Picking up the Pieces (13 page)

CHAPTER 24

After Brett walked away, everyone just stood there staring between me and Luke. Savannah and Lizzy had tears in their eyes. Jeremy just shook his head then hung it between his shoulders. Gavin and Stacia held on to each other, and Trevor shuffled from foot to foot. Luke stood without blinking for what felt like years before he finally addressed me.

“Emmy, I...”

I moved to stand directly in front of him. “I didn’t ‘get rid’ of your kid, Luke.
You
never had a kid.
I
did. You lost all rights to my child when you refused to answer my calls or emails so that I could tell you I was pregnant. I had a baby that I loved more than anything in this world, and I lost her.”

“Her?” he asked, tears welling up in his eyes. “It was a girl?”

“Yes,” I answered coldly.

He raked his hands through his hair and hung his head. “Jesus Christ. Emmy, baby…”

He reached for me, but I took a step out of reach. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “From this moment on, you don’t touch me. You don’t look at me. You don’t fucking talk to me. I want nothing to do with you, Luke. You’re nothing but poison for me, so as far as I’m concerned, you no longer exist.”

“You don’t mean that. Please, Emmy…”

“I mean it.” There was no emotion in my voice. I felt nothing, and it reflected in my tone. I was so through with Luke, it wasn’t even funny. “I could never possibly hate a person as much as I hate you. Accusing me of getting rid of my child just proved to me what a piece of shit you really are. You and Allison deserve each other. You’re both bottom feeders.”

I turned and walked away, not giving him a chance to say anything else.

“Emmy, sweetie, wait up,” Savannah called as she ran after me. “Emmy, are you okay?”

I opened my car door and climbed in as I answered. “I’m done with this shit, Van. I’m going home.”

Her eyes were frantic. “Let me come with you. Please, Emmy. You don’t need to be alone right now.”

I placed my hand on her arm to try and calm her down. “I’m okay, Savannah. I’m not going to do anything stupid, I promise. I just really want to be by myself.”

“Are you sure?”

I gave her a sad smile and responded. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

I could tell she didn’t want to let me go. She was afraid I’d sink back down into the dark place I was in right after I lost my daughter. I was in a bad way, but I’d never let myself go there again. I was stronger than that. I just had to show her.

***

LUKE

By the time I got my shit together and ran after Emmy, I was too late. Her car was just pulling away and Savannah was staring after it as tears streamed down her face. I came to a stop as she turned to me. “You son of a bitch! I knew you’d do this to her!” She slapped me so hard my head shot to the side and I saw stars, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but stand there. I deserved every bit of her hatred.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered pathetically. I didn’t know what else to say.

“You’re sorry? Oh, that just makes everything better, doesn’t it? How in the hell could you think she’d give up her own baby?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” I replied. “
Fuck
! I know she wouldn’t do something like that, but I jumped at the first scenario that popped into my head. How do I fix this, Savannah? I know you hate me, but you have to help me fix this.” I’d never felt more desperate in my life.

“I’m not helping you with shit. I told you that I knew you’d do this again, and you just proved me right. You are the worst human being on the face of the Earth, Luke. Stay the fuck away from Emmy.”

She started to walk away, but I grabbed onto her arm. “I’m
begging
you, Savannah. Please, at least tell me what happened.”

She stood silent for several seconds, but when she didn’t walk away, I knew she’d at least tell me what happened. “The doctor called it placental abruption. She was nine-months pregnant when she started bleeding heavily.” Savannah’s face went pale as she talked, and her voice started to shake. “I tried to get her to the hospital as fast as I could, but we didn’t make it in time. The baby died, and we almost lost Emmy because of all the blood she lost.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Now you see why you need to get the hell out of her life? Everything about you is a reminder of what she lost.” She pulled her arm out of my grasp and started walking again. I didn’t stop her this time. “You aren’t good for her, Luke,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away, leaving me standing alone with my thoughts. That wasn’t a good place for me to be at the moment.

When I got back to my car, I was surprised to see Trevor still standing there. “You okay, man?” he asked as I got closer.

“No,” I stated. “I’m so fucking far from okay, it’s unreal.” He nodded his head but remained silent. “Lizzy told you what happened, didn’t she? With the pregnancy?”

Trevor let out a long sigh before answering. “Yeah. When you ran after her, Lizzy filled me in. It was bad man. I mean
really
bad.”

“Savannah told me about the bleeding and Emmy almost dying.”

“There’s more to it than that. I didn’t get the long and drawn out of it, but from what Lizzy said, I gather that Emmy was in a real bad head space for a while after the baby died.”

I rubbed my hands over my face and looked up at the black sky. “Could this night get any fucking worse?”

