"I'm glad we decided to stay exclusive."

That's the choice of words Tom uses, coddling his other half in his arms at almost two in the morning. It doesn't settle well with Trina, she's already uneasy from the slight bit of pain this night put her through. For Tom's sake, she doesn't say anything about it, but doesn't say much of anything at all.

Instead, she shimmies out of his arms casually and turns to her back, her hands resting on her stomach. "Well, it won't be forever, right?" She asks, looking down once more, making sure she's not living a horrible nightmare. Once more, checking to see if her little, slight bump is gone. Once more, making sure this is truly her reality.

"We said we would stay exclusive forever after the baby." He replies, trying to touch her again, trying to hold her hand or her arm...something. Something to connect with her. She knows that he just wants to be next to her like old times, but this feeling isn't like old times.

She sits up, putting a nightgown on that had been pushed off of the bed. "That was before my inhospitable uterus," She says, quoting the doctor's exact words, "Decided we didn't need a baby, Tom." She says dryly, fixing her nightgown to cover everything up. Never had she felt so conscious of her body until after the baby mishap.

He sits up, clearly wondering what must be going through her head. Wondering if he even wants to know what's going through her head, or if he should just leave it alone. She feels him staring at her, doing that thing he does when he's trying to figure her out. After almost four years of marriage to the her, he should know by now that he's not ever going to figure her out.

Her tongue feels like cotton residing in her mouth. "I need to go get a water."

"Let me." Tom say hastily, snapping from his thoughts and pushing himself up off of the bed, his feet hitting the floor quickly and heavily.

She perks her head up, confusion written across her face. Why must he have to do everything for me? I lost a child, I'm not disabled. It's not even the first time this has ever happened.

This has been happening for the past month. He is constantly by her side, waiting on her hand and foot. It's brought tension due to the nature of the situation, but also because when she married Tom, she told him she was independent and didn't need someone waiting on her. Now, he won't leave her alone.

He thinks he's helping her, she knows that. But, he also knows how she feels about being helped too much.

Nonetheless, she lets him go get the water for her. She lets him because she doesn't want to start an argument at two in the morning, she just wants to go to sleep and stay asleep...for a long, few days.

She lays down again, making sure her nightgown is covering everything. Four years ago, she never would've slept with a nightgown on. Or clothes, for that matter. Even a year ago, she was rarely in clothes at bedtime.

The baby changed everything.

Often, she spent her nights wondering what the sex of the baby was instead of sleeping. She would see scenarios in her head, planning out what could have happened if only her body would've accepted her being pregnant.

"I'm pregnant." She paused, looking past him for a moment at the tiki torches lining the, now, quiet beach. "I know that we decided that this-" She paused, shrugging one shoulder. "...Children...is not what we want." She said, finding it harder than ever to spit her words out to him. "So I...already know what I need to do."

That night that she told Tom also replays in her mind, over and over, like a broken record. She should've left it there, instead of going on to say that she felt she should tell him. She shouldn't have ever told him in the first place. He wouldn't have ever considered the baby, and she would've aborted like she's done before.

This could've been prevented, and had a lot less heartache in the end.

…

…

"I'm going to be fine, Tom." She says, looking him straight into the eye, telling him a lie that she knows he'll figure out. "It's not like I'm not used to you going to Japan by now. I'm fine."

She's not fine. She's been in bed for the past two days. Her hair is beginning to look awful, and he doesn't really even want to sleep beside her. Her mind keeps going back to that day, when she woke up in a pool of blood.

"Susan is here again. She brought you a casserole." He says, defeated. With that statement, she knows that for now he's given up arguing with her. Her heart doesn't feel as sunken down.

She looks down her arm and away, sipping her water slowly. "Tell Susan she can shove it up her ass." She snaps dryly, not picking her head up to see Tom's reaction, instead setting her glass down and returning to the book she was reading before Tom interrupted her. She's not really reading, her mind is buzzing too much right now with the thought of Susan, but she wants Tom to believe that she's reading so maybe he'll get the hint and leave her alone.

Susan...Susan is the real reason she's experiencing this horrible, disgusting depression. Susan is the one that talked her into telling Tom in the first place, that Labor Day on the beach. She's the one that is going to get the blame for all of this.

"Tri..." Tom pleads, but just lets his voice trail off. He knows that there's no changing that stubborn woman.

Once she hears him make his way back down to the front door where he had left Susan standing with her casserole, she opens the drawer beside her bed and pulls out a little piece of black and white paper.

The doctor's office they went to for the three month check-up believed in using ultrasound machines. (Some days she wonders if it's the ultrasound that killed her baby. There are so many debates out there about those things…). Because they had believed in these machines for a while, and used them as soon as they became available in the States, they had the top of the line equipment. Which also meant that Trina and Tom got to have a picture of the little peanut growing inside of her.

