Julia…” I began, but she moved back,
looking down at her stomach and then back to my face. It was
finally dawning on her that she should be eight months pregnant by
now.

I couldn’t breathe it hurt so bad, my heart
thundering around inside my chest was killing me. I struggled for
the words, for any type of sanity that would help me cope with my
own pain at finally facing the loss, and show me some small way to
comfort her as her world fell apart.

“Babe…” I reached for her as her face
crumpled, the silent sobs racking her body as her hands came up to
cover her face. “Oh, Julia…” my voice cracked on the words and my
eyes began to blur.

“Uhhh…oh, no! I lost it,
didn’t I?” She looked at me in stunned disbelief, the pain clearly
written on her face. Julia started to shake her head. “I lost it in
the accident! Oh, God, Ryan,” she cried into me as I gathered her
shaking body close to my own. She wasn’t making any sound but her
body was wracked with violent sobs until. after what felt like a
lifetime, she gasped loudly for breath. Tears rolled down my face
and I closed my eyes in agony. “I
wanted
that baby. So much. It
was
you
…You and me. God, Ryan!
Noooooo!”

I could do nothing but hold her, my hand
stroking her long hair, both of us clinging to the other in our
shared sorrow. I searched my heart for any words that would console
her, but there were none, even though I would have given my life to
find them. My heart ached; the love I felt pouring into her.

“We’ll have more babies, Julia. Oh, God, as
many as you want, I promise,” I whispered it over and over as I
kissed her face and stroked her hair. “I wanted the baby, too. More
than anything. I was so happy for the two seconds I had to process
it before Jenna told me that you’d miscarried. Part of me died that
night. The only thing that saved me was that I still had you.”

Her arms tightened and more sobs burst from
her chest to fill the room around us. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”
she cried brokenly, her tears completely soaking through my shirt
on my shoulder, her fingers clawing at the material. These tears
were as precious as diamonds because they were hers. “You must have
been in hell all those months, Ryan. I’m sorry I left you alone
with all of this.”

I pulled her onto my lap while I settled
back into the cushions so I could rub her back. I kissed her hair
over and over again as she cried and cried. “Hush. You have nothing
to be sorry for. It was an accident, my love. It was an
accident.”

“I was so happy when the
test was positive.” She looked up at me with her dark green pools
so full of grief; my heart broke all over again.
“El
…Ellie…Sh…she figured it out,” she was
gasping for breath through the words, her fingers fisted in the
front of my shirt. “I was c…coming to tell you. I couldn’t tell you
on the phone. I wanted to see your face when I told you that you
were going be a daddy.”

Oh, God, it hurt to hear her say those
words.

“I know, sweetheart.” My throat ached and I
tried to swallow it down. Her pain, my pain, all of it was sucking
the air from my lungs, the tight bands around my chest refusing to
let my chest expand.

“I wasn’t going to Paris. I couldn’t…take
that away from you. I wouldn’t,” she sobbed again. “You’ll be such
an amazing father, Ryan. I wanted to give that to you.”

“Oh, honey. You
will
.” I brushed my fingers against her
cheek, brushing away the tears. “And it will be the most beautiful
experience and the most beautiful baby ever born, I
promise.”

“It won’t be
that
baby,” she sobbed. “I want that baby,
Ryan.”

I sucked in my breath, and
stilled.
Fucking hell, how can I comfort her?
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the sun
set and it was darker in the apartment. Neither one of us bothered
to turn on a light as we lay on the couch together.

Then the question I’d been dreading for
months finally fell from her lips. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Thud. My heart pounded and I considered how
to answer, emotions threatening to choke me. I needed to see her
face, so I eased back slightly.

“Julia, look at me.”

She moved back a little more and I wiped at
her tears before I took both of her hands in mine. I looked at our
entwined fingers as I struggled to speak past the pain. Finally, I
tore my gaze back up to hers.

