APRIL

Thanksgiving was supposed to be a gracious holiday.

Supposed to be. Every year growing up, we had gone around the table and everyone had expressed something that they were grateful for. Traditions had changed when it came to growing up and who I was celebrating with. No matter what, though, I expressed my thanks one way or another – even if it was just in a quiet prayer to God before a meal. It was how I had been raised and it felt wrong not to do that.

It was something that I was supposed to start with my own family, now that Jackson and I were married. It wasn't religious, just a tradition, and therefore something that I had always assumed he would be fine with, even if it was a little cheesy.

But this year, it's hard to be thankful.

All signs from the outside looking in would have said otherwise. We'd been happily married for many months now and it was now clear to the public perception that the two of us were expecting a child together. My baby bump had begun to pop out in the last few days, no longer a question of whether I was pregnant or just a little heavy. It was a beautiful, wonderful thing.

Except that it wasn't.

I should have been so grateful for this pregnancy and yet all I could do was ask God why. I couldn't fathom how he could possibly be so cruel, to place this upon my shoulders, to place it upon Jackson's. I'd been raised hearing that He doesn't give more than what we could handle, but I find myself doubting that with the heaviness that was currently seated in my heart. This seemed like too much pain for any human being to possibly be able to bear with any sense of gracefulness or divinity. Getting myself in and out of work each day was all I could manage.

Instead of a miracle, God had made me into a monster. My body was not safe for my baby. No body was. No life was. I was cursed. My baby was in pain. I couldn't do anything reasonable to soothe it or to stop it.

I couldn't find the choice that had been presented to be reasonable. There was no way that I could do the thing that I needed most to do. I had to terminate the pregnancy. I had to lose my baby. Most genetic defects show up in the first trimester and some miscarriage happens before women even know about it. But this wasn't that. I should have been halfway through and be glowing. Jackson and I should have been planning for some little baby moon, some three-day vacation, something happy. Not this.

As nothing short of a miracle, Webber had gone to Boston for Thanksgiving which meant that at least I wasn't going to have to see any family besides Jackson. I wasn't ready for Catherine or for anyone else. I had tried calling my mom and failed, but I knew it would have to happen eventually.

One day at a time. That was the way that we were trying to take things, but even that seemed to be much easier said than actually done. Each day was another aching pain.

Yet I had to keep going. The both of us did. We didn't have another option but to show up to work every day and try to put a smile on like we weren't dying on the inside, even if each night we came home and felt completely defeated. We were doctors. If anyone was able to handle something like this, it should have been us. But it had become clear. This wasn't going to be some hard lifetime or surgeries, or anything like that. It'd be minutes, maybe hours with our baby. There was no medical intervention or technology that would save him.

"April, watch where you're cutting." Jackson's voice drew me out of my thoughts.

My gaze jerked back down to my hand and the cucumber that I'm in the middle of chopping up to go into the salad, taking a deep breath and releasing the sigh as I set down the knife. There's no big meal. Not this time. Salad, a rotisserie chicken, green bean casserole, and a pie. It's no over the top Thanksgiving that I had pictured as my first as a married woman.

"Sorry," I apologized as if he had been the one in danger.

"Here, let me." Jackson stepped up and placed his hand over mine for a moment. I withdrew quickly, letting him pick up the knife and begin to cut up the vegetables remaining.

Bottom lip trembling despite teeth biting down on it, I take a few steps back. Most of our dinner was done already, the casserole ready to come out of the microwave, the chicken having been picked up at Whole Foods. I'm sure when Jackson went out to get it, the people had thought that he had just been enough of a mess to not be prepared about getting a turkey. But that was far from the truth. We just had no reason to be willing to celebrate the holiday.

"I don't know if I'm hungry," I admitted, placing both of my hands flat on top of the marble counters and stretching my fingers out against it. I take a deep breath, trying to keep calm.

"You know that you need to eat. Even if you don't have an appetite," Jackson reminded me gently as he set down the knife, scooting the cucumbers and carrots into the salad bowl.

"I know," I answered back blankly.

Jackson's eyes bore into me for a moment and I could tell that he wanted to say something, though his lips remained still. I stare right back at him without hesitation and I can't tell if I want him to say whatever was n his mind or to just fall quiet about it. We were both walking on eggshells. Not just around each other, but around everything. I was like a bomb ready to go off.

When we finally sit down at the table for dinner, I don't pause to say grace for the first time in a long time. On a night that I certainly should have, of all the nights, I don't. I can feel Jackson's eyes on me when I begin to shove food down my throat for the sole sake of nutrition.

"April…" His voice began softly and I could hear the worry that coated it.

"What?" I snapped at him without thinking.

"I think that we should talk about this." My gaze dropped when Jackson spoke again and I push the food around on my plate, listening to the sound of the prongs of the fork dragging across China. Even if I hadn't bothered with cooking, I had still set the table well this afternoon.

"I can't." I pushed out a noisy sigh, dropping the fork with a loud clatter. "I can't. Not today. I just… I need to stop thinking about it Jackson and I can't stop thinking about it. I literally cannot take my thought off to it for a moment. I'm fixated. I'm obsessed." My hands shake as I speak, even as I press them down to try and keep them still.

His eyes were wide and there's a sadness there that I can't name, but I can feel it deep in my soul. There's no name for this kind of grief. It just hurts and it's cruel.