Who would've guessed that two months later, her body would reject the changes and stop the process entirely?

She pulls the photo out often, only when Tom is gone. She can't stand him seeing her like this.

He took time off of work to be with her, even. She'd been counting down the days until tpday, when he's back on the flight to Japan...something she never would've been doing six months ago.

But six months ago, the grass was green, there was no snow on the ground, the beaches were full, and Trina and Tom were having their best year of marriage yet. Now, there's a outrageous amount of snow, and their relationship has never been worse.

Her thumb swipes over the pixeled image of the little peanut sized baby that had been growing inside of her. It wasn't the first time she'd ever experienced losing a baby. She terminated once with Luke, and again one other time with Tom. She never told either men about the experiences. She also lost one with Tom, but he found out about that one. They agreed to not talk about it, and let her handle it on her own.

But that was back when they were dating, back when Tom didn't act like he owned her. He never acted this way until that morning she woke up, and her world was immediately altered.

This baby, though, was different. They talked about this baby. They both got equally ready to have this baby. They were tossing around girl names and boy names...Lucy for a girl, Kenny for a boy. They started looking at cribs, they cleaned the spare room out to prepare a nursery, they were doing everything that real parents should do to prepare for an abundantly loved baby.

Friends were beginning to prepare baby showers, Janet was in the middle of crocheting a baby blanket filled with beautiful colors, Susan's daughter Laurie was buying books for Trina to read to the child after he or she was born.

Baby books were being read, parenting books, and nursery magazines.

All of the preparation was happening, and then just like that, everything came to a screeching halt.

Janet's blanket for the baby turned into a lap blanket for an elderly person at the care home down the road, Laurie's books were being donated to the local library, and the baby books and nursery magazines were being left underneath the coffee table, where Tom tried to hide them. (Which didn't work...Trina still found them and cried over them while he was at the grocery store).

Never has she been this emotional, either. One moment she's upset because of the baby, like now while she's rubbing her thumb over this precious baby's morphed photo. In a few minutes, she'll be incredibly mad at herself for not being able to house this baby properly in her body.

She was ready. Tom was ready. They decided they could be parents, and maybe they even wanted to be. It was as though fate dangled something in front of them, and they were so close to grabbing it before they stumbled and missed it.

"Alright," Tom's voice pulls her out of her day dream. She shoves the picture quickly, but carefully, back into the drawer and shuts it as quietly as possible. "I'm off..." He says, buttoning the last button on his shirt. "You promise me you're okay?"

She knows what he must be thinking. He's hidden all the razors, all the sharp knives. He's ridiculous for thinking she would actually consider her own death in all of this. "I'm fine, Tom. I'd be sitting her if you were here, and I'll be sitting here when you aren't." She says, finally looking up at him from having her eyes pointed down, watching her fingers pick at her nails. "Call me when you get there, okay?" She says.

Through all of this, she hasn't stopped loving him any less than she ever has. He's just on her nerves more, and she just doesn't show it even more than before.

"Okay." He answers quietly, grabbing his hat and putting it underneath his arm before leaning down on the bed and kissing her lips. "Please remember that I love you, Tri. I know this wasn't what we wanted, but we didn't think we wanted a baby either. Sometimes things happen for reasons we don't understand. I don't understand it either, I'm..." He pauses and shuts his eyes, sighing as he tries to find the appropriate words. "I'm torn up about this, too. I'm not saying my pain is the same is yours, but it's hard for me too. I wanted this, but now all I really want is for my wife to stop lying to me and telling me she's okay when I know she's not." He whispers, his tone dropping and his eyes softening.

She feels tears sting her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall. "I can't not lie to you, Tom. If I tell you the truth you'll just feel even worse. So please, try...just try to forget about everything at home for the length of your trip. Take the pressure off. Go sleep with someone new." She says, giving him the permission.

He shakes his head. "I want to stay exclusive..." He admits. She had gotten the hint the other day when he was talking about how glad he was they were exclusive again, but she didn't think he really meant it. "I like just being with you. We're getting older anyway...less people our age..." He says.

She looks down at her book, annoyed that he reminded her of that again. She's younger than him, she can still play with the best. He on the other hand, must feel that isn't true after the baby.

She pulls her robe around her tighter and nods, "Okay." She says, even though her mind is thinking other things. She's becoming very experienced at lying to her husband.

He presses a kiss to her lips one more time before leaving the room, giving her a soft I love you before he exits the doorway.

When she hears the front door shut and his car engine start, she opens the drawer again and grabs the newspaper from it, opens it to the classifieds, and finds the job she circled.

-MIDWAY AIRLINES-

-NOW HIRING-

-LOOKING FOR EXPERIENCED FLIGHT STEWARDESS'-

-PLEASE VISIT THE OFFICE BEFORE 02/01/1977 FOR AN APPLICATION-

If Tom could use work to clear his mind, she should be able to, too.