My baby was stillborn at 38 weeks. I sobbed in the ward when my husband came. I had spent the last nine months dreaming of nursery colors and the smell of baby powder, only for the world to turn into a cold, clinical nightmare.
My heart felt like it had been physically ripped from my chest, leaving a hollow space that echoed with every breath I took. I looked at Harrison, expecting him to fall to his knees or wrap me in a protective embrace, but his face was as blank as a fresh sheet of paper. He sat in the hard plastic chair by the hospital bed, checked his watch, and said flatly, “This is a relief.
Now we can split up without guilt.” I broke. The scream that left my throat didn’t even sound human; it was the sound of a woman losing her child and her marriage in the same sixty seconds. He didn’t even flinch at my pain, just stood up, smoothed his coat, and walked out of the room without looking back.
I was left alone in the dim light of the maternity ward, surrounded by the muffled cries of healthy babies belonging to other, luckier women. The next day, I was discharged into a world that felt gray and tilted. The hospital staff looked at me with pity, but I couldn’t bear to see it, so I kept my head down until I reached the car.
I had to go back to the house we shared in North London one last time to pack a bag before heading to my parents’ home in the countryside. The house was quiet, smelling of the lilies people had already started sending, a scent that now made me want to gag. I walked into the kitchen to grab a glass of water, my hand trembling as I reached for a tumbler.
That’s when I noticed a small, amber-colored bottle tucked behind the toaster, partially hidden by a stack of mail. I found in the kitchen some pills I had never seen before—small, white tablets with a specific marking I didn’t recognize. My name wasn’t on the bottle, and neither was Harrison’s; it was a prescription for a name I’d never heard of, filled at a pharmacy three towns away.
I sat at the kitchen table, the silence of the house pressing against my ears like deep water. I pulled out my phone and searched the name of the medication, expecting it to be some kind of heart medicine or perhaps an antidepressant Harrison had been hiding. My breath hitched when the results popped up: it was an aggressive form of hormonal medication, often used to induce certain physiological changes or, in high doses, to interfere with the stability of a late-term pregnancy.
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