“I don’t see how, brother.” Trevor walked up and placed a supportive hand on my shoulder. “Nothin’ more you can do tonight, Luke. Let’s head home. You can get some sleep and maybe come up with a plan in the morning.”

I looked at Trevor and let out a dry laugh. “I don’t see me coming back from this one, Trev.”

He shook his head and gave me a look of pity. “I hope you’re wrong, but I just don’t know.”

CHAPTER 25

PAST

Late Spring 2006

EMERSON

“Maybe you shouldn’t be standing up there. You said yourself that you were feeling a little pain.” Savannah was holding the bottom of the ladder for me as I reached up to paint the last white butterfly on Ella’s lavender nursery wall. I wanted to make her room as beautiful and girly as possible soft purple walls with white and pink butterflies strategically placed all around. The people who wrote the books on pregnancy weren’t joking when they said the mother started nesting near the end of her pregnancy. I was nine months along, and when I woke up that morning, I just had to finish up my daughter’s bedroom. I wished Grams could have been here, but she was at the diner, so I called Savannah over to help me finish up the last of it.

I was so anxious to meet my sweet baby girl. I couldn’t wait to get Ella home and in her new room and see her swaddled in her pretty pink baby blanket. I could picture myself sitting in the glider as I watched her sleeping peacefully in her crib.

“It’s just Braxton Hicks, Savannah. The doctor said it was totally normal at this stage of the pregnancy. Now shut up and hand me that stencil.”

She huffed out a frustrated breath but finally relented and did as I ordered. I reached down to get the butterfly stencil when a sharp pain cut through my abdomen. It was so painful that I lost my breath. I clung to the top rung of the ladder so I wouldn’t fall. I thought I could wait out the pain, but after a second or two, it wasn’t subsiding.

“What’s happening? Emmy, what’s wrong?” Savannah asked in a rush, clearly freaking out.

It was almost unbearable, but I did my best to climb down the ladder and stretched out on the bedroom floor. I was trying to do the deep breathing I’d read about in one of my books, but the pain wasn’t getting any better “I don’t know what’s wrong, but this isn’t right. God, it hurts.” To make matters worse, when I looked up at Savannah and took in her ghostly white complexion, I knew something was wrong. These weren’t just normal labor pains.

“Oh God, Emmy… Is that blood? It looks like blood!”

“What?!” I tried to sit up to see what she was talking about, but the room started to spin around me. “Van,” I mumbled through the pain. “I need you to drive me to the hospital. We have to go right now.”

“Emmy, I need to call an ambulance. There’s too much blood.” Tears welled up in Savannah’s eyes as she spoke. At the sight of her fears, combined with my own, my cries turned into sobs.

“We can’t wait for an ambulance. That’ll take too long! Please just help me up, so we can go,” I begged.

She didn’t hesitate. She pulled me from the floor just as another stabbing pain ripped through my abdomen. It was a miracle that I made it to Savannah’s car without passing out, but the desperation to keep my baby safe pushed me to keep going. As I sat inside, I tried my hardest to keep my eyes open but it was impossible. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion, and my vision began to blur. The last thing I remembered before passing out was reaching down to stroke my stomach as tears streamed down my face.

“It’s okay, baby,” I spoke to my belly. “Mommy’s gonna get you through this. Just hang on, Ella. I love you.” After that, everything went black.

***

I woke up feeling groggy and out of sorts. Nothing around me felt familiar. I blinked several times trying to get my vision in focus. “She’s awake
.” I heard from somewhere next to me. It sounded like Savannah but I wasn’t sure. It felt like my brain was taking forever to kick-start. “Emmy, sweetie, can you hear me?”

Savannah’s blurry image slowly came in to focus. “What happened?” I asked in a voice so scratchy that I barely recognized it. It hurt to speak.

“Oh, honey.” Savannah broke down in tears. I saw movement from behind her and watched Jeremy pull her into a hug. A quick glance around showed that Grams, along with all of my friends, were standing around me.

The memories of where I was and why came rushing back. I quickly reached down to feel my stomach, terror running through me when it felt smaller than it had been before. “Where’s Ella?” I ask
ed on a sob. “Where’s my baby?”

Grams came and sat on the side of my bed
as took my hand in hers. “Baby,” she whispered as tears streamed down her face, “there was a problem that the doctors weren’t expecting.” She cleared her throat before continuing. “Emmy, you started bleeding badly because your placenta detached. Ella didn’t make it, sweetie. I’m so sorry.” The last words were said with a hiccupped sob. I’d never seen my grandmother so heartbroken before. Even when my parents died, she was my rock. Seeing her breakdown in tears was just too much.

“But… I don’t understand. She has to be okay. I just finished her nursery. She hasn’t even had a chance to sleep in it yet.”

Lizzy let out a heart wrenching sob and left the hospital room. “Where is she?” I managed to ask past the lump in my throat. “How long have I been out?”