“I’m sorry you’re so sad.
I’m…sorry I did this to you,” she said and then sniffed as another
sob shook her shoulders. All I wanted was to take away her
suffering. We were like one person and it had always been that way,
each of us feeling the other’s emotions as if they were our own. It
was a beautiful, amazing…
painful
miracle. My thumbs rubbed over the tops of her hands and I
shook my head.

“You didn’t do anything to me, sweetheart.
This is something we’re going through together. It happened to both
of us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, then?”

“Julia…you were so fragile and I was
focusing on getting you better. That’s all I could think about
because I knew I wouldn’t survive without you. There were lots of
reasons. I was so scared.”

“Of what? I mean, after you knew I was
better? Why not tell me then?”

I didn’t take my eyes from
hers. “I was afraid of
this
. I knew
you’d be heartbroken and I wanted to protect you in any way I
could. There was also the risk it would be so traumatic to you that
you’d block everything out forever, and I
needed
you to remember me, my love. To be able to
hope
you would.” The
tears welled and spilled down my cheeks, first one and then
another. “It was selfish, but I couldn’t bear losing the memories,
how we met
;
the
love between us…especially this
mad
,
mad love
.” Her face, so
full of sorrow, softened, the love glowing there to comfort me. I
had to touch her, and reached forward and cupped the back of her
head with my right hand as her fingers began to stroke my
jaw.

“Oh, Ryan. I never really
forgot you. I always
felt
you
. Like a moth to a flame, you had me
helpless. As you always have.”

“But I had no way of knowing. I couldn’t
bear losing so much of us. I was…tormented. Please don’t be mad at
me.”

She shook her head. “I’m
not. How could I be? I understand your feelings.” She was calmer
now, but tears were still flowing softly. Her hands tightened
around mine. “I
do
love you, Ryan, and I don’t deserve you.”

“I’m not worthy of
you
. You’re so perfect.” Julia leaned
forward and kissed me softly, her mouth opening and coaxing a
response from me. I wasn’t finished with my explanation, so I
reluctantly pulled my mouth from hers as I stroked her cheek with
my thumb.

“There’s more.” This was
the hardest part to admit, but I wouldn’t hide anything from her
ever again and I knew we’d survive anything. The love between
us
was
stronger than either one of us on
our own and I needed to trust that.

“Okay,” she said softly and waited. “Tell
me. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”

“As much as I wanted you
to remember me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted you to remember losing
the baby.” I’d said the words aloud for the first time and they
hurt like hell.
We lost our baby.
Maybe we couldn’t feel it or touch it like the poor woman in
the ER today, but that didn’t make it any less real or the pain any
less intense.

“That’s why you wouldn’t make love to me.”
She knew it was true without asking. “You thought being close would
bring it back?”

I nodded. “It killed me. I wanted to
reassure myself that we were still us in the most profound way
possible, but I couldn’t risk hurting you.”

Julia looked sad and confused. “At least if
I had known, I could have offered you some sort of comfort, Ryan.
It wasn’t fair to you,” her voice cracked and new tears fell.
“I’m…so sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”

I shook my head. “But
you
were,
baby. I
got to look at you and touch you every day and that was the one
thing that kept me sane. I was terrified that if I told you about
us and the baby, it would’ve been more like a book you read and not
something you lived through…” My own voice trembled as I struggled
to speak. My throat was so tight and the tears thickened my voice.
“I
needed it to be real
, Julia. I couldn’t bear it if you knew and still didn’t
remember or…”

“What, honey? Just say it, Ryan,” she
begged.

“I didn’t want to suffer this without you.”
I wiped at my tears with the back of my hand before I continued. “I
felt selfish, needing you with me to mourn this loss, but I just…I
couldn’t bear facing it without you. There was only one thing that
could have been worse…if I’d lost you, too.”

We both were crying and touching, wiping
each other’s tears away until finally we melted together, both of
us lost in our grief.

“Ryan, you can never lose me,” Julia said
softly. “Just remember how much I love you, that’s all you need to
do. Even if I would have died…”

My arms wound around her
and tightened to stop her, “Jesus, don’t even say that, Julia,” I
begged. “
Please
.”