Invisible String

Chapter 8: Break Free

"Say it. I'm dying."

Her brother simply rolled his eyes before sitting on the couch, the tablet in his hands. He handed her a little package of mixed nuts, then his expressions changed from annoyed older brother to worried doctor again.

"You passed out because your blood sugar dropped too low. Have you been eating right, Liz?"

When she didn't say anything, it was answer enough for him.

"You always forget to eat when you're nervous." he remembered. "But you can't go on like this, okay? It's not good for you, kid."

"I know." she muttered. "I'm just exhausted."

"I know." he said. "Your iron levels are also low. It could be from your diet, but–"

"I had a miscarriage." she blurted out the words before thinking.

It was the first time she spoke about what happened with someone other than Robert. No one else in her life knew about it.

"What?" he almost dropped the tablet, mouth opening in a shocked expression.

Twisting the bottom of her scrubs shirt in her hands nervously, she told Will about that morning, six months ago. That morning when she woke up in a pool of her own blood, and called Rob crying only to hear she was just being dramatic. She bled for two more hours before a friend took her to the hospital, while she miscarried what was left of the pregnancy alone on a hospital bed forgotten in a corner while Robert had fun with his friends.

Blood had never bothered her. How could it, with her choice of career? But the stickiness of the blood on the bed sheets that clinged to her thighs was a feeling hard to forget.

She didn't even know she was pregnant before the miscarriage happened. They weren't trying. Lizzie didn't want children, not at that moment, and they didn't have time for a baby. When she reminded Rob of that, after he suggested they could try again, he said that she should just quit her job then.

Looking back now, that was the beginning of the end for them.

Will nodded, sadness and anger all over his face.

"Some women experience iron deficiency after a miscarriage. It's not dangerously low yet, but we'll have to monitor your diet, make some adjustments." he explained. "Liz. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry you went through that, and I wasn't there for you." comforted Will, pulling her for a tight hug.

"I didn't know I was pregnant." she repeated the start of the story, her head on his chest. "His stages of grief were a bit different than mine. At first I was a dumb whore for getting pregnant. Then I was a useless idiot for losing the baby, and lastly I was a narcissistic bitch for not wanting to try again." There was a hole in the living room wall of their apartment from that night where she said she didn't want to have children and was going to get a contraceptive implant. Lizzie ended up covering the hole with a framed picture of the two of them at her graduation and got the implant two weeks later.

"Why did you never tell us?"

"It was easier to pretend that it never happened." she confessed, wiping the tears that formed in her eyes. "Just like everything else. At first, I thought that if I didn't talk about it, it wasn't a problem. But then it obviously became a problem, you know? I couldn't deny anymore. Then I thought I could fix the problem."

"But you can. No one can, Liz."

"I know that now. Then I felt ashamed, because I waited too long. I felt dumb. How did I put myself into that? How could I be so stupid?"

"It's his fault, you know that."

"I know that now, too, Wills. But it took some time, and there are still days when I think it would be easier to just go back to that life. Some days, it still feels like it's my fault and that I need to fix it."