Free Hiding In His Dreams by Jason W. Chan

expression he had never seen before on her, not even when
she was upset with her mother.
    Her face was twisted. Her eyes were
hollow. Her mouth was a straight line, nearly disappearing
altogether into her face.
    Dr. Best put down the documents. “Were
you on your feet a lot?”
    Alyssa stared at the doctor in silence.
She then looked down at her stomach. The bleeding had
stopped.
    Luke answered for her. “Yes, she
was.”
    “ Bad idea,” the doctor said.
“Really bad idea.”
    * * * * *
    When they got home that night, Alyssa
went straight to the crib room. Luke followed her and stood in the
doorway. She trailed her fingers along one crib’s tiny mattress,
then stared at the baby paraphernalia on the guest bed. She then
turned her attention to the empty cribs, gazing at it for a long
time.
    Luke watched and didn’t know what he
should do or say. He assumed she was thinking about what the dead
babies would be doing in the cribs if they were alive: giggling,
crying, fussing.
    After a while, she went straight to
their bedroom, got into bed and pulled the covers over her head.
Luke stood by the door, unsure of whether to go in. He was going to
ask her to marry him the night before. He had it all planned out.
Now, he was thinking the proposal should wait, at least until they
dealt with the miscarriage.
    “ Alyssa?” he called out
tentatively.
    She did not even stir.
    He sat on the bed.
    “ Alyssa?” he tried
again.
    Still nothing.
    He removed the blankets gently,
revealing a tear-stained face underneath.
    She wiped away her tears. “When I was a
little girl, I won the spelling bee. My second-grade teacher gave
me some dolls as a reward. I still remember her telling me that
raising kids is the most special thing in the world. I took those
dolls everywhere I went. I brushed their hair, dressed them up,
even bandaged one after I accidentally broke her arm.”
    She stopped, and smiled as she
reminisced. The smile looked out of place on a face that had been
crying just moments earlier, like a dark cloud on a sunny
day.
    She sat up and propped up a pillow, and
leaned against it. “It was something to care for. To love. And to
be loved back.”
    Luke listened with his full attention,
staring into her flushed face.
    He brushed a loose strand of hair that
was matted near her eye. He then climbed into bed in her. He put
his arms around her and she rested her head on his
shoulder.
    She closed her eyes. “My mother
neglected me her for career,” she continued.
    “ She focused entirely on her
academic career. I took care of myself. I raised myself. I told
myself that I would never be like her. That I would be the best
mother in the world.”
    “ We can try again,” Luke
said. “You can get pregnant again.”
    “ What if I miscarry
again?”
    “ You won’t. Just don’t work
as hard.”
    She picked her head up and looked at
him, her eyes boring into him. “It won’t be the same. We were going
to have twins. Twins. One of them was going to be named
Shaylee.”
    “ This is my fault,” he said.
“If I hadn’t come down there and provoked the patient. If I had
protected you better….”
    Alyssa put a finger to his lips. “You
came down because you were worried about me. And some careless
orderly had left the door of the Detention Room open. He would have
come out sooner or later. And you couldn‘t approach me when he had
the knife to my throat, because no one knew what he would have
done.”
    When she put it that way, Luke knew he
could not argue with her logic.
    She put a few fingers on his neck and
stroked him there. “It’s no one’s fault,” she whispered. “I don’t
ever want to hear you say that. If anything, it‘s my fault for
working even though I should have been resting.”
    He said nothing. He knew that it was no
one‘s fault, but he could not shake off the nagging feelings of
guilt.
    He also felt that the situation was
still unresolved, and it would come back to bite them in the
ass.
    He wanted to