Chapter 2

"I don't know I just feel that it's my fault." Jack looked straight at the doctor sitting three feet in front of him. His eyes didn’t move. He didn’t blink.

"Why do you feel it's your fault?" The doctor asked, she sounded gentle with her tone.

"I don't know. I'm working on figuring that out."

"You would be surprised how many couples experience a miscarriage." She continued, "It really happens more frequently than you would think."

"Thanks, but that doesn't make me feel any better." Jack’s voice cracked as the words fell from his mouth. "Actually, that doesn't make me feel any better at all. Should I feel different knowing that more people go through it than I initially thought?"

"Of course not." She said, in a very quiet and patient voice. "I just wanted you to know that you’re not the only one this has happened to."

"Has it happened to you?" Jack snapped back at her.

"No." She started to ask another question, "Do you think..."

"Do you have children?" Jack was continuing to grill her.

"No."

"Do you know what it's like to go through the emotion of creating a life and then losing it?"

"No, I’m sorry, I don't.” The doctor tried to refocus Jack. “ Why don't you tell me what you were feeling when you found out about the miscarriage."

"How do you think I was feeling?" Jack’s tone was awful and he knew it. He didn’t care though.

"I don't know. That's why I want you to tell me."

"I was angry. I was mad. I was hurt. I felt betrayed."

"Betrayed?" Her curiosity peaked. "By who?"

"By God."

"How did God betray you?" Her pitch had changed.

"I just feel like we shouldn't have miscarried."

"Do you think that He was the cause of this?"

"No. But I think He could have prevented it. "

"How did you want Him to prevent it?"

"I don't know. I don't care. I just wanted Him to prevent it."

"God doesn't pick and choose who this kind of stuff happens to." She seemed a little angry. "You know that, right?"

"I don't know. Maybe he does. How do you know He doesn’t?"

"What about your wife?" She asked, once again changing the focus, perhaps more for her own cause.

"What about her?"

"Were you mad at her? Did you feel betrayed by her?"

"Of course not." Jack glared at the doctor for suggesting it. "My wife has been amazing during this whole thing. I wanted to take every bit of her pain and make it mine. I wanted to be the one laid out on the table undergoing surgery. I wanted to be the one to bleed. The one to cry. I just didn't want her to hurt anymore."

"Do you think that's what she wanted?" The doctor asked.

“No. She didn’t even want me to come with her when she had the procedure after a miscarriage.”

"Does that bother you?"

“Of course it bothers me. But I let her make that decision.” Jack struggled to keep looking at the doctor.



"Well, do you really think she wanted to not go through that? Do you think that she wanted to not experience all the pain of the miscarriage? Including the surgery that followed?"

"Maybe." Jack was starting to understand her point.

"Don't you think it was her right to feel the physical effects as well as the emotional effects?" The doctor continued.

"Yeah.” Jack finally broke his stare from the doctor, tears streamed from his eyes, down his cheeks and onto the floor.

Jack thought about the week before when Lauren danced in front of the car. Then he thought about what the doctor was saying. He knew that Lauren was helping herself get over the pain.

Jack realized that he had even began to get over things.