"I know. I… I feel the exact same way that you do, April. I do. Which is why I think that we should talk about it. It's not good to keep it bottled up like this. Not for me, not for you." Jackson spoke seriously, setting down his own utensils. "We need to talk about this."

No matter how right he may have been on the matter, it doesn't help with the curl of nausea and disgust that had remained pitted deep in my stomach since I had found out about this. I still couldn't believe that Edwards had lied to our face, that she had told me our son was fine only to learn that was far, far from the truth. Anger and disgust laid side by side inside of me, and it was as if they had taken over who I was entirely. I couldn't see past it. It was there and it wouldn't go away no matter what I tried to do. I could feel this ruining me, piece by piece.

We were going to lose our son. That was the only thing I could focus on. I couldn't pretend it was normal. But I couldn't bring myself to speak about, either. That option was far too painful.

But he wanted me to. So I would try.

"There's this moment when I first wake up in the morning that I forget. I'm still tired and I don't remember that he's going o die. That he's in pain with each breath I take. That I failed to do the most basic thing possible, that I failed to keep him safe. I don't remember that for just this brief, beautiful, blissful moment. And then I do. And it's like I've been hit by a truck, and backed over, and hit again. It's the worst feeling in the world. And I carry that with me through the rest of the day." I'm shaking and my eyes burn fiercely. "You can say you understand, but you don't. Not really. You're not… you're not carrying him. You're not the thing causing him pain."

Jackson ran over his face and leaned back in his chair for a moment, and I assume he's in the same place that I am. Disgust. With me, of course.

Even if there was nothing that I could have done before knowing about the condition that our unnamed baby boy had, there was something that I could do now. Something that I needed to do and something that he had brought up that he thought was the right thing to do. Yet I still sat here, pregnant and hating myself, terrified to let go.

"I wish things were different. But they aren't." Jackson started. "And I'm sorry they aren't. But… we can go to church. We can do whatever you need to do, April. I'm here for you. For both of you. We're going to figure out a way to get through this."

I shook my head and pushed my plate away from me, making room for my elbows on the table and slouching forward. It's a heavy conversation. Even if I wasn't hormonal, it wasn't one that I would have been able to handle with any sense of clarity inside of my head. This was all turning out to be too much.

"Why don't you take a bath?" Jackson suggested with a raise of his eyebrows.

"Okay." I don't want to fight with him, not over something simple.

Leaving half of the food on my plate untouched, I get up from the kitchen table without another word and walk down the hallway through our bedroom and to the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind me. The sanctity of the bathroom with the tub running up to fill is the only place that I can really cry without worrying about it, but even then, as the tears fall from my face, they're not loud or noisy. I can feel my nose getting stuffy, but I cry in my own silence.

When the bathtub is filled, I strip out of my clothes and leave them in a pile on the floor before climbing in. I sink under entirely at first to get my hair wet before I just slouch there and absorb the warmth of the water surrounding me.

But even that, I can't entirely enjoy. I know what life inside of the womb is like. It was filled with water. It was why water births worked – something that I had looked into out of curiosity, out of one point. A baby doesn't drown during a water birth because the baby is already in water in the womb. It takes air for breath and when a baby comes from water into water without the introduction of air, the lungs remain collapsed and no water can enter. But does it matter? I don't even know if this baby will get to breathe.

The fixation on that detail alone is enough to make sure that it's not a long bath. I wash quickly before getting out, careful of my changing center of balance.

Jackson had apparently already finished with doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen because he was seated on the edge of the bed, his hands folded in front of him but otherwise doing nothing. It makes sense, in a way. I hate that it does. He doesn't look up at me, even though I walk past him with nothing but a towel over my shoulders to keep my hair from dripping.

"I'm sorry that I can't talk about it. It's too much today." I murmured quietly as I opened up the dresser, pulling out a fresh pair of panties and pajamas.

"You don't need to apologize, April. I know that this is hard for you. It's hard on me too." Jackson replied but I could hear the sigh that fell from his lips regardless. Hard seemed to be such a vast underestimate for all of it, but there really was nothing that could accurately describe it.

The bed sunk under my weight when I finally get down on it. I'd gained a good twenty pounds. For nothing. No, not for nothing. For pain. For agony. For more suffering. Not for happiness.

"I don't want to fight," I whispered out quietly, blinking back tears in my eyes.

"I don't want to either," Jackson agreed. "We're going through something hard and… things are going to be said. That's the way this goes. We see it all the time in the family of patients at work. They fight and they rip each other apart. But at the end of the day, they still get through it. We will. We'll get to the other side. It's just going to take some time first."

I wanted desperately to believe him. I had seen the same proof for myself but it's hard to put it in the context of our own lives, our own loss that was just lingering around the corner. Yet I still want him to be right. I want to survive this. I just don't know how.

Laying down on my left side, I let go of the breath that I was holding onto. Jackson curled up around me only a moment later, the warmth of his body filling my back and an arm falling over my stomach, holding onto my belly as if he could somehow protect our baby from the fate that he was going to suffer. That we were all going to suffer.

"I'm still thankful to have you in my life, and as my wife, April. Nothing in the world will change that." He said softly in my ear. Tears welled in my eyes, blinking quickly.

"I love you, Jackson," I whispered back, voice struggling to come out clearly with emotion.

"I love you too."