Brett came up to me then and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Emmy, you were in ICU for a day. They had to do emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. You’ve been in and out for three days.”

I lost it then. Knowing my daughter had died three days ago, and I didn’t get to hold her was more painful than anything else. Not being able to hold her or kiss her little cheeks ripped my insides apart. My friends and Grams just held on to me as I cried so hard my chest hurt. I cried until there weren’t any tears left. The nurse came in to push more pain meds and after what felt like hours of torment, I was finally forced to sleep. But when I woke later that evening, I remembered...
everything
. The torment started again. It was a vicious circle that lasted for days.

After the tears disappeared
, the numbness invaded.

I sat through my daughter’s funeral in complete silence, my body refusing
to acknowledge anyone. That feeling lasted longer than the complete sorrow. I went through my days like a zombie, not caring about anything or anyone. I felt like an empty shell of my former self. The door to Ella’s nursery was shut and remained that way for over a year. It was never to be touched.

Eventually
, the emptiness wore off and depression took over. I found that I could easily drown it out if I drank enough. So, that’s exactly how I spent the next year of my life. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t remember the loss of my daughter. I drank to numb the pain. I drank to forget. I drank because I hated myself. I drank because I hated everyone. I simply hated everything about my life.

***

PRESENT

Spring 2013

Remembering that part of my life made me cringe. I was embarrassed of who I was, and I never wanted to be that person again. I went out to the bars in the city every night and met people who didn’t know me, people that didn’t know about my past or that I was drinking and partying to fill a void. I hung around some really bad people that did some pretty bad stuff, but I didn’t care. They supplied the drugs and alcohol, so as far as I was concerned, they were just fine.

I knew that what I was doing wasn’t really who I was, but being drunk or high was better than being sad. My friends tried so hard to be supportive, but every time I looked at them, I could see the pity in their eyes and I hated it. I couldn’t stand to be around anyone who knew.

I was ashamed of the downward spiral I was on, but I didn’t know how to pull myself out of it. God only knows how long it would have lasted if I hadn’t have hit rock bottom as soon as I did. I woke up one morning in a room I didn’t recognize, lying in a bed I’d never been in, with two men that I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember what happened the night before, but from the lack of clothing on all three of us, it was easy to ascertain that I’d had sex with two men whose names I didn’t know.

I jumped out of the bed, ran to the bathroom and emptied my stomach of all its contents. When I was finally able to move from the floor, I dressed as quickly as possible and ran out of the room. When I found out I was in some shitty hotel, in an even shittier part of town, I didn’t hesitate to call Savannah to come and get me. It was the first time in a year I asked for her help, and she was there the moment I needed her.

It took a lot of work, but I managed to get my shit together and start pulling myself up with the help of the people who loved me. There was no doubt in my mind that they were terrified I’d go back to that after my blow up with Luke the night before. But I knew I was tougher than that.

The ringing of my phone pulled me out of my thoughts and back to reality. I grabbed my cell from the nightstand and looked at the display before hitting send. “Good morning, Savannah,” I said as soon as I answered. “I’m still fine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied. “I’m not calling to check on you. There’s a
Storage Wars
marathon on today, and I just thought you’d want to know, that’s all.”

I let out a deep belly laugh. “Much appreciated, love. Tell you what. Why don’t you see if all those people standing beside you want to come over, and we can watch it together?”

“People? What people? I’m here all by my lonesome.” I could hear the laughter in her voice and it made me smile even more.

“Am I on speaker?”

“Maybe.” That meant yes.

“Lizzy, Brett, Stacia, Gavin, and Jeremy. Would you like to join me and Savannah for a
Storage Wars
marathon today?”

Different versions of yes came from all of my friends in the background. “You guys suck,” Savannah told them. “So much for covert.”

I heard a throat clear in the background. “Uh…Emmy? Trevor here,” he said quietly.

“Hey, Trev.”

“You doing okay, gorgeous?” I loved how Trevor managed to pull off flirting in any scenario.

“I’m good, Trev. You?”

“Well. Uh… I was wondering—seeing as I love
Storage Wars
and all…”

“You coming alone?” I interrupted.

“That can be arranged,” he responded. I knew he still considered Luke his best friend, but over the past several weeks, it became clear that wherever Lizzy went, Trevor followed.

“Then do you want to come over to watch it?” I asked.

“Well, I guess I could squeeze you in…”

I let out another laugh and addressed the whole group. “You guys are ridiculous. I’ll see you in thirty. Bring food!” I hung up and climbed out of my bed feeling a little bit lighter. Luke wasn’t going to destroy me this time. I spent massive amounts of time worrying about how I would handle it if he broke my heart again. It felt like a weight being lifted off my chest to know I’d be just fine.